TRAILBLAZING JOURNALIST LES PAYNE DIES:
JOURNALIST LES Payne, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, trailblazer and revered mentor across a sterling 37-year Newsday career, has died of a heart attack at his Harlem home. He was 76.
The founder of the National Association of Black Journalists rose through the ranks of the Long Island newspaper from reporter to associate managing editor before his 2006 retirement. Payne’s beat was local and global, from strifetorn Soweto to Turkish poppy fields to City Hall, and it brought him into the spheres of luminaries like Nelson Mandela, Norman Mailer and Charles Mingus.
He aided many younger journalists while championing the cause of racial equality, and was inducted into two journalism halls of fame. “A personal friend, a man of high quality, skill & great character; a pacesetter of the journalistic world,” tweeted the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “We listened to him. We read him. He left a lot for us to think about.”
Payne was walking into his home on St. Nicholas Ave. about 6 p.m. on Monday when he suffered a fatal heart attack.
During his decades at Newsday, Payne directed national and foreign coverage, served as an editor with the ill-fated New York Newsday and worked as a columnist — writing even after retiring.
He earned the Pulitzer in 1974 for “The Heroin Trail,” a 33-part Newsday series in which Payne worked with a team of reporters tracking the drug from its harvesting in Turkey to its injection into the veins of New York’s junkies.
“Les Payne spent almost four decades at Newsday establishing a standard of journalistic excellence that has been a beacon for all who have come after him,” said Newsday editor Deborah Henley.
The Tuscaloosa, Ala., native arrived at Newsday in 1969 after serving six years in the Army, rising to the rank of captain during the Vietnam War. His career milestones included his coverage of the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the fight to end South Africa’s apartheid government — including the 1976 uprising in Soweto. After founding the NABJ in 1975, Payne later served as the fourth president of the nation’s largest organization for black journalists.
“A legendary journalist whose eloquent writing brought passion and truth-telling to an industry too often tone-deaf to the issues impacting communities of color,” said association President Sarah Glover.
Payne, a University of Connecticut graduate, was inducted into the Long Island Journalism Hall of Fame and the Deadline Club’s hall as well. He was the inaugural professor for the David Laventhol Chair at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
He is survived by his wife, Violet, and their three children, Tamara, Jaml and Haile.
“He appreciated the people who appreciated him: the readers,” said his wife. “They were the ones he enjoyed writing for, and I appreciate them reading him.”