Les Payne's Special Tribute to Newsday Legend Bob Greene
Journalist and author Les Payne was born on July 12, 1941 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. As a child, Payne was always interested in writing. He graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1964 with B.A. degree in English. Serving six years in the United States Army, Payne worked as an Army journalist and wrote speeches for General William C. Westmoreland. While on assignment in Vietnam, he ran the Army's newspaper, and when he was discharged, he had attained the rank of captain.
Payne joined Newsday in the late 1960s, serving as the associate managing editor for the paper's national, science, and international news. In 1968, as an investigative reporter, Payne covered the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther, Jr., and in the 1970s, he covered the Black Panther Party. He won a Pulitzer Prize for The Heroin Trail in 1974, which was a Newsday series in 33 parts that traced the international flow of heroin from the poppy fields of Turkey to the veins of drug addicts in New York City. Later, it became a published book. He also covered the Symbionese Liberation Army and authored The Life and Death of the Symbionese Liberation Army. As a Newsday correspondent, Payne reported extensively from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the United Nations. During the 1976 Soweto uprising, he traveled throughout South Africa and wrote a series that was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in foreign reporting. Payne is also responsible for Newsday's Queens edition, whose news staffs have won every major award in journalism, including three Pulitzer Prizes. He is also a columnist for the Tribune Media Services.
As one of the founders and former presidents of the National Association of Black Journalists, Payne has worked to improve media fairness and employment practices. He is also the Inaugural Professor for the David Laventhol Chair at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Payne has received several awards including the United Nations' World Hunger Media Award, and three Unity Awards for investigative reporting. In 1990, he won cable television's highest honor, the Ace Award, for an interview with Mayor David Dinkins on Les Payne's New York Journal. In addition, he is a recipient of two honorary doctorate degrees from Medgar Evers College and Long Island University.
BOB GREENE
Bob Greene, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for public service and the founding father of investigative team journalism, died after a lengthy illness. He was 78.
From Newsday:
During a 37-year career at Newsday, first as a reporter and later as an editor, Greene pushed his reporters to dig out public corruption by aggressively covering their assigned beats, no matter how seemingly insignificant. In 1975, Greene helped form an organization for like-minded professionals, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and a year later, after the murder of Don Bolles, one of the group's founding reporters, in Phoenix, Ariz., he headed a team that wrote a series of stories about corruption in that state. The project brought Greene national attention and an enduring legacy.
Greene joined Newsday in 1955 as a reporter. Two years after his arrival, he took off a year at the request of Robert Kennedy to work as an investigator for the U.S. Senate Rackets Committee, Newsday wrote in its obituary.
He won his first Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal in 1970 for exposing land scandals In 1974, along with a team of reporters, he won a second Gold Medal for a series that tracked heroin from Turkish poppy fields to Long Island neighborhoods.
Greene is survived by his wife, Kathleen and his son, Robert Jr. Many of you remember back in 1989 that his daughter, Lea, was murdered during a home break in.
Greene worked closely with District Attorney James M. Catterson to prosecute and convict her two killers.
Long Island Business News extends its sympathies and warmest wishes to the Greene and Newsday families for their loss. Journalism has lost a giant.
For more info on the Fair Media Council contact: www.FairMediaCouncil.org
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