Les Payne: Raw & Uncensored

A Special Post in Honor of the Journalism
Icon on the Third Anniversary of His Death

The G-Man Interviews

Pulitzer Prize-Winner Discusses His Career, New York Times Battle, the Tactical
Genius of President Obama, and the Global Crackdown and Killing of Journalists

This interview was conducted at Mr. Payne’s home in Harlem (NY) on April 15, 2014.

Welcome.

Les Payne, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, was a former editor and columnist for Newsday. He was responsible for national, foreign, and health and science news at the paper for a quarter century and served as the editor of New York Newsday. His news staffs won every major award in journalism, including five Pulitzer Prizes.

Payne, along with two other Newsday reporters, won a Pulitzer Prize after investigating the international flow of heroin from the poppy fields of Turkey, through the French Connection, and into the veins of drug addicts in the New York City area. Spending more than six months in Europe and Asia on the story, he reported from locations such as Istanbul, Turkey, Munich, Cyprus, and Nice. The 33-part Newsday series was also published in book form.

Some of his other major investigations include: migrant farm laborers on Long Island; involuntary sterilization of Black women; U.S. Atomic testing in Nevada; illegal immigration; The Black Panther Party; and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Payne’s other awards include: the $10,000 U. N. World Hunger Media Award; Columbia University’s Tobenkin Award; the 2009 Aaronson Lifetime Achievement Award (Hunter College); three Unity Awards from Lincoln University, the Inaugural Howard University Journalism Prize, the Headliner Award: ’08 induction into the NABJ Hall of Fame; the UPI Award for Best Commentary, two Commentary Awards from the National Association for Black Journalists, the Page One Award for feature writing, several Associated Press awards for column-writing and more than 200 other prizes from civic organizations, professional groups, high schools and universities. He has also been inducted into the Black Newspaper’s Hall of Fame.

He was in the process of completing a biography on Malcolm X when he died in 2018.

May his extraordinary body of work be discovered and embraced by current and future journalists, worldwide, and may he forever rest in peace.