Payne was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 1941. In 1954, Payne moved with his mother to Hartford, Connecticut, where she remarried. According to DNA analysis, he was descended in part from people from Cameroon. The first member of his family to attend college, Payne graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1964 with a degree in English. He was interested in pursuing a career in journalism, but as an African American he found no opportunities in the mainstream press. Instead, Payne joined the army, where he eventually became a captain. He ended his army career with two years as an information officer, writing speeches for General William Westmoreland and running the army newspaper.
Career
Newsday hired Payne in 1969 as an investigative reporter. In 1973, he helped write "The Heroin Trail", a series of 33 articles that detailed how heroin originated in Turkish poppy fields and found its way to the streets of New York City. Newsday won the 1974Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for "The Heroin Trail". Next year, it was published as a book credited to the newspaper staff, The Heroin Trail. In 1975, Payne and other African Americans working in the media established the National Association of Black Journalists. Payne served as the group's fourth president. Payne co-wrote a series of articles about the Symbionese Liberation Army and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. These became the basis of his next book, The Life and Death of the SLA, credited to "Les Payne and Tim Findley, with Carolyn Craven". His reporting from South Africa during the 1976 Soweto Uprising was selected by the jury for a Pulitzer Prize in International Journalism, but the group's advisory board overruled their decision with no explanation. Despite being barred from the country, Payne returned to South Africa in 1985 to chronicle the changes that had taken place during the intervening years. Payne started writing a weekly column for Newsday in 1980. It was syndicated in 1985. In 2006, Newsdays editor said the column was "so strong, so provocative and generated so much hate mail that Newsday editors got to know the names of all the Suffolk County Police Department's bomb-sniffing dogs". Payne served as Newsdays national editor and assistant managing editor for foreign and national news; at different times, he was responsible for the newspaper's coverage of health and science, New York City, and investigations. He was responsible for New York Newsday, the newspaper's short-lived attempt to compete in the New York City market. His staff won many journalism awards, including six Pulitzer Prizes. After retiring from Newsday'' in February 2006, Payne continued to contribute his column to the paper until December 2008. In his retirement, he wrote a biography of Malcolm X, which will be published in 2020 as '. The book is framed by essays from Tamara Payne, Payne’s daughter and primary researcher, who completed the biography after her father’s death.
