Lloyd Allen Dobyns, Jr

Lloyd Dobyns, an award winning NBC News correspondent and anchor during the 70s and 80s known for his robust reporting and wry delivery, died Sunday, August 22nd, in Mebane, North Carolina, from complications following a series of strokes. He was 85.

Dobyns was an NBC News correspondent in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but is particularly remembered for the innovative late night news series NBC News Overnightwhere he was teamed with Linda Ellerbee. The program was known for the insightful writing of its two anchors as well as its sardonic tone.

A graduate of Washington and Lee University, Dobyns was born in Newport News, Virginia on March 12, 1936. After a stint as an officer in the US Army, he got his start in broadcasting as a reporter for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1957. Three years later, he began anchoring the news at the local NBC affiliate in the Tidewater area of Virginia (WAVY-TV), then became news director, where he was responsible for several progressive changes, including hiring the area’s first female TV reporter at a time when television news was primarily a man’s game.

He left Virginia in 1969 for New York, first as Managing Editor of WNEW-TV, then as part of the NBC News team. At NBC, he worked as a foreign correspondent, then was brought back to New York by legendary producer Reuven Frank to anchor the groundbreaking TV news magazine, Weekend. 

When reporters asked Frank to describe “this guy Dobyns,” he answered, “well, he writes like David Brinkley and looks like Charles Bronson.” Dobyns set the style for Weekend, a writing and reporting style that continued after he was joined by Linda Ellerbee – the first time the irreverent duo were paired. “He was a friend, teacher, trouble-maker, and a world-class journalist,” said Ellerbee, “I shall miss him more than I can say.”

After leaving  NBC News Overnight, Dobyns anchored the short-lived but critically acclaimed TV magazine Monitor. Later, in a documentary titled If Japan Can, Why Can’t We?, he reported on the Japanese boom at a time when American manufacturing was faltering. The success of this documentary led him to co-write several books about Japan’s economic success with NBC News producer Clare Crawford-Mason.           

“I learned a lot about journalism and how to deliver it by watching Lloyd—here was an old-school journalist inventing a new school of journalism every night on NBC," said Brian Williams, chief anchor at MSNBC. "Lloyd was wry without being snarky, he was smart but never pedantic, he was dry by design...but never boring. He firmly believed: he was a delivery system. The news was the star of the broadcast."

During his long career with NBC News, Dobyns won more than two dozen awards for reporting, writing, and anchoring. "Lloyd was a man ahead of his time,” said Richard C. Wald, former president of NBC News, now Fred Friendly Professor of Professional Practice in Media and Society at Columbia University. “He had what is now called edge. In service to that style he brought experience, intelligence and a subversive humor that made anything he did identifiably Dobyns."

When he retired from television in 1986, Dobyns occupied the Ayers Chair at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, then moved back to Virginia in 2004 where for several years he wrote and hosted award-winning podcasts for Colonial Williamsburg, interviewing historians, writers and other authorities on America’s past.

In 2003, Dobyns was inducted into the Virginia Hall of Fame for the body of his work over the years.

Dobyns is preceded in death by his son, Brian, and his brother, Norman Dobyns. 

He is survived by his wife, Patti, three children: Denise, Alison and Kenneth, and eight grandchildren. 

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