Last Updated: December 29, 2000
Printer-friendly version
Institute for journalism excellence
Reinventing Lloyd Dobyns
The TV veteran and journalism professor pulls a stint
at The Virginian-Pilot as part of ASNE’s Institute for Journalism Excellence
By Warren Watson
Lloyd Dobyns has reinvented himself — again. The former NBC News reporter
and correspondent, and later author of business and management books, added
spice and wit to the API seminars for the ASNE Institute for Journalism
Excellence in mid-June.
Dobyns, 64, best known for his stint as host of the quirky “NBC News
Overnight” and “Weekend” shows in the late ’70s and early ’80s, went through
the paces of the week-long seminar, which was a prelude to his summer job
as a business reporter at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk. Dobyns
is currently Ayers Chair in the Department of Communication at Jacksonville
State University in Jacksonville, Ala., where he teaches news writing and
Internet research.
“Yes, I reinvent myself every 10 years or so,” said Dobyns by telephone
from his summer home, a hotel room near the newspaper. “The headline
might also say, ‘Man can’t keep job.”
Dobyns has gone full circle in his return to the Tidewater area.
A Virginia native who started his communications career as a TV anchor
in the Norfolk/Newport News area in the 1960s. He spent 16 years at NBC,
leaving in 1986.
From there, reinvention No. 1 led him into the Total Quality movement,
where he labored behind the scenes —and the camera — writing books and
producing videotapes about total quality and management issues. He partnered
for a time with the legendary W. Edwards Deming, whom many consider the
father of the Total Quality movement. He settled into his new role
in northern Alabama two years ago.
Talk about reinventing yourself — again and again.
His latest incarnation, that of journalism teacher, led him to the summer
job in business at the Virginian-Pilot. Might that represented another
future career? Dobyns says no — at least for now.
“I got into teaching by accident,” he said. “They called me, and
said they had a temporary position. That was in ’93-’94. I did it
and liked it — except the grading papers part.” After another temporary
stint at Washington and Lee, Jacksonville called again, offering him a
chair in broadcasting in January 1998.
“I can touch people here. I can get them started in this business,”
said Dobyns of teaching. “Many of my students are from right there
— in northeast Alabama. I try to get them to the point of where they have
a chance of making it.”
He said he might be a bit more of a taskmaster with his grades:
“I mark up a lot of stories, but that’s the only way students will learn.”
His summer job in business reporting represented less of a desire to
switch careers again and more of a strategy to help his students.
“Business writing is an area of need for newspapers. I would like
to start a course, and the best way is to do it firsthand,” said Dobyns.
But he did admit that the newsroom atmosphere fueled anew his zeal for
writing.
“I’ve had some modest compliments on my work so far,” he said.
“That always feels good.”
Said Pilot business editor Carl Fincke, “His writing was solid.
It was nice to have an experienced intern like Lloyd. He came in, sat down
and got the job done in his summer here. He didn’t have to ramp up at all.”
Dobyns is particularly proud of a recent Sunday story he conceived and
delivered on the economic impact statewide of the Virginia wine industry.
“They make a contribution you simply won’t believe.”
In addition to other routine stories at the Pilot, Dobyns did a lengthy
feature on the growing popularity of business news on TV, and a first-person
account of what it is like to fly on the Concorde. The latter appeared
the day after the fatal Concorde crash in late July.
“Lloyd was fun and interesting to have around,” added Fincke.
“He loves to call himself the world’s oldest living intern. He did
liven things up with some war stories from all over the world, from Tokyo
to New Caledonia.”
But that extensive travel remains history. Today, Dobyns speaks
with a hint of pride when he talks about his home state, where he spent
all of his formative years, and where he landed again this summer.
After tenure at a Virginia military academy, he graduated from Washington
and Lee University in Lexington, Va. That led to a brief stint (1958-60)
in the U.S. Army. When he started work for NBC, he left his home
state for the first time.
Many of us remember Dobyns’ career at NBC. He was everywhere,
making documentaries, anchoring news shows, traveling the globe reporting
stories.
While there, he worked in 48 states and 47 foreign countries, married
and raised a family of four children while living in New York, Chicago,
Paris and Tokyo. He is divorced now, with his youngest child just turning
39.
Lloyd was best known for teaming with Linda Ellerbee in the early 1980s
as co-anchor of the classy, irreverent “NBC News Overnight.” He also anchored
“Weekend” (1974-79), a late-night companion of “Saturday Night Live,”
where he says he did his best work.
Tim Brooks, a TV historian and now executive at the Sci-Fi Channel and
USA Network, said that Dobyns the TV anchor and reporter will be best remembered
for his sardonic style.
That was typified in his five years with “Weekend,” which Brooks describes
as “one of the most unusual news programs attempted in the 1970s.”
Added Brooks, “It was an odd mixture of serious and frivolous features,
packaged in the most irreverent fashion.”
That includes animated pieces and satire. At the time, it was
quite hip, Brooks said of the series, which rotated in a late-night Saturday
slot with “Saturday Night Live.”
Weekend eventually died when NBC producers decided to move it to prime
time and program it (unsuccessfully) against “60 Minutes.”
Dobyns’ co-anchor at “Weekend,” Linda Ellerbee, was equally irreverent
in her role. So, it was no surprise they were paired together in
another oddball newscast. “NBC News Overnight,” hatched in the early days
of cable news in 1982.
“It was hip and unconventional,” even down to the theme music, said
Brooks. “But not enough people watched.”
It did become a cult favorite. Among the fans: lead singer Jerry
Garcia of the Grateful Dead.
Ellerbee, in her 1985 autobiography, speaks in friendship and admiration
about the well-traveled Dobyns, “He was my partner on ‘Weekend,’ later
my partner on ‘Overnight,’ and in between we shared offices, opinions and
reputations for having no team spirit. ... I can say with absolute certainty
that the reputation is deserved; Lloyd has no team spirit, none at all.
It’s one of his best qualities.”
She added about his individuality: “He neither suffers fools gladly
nor sees anything worthwhile in abstention — from anything.”
Ellerbee marvels at the fact that Dobyns “does know how to spell Buffalo,
how to get bail in Tel Aviv, the proper way to eat an ortolan — and he
calls by first name at least three bartenders, two police detectives and
one newspaper editor in each of the 10 biggest cities in America.”
Between “Weekend” and “Overnight” Dobyns continued at NBC, where he
was part of the team behind one of the most successful documentaries in
television history — “If Japan Can… Why Can’t We,” which aired in 1980,
with Dobyns as narrator. The documentary introduced W. Edwards Deming
to this country. The documentary helped launch the Total Quality revolution
in business.
Dobyns later worked with Clare Crawford-Mason and Deming to produce
a 28-volume Deming Video Library. The trio worked together on and off for
more than a dozen years.
Dobyns speaks with reverence about Deming, but also noted his quirkiness.
“We worked together for six years, knew each other for almost 13,” said
Dobyns, “and he never had any interest in anything other than what he did.
“You never heard the word ‘vacation’ or talk of a day off with him.”
Dobyns and Crawford-Mason parlayed their effort into two highly regarded
management books, “Quality or Else: The Revolution in World Business (1991),”
and “Thinking About Quality (1994).”
Dobyns does enjoy the free time that academia affords. He is working
on a novel (about the Munich Olympics and the deadly raid on the Israeli
athletes), is a Civil War buff and visits battlefields often.
He is a student of history.
“Why would someone not be interested in the heritage around us,” he
said. “The Revolution determined that we would be a country. The Civil
War determined what kind of country.”
Dobyns hopes to write another book someday — on the early history of
television news — and continues to be outspoken on his days in front of
a camera.
“The backstabbing and politics I could live without,” he said.
So, TV is out for the time being — but work is not.
“You know. I’m eligible for Social Security next year,” Dobyns said.
“But I’m still going to work. That’s (Social Security and retirement) what
you do when you’re ready to die.”
