Dobyns was born and raised in Newport News, Virginia. He graduated from Washington and Lee University in 1957. Dobyns started his broadcasting career in his hometown, eventually serving as an anchor at WAVY television in Portsmouth/Norfolk/Newport News in the 1960s. He was with NBC from 1969 to 1986. In 1980 he was a reporter on the successful TV documentary, If Japan can... Why can't we? about the reasons Japan was a manufacturing powerhouse as US industry struggled to keep up. He hosted Weekend from 1974 to 1979 and NBC News Overnight with Linda Ellerbee before being replaced by Bill Schechner. In 1983, he was the anchor of NBC's short-lived, hour-long Monitor. Next, he got involved in the Total Quality Management movement, partnering with W. Edwards Deming. Later he worked at the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper and taught journalism at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama where he became the Ayers Chair in the Department of Communication’s broadcast division. In 2005, Dobyns hosted podcasts for Colonial Williamsburg, interviewing various staff members about their particular specialty at the restored colonial capital of Virginia. Dobyns currently resides in the Presbyterian Home of Hawfields in Mebane NC.
Awards
Dobyns has won 28 national awards including a George Foster Peabody medal. In presenting a 1975 award to Weekend, the Peabody committee noted that, "Felicity of style and polished journalistic professionalism are the distinctive wellsprings at the source of 'Weekend', produced and written for NBC by Reuven Frank and Lloyd Dobyns. A once-a-month magazine of television, inquiring into the off-trail, 'Weekend' is hereby honored not only for its content, but also as an instructive example of how the language can be employed with grace and precision." Dobyns' work has also earned a DuPont-Columbia Award, a 1982 Humanitas Prize and two Christophers. He became a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame in 2003.
Books
Lloyd Dobyns co-authored two books with Clare Crawford-Mason:
