Joseph Dyer dies at 76; retired KCBS-TV executive

Joseph Dyer, a retired KCBS-TV executive who was one of the first African American reporters hired by a major network television station in Los Angeles and later helped it set a standard for community involvement, died of heart failure Thursday at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, said his daughter Monica. He was 76.

The son of Louisiana sharecroppers, Dyer was hired by KNXT-TV (which later became KCBS) as a writer and news producer in 1965, a few months before the Watts riots erupted. He was one of the few African American reporters to cover the unrest.

In 1968, he was promoted to director of community affairs, a position he used to promote ethnic and racial diversity within the station and strengthen dialogue with outside groups that often were critical of its policies and coverage.

“He had a profound effect making sure the voices of African Americans were heard,” said Danny Bakewell, a longtime activist and publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel. “He put CBS in the forefront of community outreach.”

Gentlemanly and avuncular, Dyer was regarded as a mentor by many black broadcast journalists.

“Joe Dyer was responsible for the morale of most, if not every, black employee at KCBS,” said Tony Cox, who was an early morning anchor and reporter at the station in the early 1980s. “Television news can be very cutthroat. Joe was a person who educated a lot of us about the mechanisms and machinations of the television news industry and the corporate news world.”

During his 30 years at the station, Dyer also hosted a weekend public affairs program and wrote editorials, which he delivered on air. He once told talk-show host Tavis Smiley that he believed his work in those roles was especially important in an industry in which African Americans and other minorities often were assigned to cover sports or weather.

“I have nothing against weathercasters or sportscasters,” he told Smiley in 2002, “but I’m well aware that a black child needed to see an African American on the air talking about issues,” such as politics, finance and the environment.

Dyer was born Sept. 24, 1934, on a sharecropper’s plantation in Gilbert, La., and grew up in Bogalusa, La. When he was 9, his father died and he went to work picking cotton to help support his siblings and his mother, who was deaf.

Dyer was interested in drama but went to New Orleans’ Xavier University on a football scholarship. After a year, he transferred to Louisiana’s Grambling State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in speech and drama in 1957.

He served in the Air Force until 1961, editing the Grand Forks Air Force Base newspaper and hosting the North Dakota base’s television broadcast. After his honorable discharge, he settled in Los Angeles, working briefly as a technical writer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge before moving to KNXT-TV.

After retiring from the station in the mid-1990s, he published a memoir and wrote historical fiction for young readers, including a novel inspired by the life of Harriet Tubman called “Emily Dutton’s Secret Medallion.”

In addition to his daughter Monica, he is survived by his wife, Doris; two other daughters, Karen and Kim; a son, Joe III; two sisters; and three grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

elaine.woo@latimes.com