 After his serving in the Navy, Fleming worked at local newspapers and eventually worked his way up to becoming a reporter for The Atlanta Constitution Magazine.In 1961, having worked as a stringer for Newsweek for a number of months, he was hired by the magazine as a permanent correspondent in their Atlanta Bureau when Bill Emerson, formerly Atlanta Bureau Chief, was promoted.During his career as a journalist, Fleming risked his life covering James Meredith's entry into the University of Mississippi and also in 1964 when he covered the deaths of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi.