Lyons began her journalism career at the age of 16, working for
The Benton Evening News as a photographer and a darkroom assistant, developing film and printing photos for each of the newspaper's six-day daily editions. Once in college, she became a staff writer for Texas A&M's student newspaper,
The Battalion, before joining the staff of
The Bryan-College Station Eagle, first as a part-time reporter covering spot news and obituaries and then later, as a full-time police reporter and then education reporter. In April 1998, Lyons joined
The Huntsville Item as one of three full-time reporters, originally covering The City of Huntsville,
Sam Houston State University, feature stories and breaking news. In January 2000, she moved to covering the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as the prison beat reporter, at a time when the Item had one of five witness spots to cover every execution carried out in the State of Texas. of which Lyons witnessed 38. that in the early years of covering executions, she was skilled at compartmentalizing her emotions and staying neutral during her execution coverage although on occasions, she found herself empathizing more with particular individuals. Lyons was 22 when she began regularly covering executions and she was the prison reporter during
Texas' record-breaking 40 executions in 2000, during which then-Texas Governor
George W. Bush was running for president, meaning international and national media were frequently in Huntsville and she received dozens of media requests from all over the world during that time, all wanting to interview the "young woman who watched executions," as well as an influx of hate mail and angry phone calls, some threatening and accusing her of appearing "cold," in interviews because she did not take a stance on the death penalty. Lyons became a public information officer for TDCJ in November 2001 after she was approached by PIOs Larry Fitzgerald and Larry Todd about the position. She resigned entirely from the TDCJ in May 2012 after two additional false complaints were lodged at her, and specifically, that she was being required to keep her time in a way that was wholly different from both her current and former male coworkers, as well as against the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The lawsuit was dismissed on summary judgment by U.S. District Judge David Hittner in 2013, with Lyons and her lawyers Nasim Ahmad and Delana Cline filing an appeal before the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. In September 2014, the
Fifth Circuit ruled in Lyons' favor, finding that both the district court and TDCJ neglected to mention a key witness affidavit in briefs to the appellate court. and the case was settled in November 2014 in Lyons' favor. During her 2001–2012 tenure with the prison system, Michelle Lyons witnessed more than 280 executions by
lethal injection, including high-profile cases such as
Napoleon Beazley,
Betty Lou Beets, and
Shaka Sankofa (nee
Gary Graham). Lyons witnessed the executions of two women. ==Later career==