Journalism Days Promotion Repeats Historic Question 'Where's Roy Reed?'

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Members of the J-Days team found "Roy Reed"

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – According to journalistic lore “Where’s Roy Reed?” was the question a New York Times editor blurted out while looking at a picture from a violent incident during the civil rights movement. Reed was the Times reporter covering the civil rights struggle across the South, and when news happened he was supposed to be in the picture.

The question is being asked again, in another context, as part of a Journalism Days promotion – “Where’s Roy Reed?”

A cardboard cutout of the professor emeritus of journalism will be popping up around campus, at a new location each day, between Monday, March 31, and Friday, April 4. Students can win a prize if they take their picture with “Roy Reed” and post it to Twitter @UofAJdays or #UAJdays2014 before 5 p.m. Two daily winners will be picked to receive a T-shirt from Houndstooth Press and a grand-prize winner will be drawn at the end of the week for a $50 gift certificate to Feltner Brothers, on College Avenue.

The cutout will appear at these locations during the week.

• Monday, March 31, Kimpel Hall 116
• Tuesday, April 1, Union Mall noon- 1:45 p.m.
• Wednesday, April 2, UATV Studio, Kimpel Hall 117E
• Thursday, April 3 Mullins Library lobby level, 12:30- 2:15 p.m.
• Friday, April 4, Traveler office, Kimpel Hall 119

Each day a student takes a picture and posts it by 5 p.m. he or she gets an entry into the daily T-shirt drawing and an entry into the grand-prize drawing. Pictures for Tuesday and Thursday will receive two entries into the weekly drawing.

The “Where’s Roy Reed?” contest is in conjunction with the Roy Reed Lecture series, which will feature New York Times deputy national editor Peter Applebome, speaking at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 9 in the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House.

Roy Reed was a University of Arkansas journalism professor and former New York Times reporter.

Reed started with the Joplin Globe in 1953. From 1954-1956, he served as a public information officer in the U.S. Air Force. He joined the Arkansas Gazette in 1954 and worked there for eight years. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University from 1963-1964. From the Gazette, Reed moved on to the New York Times, where he covered the civil rights movement in the South and worked as a foreign correspondent in Great Britain from 1977-1979.

Reed joined the faculty at the Walter J. Lemke department of journalism in 1979 as an associate professor. He served as chair of the department in 1981-1982, becoming a full professor in 1982. Reed retired in 1995 and lives in Hogeye with his wife, Norma. Students remember Reed for his respect for the written word and his sense of a reporter’s responsibility for accuracy.

Reed is the author of Beware of Limbo Dancers, a memoir focusing on his time reporting about the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Reed also wrote Looking for Hogeye a collection of essays about his adopted hometown and Arkansas, and Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal, a biography of the former Arkansas Gov. Orval E. Faubus. The University of Arkansas press published all three of his books.

Reed was awarded the 2007 Cecil Woods Jr. Award for Nonfiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.