Roy Reed Lecture Series

Roy Reed (1930-2017) was a University of Arkansas journalism professor, renowned biographer and reporter, prolific interviewer, award-winning writer and beloved educator and mentor.

He grew up in Piney, Arkansas, near Hot Springs and attended Ouachita Baptist College before earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

He married Norma Jean Pendleton (1931-2023) of El Dorado in 1952, and they had two children, Cindy and John. He worked for the Joplin Globe in Missouri, served two years in the United States Air Force, reported for the Arkansas Gazette and completed a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard before joining The New York Times in 1965.

The Times dispatched Reed to Selma, Alabama, where he covered the release of Martin Luther King Jr. from jail and then the "Bloody Sunday" march by civil rights protesters. He later covered the White House and Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s unsuccessful presidential campaign before taking the assignment as London bureau chief. He wrote more than 1,300 bylined articles for the publication.

In 1978, Reed retired from The Times and moved his family back to Arkansas. He taught journalism at the U of A from 1979 to 1995, and he was department chair in 1981 and 1982. As a teacher, he stressed the importance of telling stories accurately and well — with careful attention to language.

He wrote three books and edited a volume of compiled interviews. In 1986, he published Looking for Hogeye, a collection of essays about the South. Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal, a biography of the former Arkansas governor, was published in 1997 and was a New York Times Notable Book that year. In 2009, he published the edited volume Looking Back at the Arkansas Gazette: An Oral History. The following year, he was awarded the Porter Prize. In 2012, he published a memoir, Beware of Limbo Dancers: A Correspondent’s Adventures with the New York Times.

Reed conducted more than 40 interviews for the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History. In the 2014 movie Selma, he was played by actor John Lavelle.

2025 Roy Reed Lecturer: Chuck Todd

Chuck Todd is a renowned political analyst and host of The Chuck ToddCast, a weekly podcast offering in-depth interviews with political figures and experts. A six-time Emmy® Award-winner, Todd was NBC News’s chief Political Analyst and moderator of Meet the Press from 2014 to 2023. He also hosted Meet the Press NOW, a daily show on NBC News NOW, bringing timely political analysis to a digital audience.

Known for his sharp insight and encyclopedic knowledge of politics, Todd has co-moderated multiple presidential debates, including the record-breaking 2019 and 2020 Democratic debates. He previously served as NBC News’s chief White House Correspondent and hosted The Daily Rundown on MSNBC.

Todd is the author of two books and has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. He teaches how Washington works as the inaugural Scholar-in-Residence for The University of Southern California’s Capital Campus, in Washington, D.C. Todd resides in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Kristian, and their two children.

 

Former Roy Reed Lecturers

2024 – Chad Day, Associated Press chief elections analyst

2023 – Rusty Turner, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette executive editor. and Antoinette Grajeda, Arkansas Advocate senior reporter  

2022 – Gerald Jordan, University of Arkansas retiring professor

2021 – Kathy Roberts Forde, University of Massachusetts Amherst professor and journalism historian 

2020 – Jon Schleuss - listen online 

2019 – Josh Dawsey, NewsGuild-Communication Workers of America labor union president  

2018 – T.J. Holmes, Good Morning America 

2017 – David Bianculli, founder and editor-in-chief of tvworthwatching.com and a television critic for NPR's Fresh Air -

2016 – Hoyt Purvis, former press secretary to Sen. J.W. Fulbright and longtime University of Arkansas professor of journalism -

2015 – Bob Woodward, famed Washington Post journalist 

2014 – Peter Applebome, New York Times deputy national editor 

2013 – Gene Foreman, former Philadelphia Inquirer editor 

2012 – Susan Bennett, Newseum senior consultant

2011 – Dean Baquet, New York Times Washington bureau chief 

2010 – Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post science reporter and author of The Hidden Brain, and Chris Mortensen, ESPN correspondent

2009 – Roy Reed, (link)former University of Arkansas journalism professor and author of Looking Back at the Arkansas Gazette: An Oral History  

2008 –

2007 – Keith Chrostowski, Kansas City Star deputy national editor 

2006 – Hank Kilbanoff, Atlanta Journal-Constitution managing editor of news and author of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and the Awakening of a Nation  

2005 – Hodding Carter III, president and chief executive officer of the James S. and James L. Knight Foundation

2004 – Allan Siegal, New York Times assistant managing editor and standards editor, and John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center