KENT S. COLLINS has been managing news stories and newsrooms for 44 years. Now, as chair of the radio-television journalism faculty at the Missouri School of Journalism, his job is to support the good teaching and research work of a dozen faculty members, and to help guide the learning program for the 200 students enrolled in radio-television journalism courses.

His first newsroom was at the Chapel Hill (N.C.) Weekly, run by Jim Shumaker, who was the model for the cartoon character “Shoe.” Says Collins: “Shumaker wanted us to write words that had the descriptive value of 10 words.”

Collins’ first television newsroom was KOMU-TV at the Missouri School of Journalism, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1970. (“KOMU-TV was my first and will be my last,” he says.) He has twice served as news director of KOMU-TV since joining the faculty in 1984. Collins has worked in or visited almost 80 television newsrooms from Beijing, China to Los Angeles, California to Sofia, Bulgaria. During his career he has served duty as reporter, producer, anchor, newsroom manager and consultant.

Today, Collins practices and teaches both newspaper and radio-television journalism. He coaches television journalists and consults television station owners in the U.S. and overseas. He serves as an expert witness in civil suits involving the media. And he coordinates commercial research projects for domestic television stations with the school’s Center for Advanced Social Research. Collins has served as a co-researcher and editor of an innovative project with the Missouri School of Law, which investigated the effectiveness of judges, prosecutors and police responding to domestic violence.