Faculty News Releases Awards

Photojournalism Professor Rita Reed Wins the 2014 O.O. McIntyre Professorship for Teaching Excellence

The Award Comes with a $10,000 Salary Supplement for Next Academic Year

Columbia, Mo. (May 16, 2014) — Professor Rita Reed is the 2014 winner of the O.O. McIntyre Professorship at the Missouri School of Journalism. The professorship recognizes teaching excellence and comes with a $10,000 salary supplement for the next academic year.

Rita Reed
Rita Reed

Reed’s leadership, international outreach and passion to help young photojournalists develop their skills were cited as exemplary by her nominators. Two recommendations follow.

“While director of the College Photographer of the Year competition, sponsored by the Missouri School of Journalism in conjunction with the National Press Photographers Foundation, she has overseen a doubling of the number of entrants to the contest just in the last few years. Through introducing podcasts of the judging that are posted to the CPOY website, she has brought a deeper appreciation for and understanding of the judging process and extended the educational reach of the competition. Other schools regularly use the podcasts in their classroom instruction, learning about what makes successful photography and visual narrative, by seeing the pictures and hearing the judges’ deliberation. She also has negotiated a sponsorship with Nikon, which made possible the elimination of entry fees, enabling more students to enter and broadening the competition.”

“Professor Reed provides leadership in the profession beyond our immediate environment by, for instance, traveling to China to present College Photographer of the Year exhibits and to the Danish School of Journalism in Åarhus to evaluate portfolios of students in their international program, and leading groups of MU students to Hannover, Germany, to introduce young photographers to Lumix, the world’s largest youth photojournalism festival and to lead workshops in Germany and Romania, respectively.”

After 20 years as a working photojournalist with Star Tribune in Minneapolis and The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Reed served as a visiting professor during the 2000-01 academic year and then joined the photojournalism faculty full time in 2001. She has worked not only on local, regional and national stories, but also internationally in Haiti, Bolivia, Colombia, Taiwan, China and the countries of the former Eastern Block.

Reed holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and an undergraduate degree from Southwest Missouri State University. She was the 1993 recipient of the Nikon Sabbatical Grant for Documentary Photography for the completion of work on a photographic book about gay and lesbian teenagers. Reed maintains an interest in and concern for adolescents and the issues they face. She is the director of the College Photographer of the Year competition.

Winners of the O.O. McIntyre Professorship are:

About the O.O. McIntyre Professorship

The professorship is named for O.O. McIntyre, one of the most widely known New York columnists during the 1920s and 1930s. His column, “New York Day by Day,” was syndicated to 508 newspapers in every state, Canada and Mexico. Born in Plattsburg, Mo., McIntyre was raised in Gallipolis, Ohio, where he got his start in newspapers as a reporter for $5 a week. McIntyre died in 1938, and his widow left part of his estate to the Missouri School of Journalism. In her will, she established the O.O. McIntyre Postgraduate Writing Fellowship to help aspiring writers and the O.O. McIntyre Professorship to recognize outstanding educators.

Updated: August 26, 2020

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