NEWS INDEX Archives 2004 December

Bob Reid, influential journalism professor at Illinois, dies at age 64

Craig Chamberlain, News Editor
217-333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu

12/15/04

Click photo to enlarge University of Illinois Photo Robert D. Reid retired from Illinois in fall 2003.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —
Robert D. Reid, a recently retired professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, suffered a heart attack and died early today at his home in Champaign. He was 64.

Reid began teaching journalism at Illinois in 1979 as a visiting lecturer, then joined the journalism faculty as a professor in 1980. He retired for health reasons in fall 2003.

“Bob Reid was a first-class journalist who chose, more than two decades ago, to share his knowledge and love of journalism with students,” said Ron Yates, the dean of the College of Communications and a journalism faculty colleague at Illinois. “He was passionate about the need for exemplary public-affairs journalism and he instilled that passion in many, if not all, of his students.”

“He was a great man,” said Walt Harrington, the head of the department of journalism. “He had a profound interest in people – something that's all too rare. He was thoughtful and remarkably well-read and never stopped learning and wanting to learn.”

Reid began his journalism career in 1959 while an undergraduate at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, working for four summers as a reporter and copy editor for the Journal-Standard in Freeport, Ill. In 1964, with a master’s degree from Medill, he became an editorial writer and state legislative correspondent for the Lindsay-Schaub Newspapers, based in Decatur, Ill.

From 1966 to 1968, Reid was the editorial page editor for the Journal-Standard, then spent four years as managing editor of the Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale. From 1972 to 1979, he was the editorial editor for the Lindsay-Schaub Newspapers, where he wrote editorials and opinion columns, and directed a staff of editorial writers, for six Central and Southern Illinois newspapers.

From 1979 to 1988, while teaching at Illinois, Reid wrote a weekly public-affairs column for the Illinois Times in Springfield, the Southern Illinoisan, Edwardsville Intelligencer and Alton Telegraph.

Reid was known for his tough classes and his tough grading policies – such as giving an F for work turned in even a second late or for misspelling a name in a story. But it was “the good kind of tough, the tough that teaches you valuable lessons about your chosen profession, and about yourself,” according to Mark Donald Ludwig, one of his first students, writing in the September 2003 issue of Quill Magazine.

Ludwig, now a journalism professor at California State University in Sacramento, noted in his Quill tribute how he kept advice from Reid posted above his own desk: “My main advice is to ask the students to do a lot, have high expectations and rigorous standards, and try to keep them inspired about the role of journalists in a democratic society, despite the hard work good journalism requires.”

Reid was just as well known for the way he mentored both students and new teaching colleagues, arriving in academia from the world of journalism. “He didn’t just teach me how to teach, but how to care for students way beyond what they were doing in the classrooms,” Harrington said.

“We kidded him about being the department’s ‘keeper of the flame,’ ” Yates said, “because Bob was always there to remind us of our responsibility to our students and to the world of journalism.”

In 1992, Reid received the university’s Oakley-Kunde Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, in large part recognizing his role as an adviser to students, even after graduation. In 2002, he received the Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Yates said Reid had been working with the college to establish the Bob Reid Teaching Development Fund in Journalism. “We intend to follow through on that plan so that Bob’s friends, former students and colleagues can help perpetuate his passion for journalism teaching and scholarship.”