When Larry Foley of the University of Arkansas won the Arkansas Press Association’s Journalism Educator of the Year award in October, the association closed a circle that was nearly a half-century in the making.
Foley, a professor of journalism and documentary film at the Fayetteville campus, recalled that the association played a big role in his start in the business. “I will tell you that when I was a starving college student in the 1970s, I got the Arkansas Press Association scholarship, and man, it was $250, which paid my tuition for the semester,” Foley said in a telephone interview. “All these many years later, it’s as if my professional life has come full circle.”
Between the scholarship and the Educator of the Year award, 48 years passed. In that time, Foley spent 17 years as a TV reporter, producer and public TV executive before starting a 32-year run teaching at UA.
“I’ve always believed teaching is a calling,” said Foley, who was giving an interview about the planned merger of Nexstar and Tegna TV. “And at the heart of what I have always taught as a journalism professor is this mandate: The Truth Matters.”
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