Erudition

Liberty Island - Sitton stands before the New York City skyline during a 2008 trip for the College Media Adviser's spring convention. Not even the pigeons got him down.

Ronald Sitton, associate professor of journalism, started teaching at the University of Arkansas at Monticello in 2004 and earned tenure five years later.

The Arkansas College Media Association named Sitton director in fall 2009; he became just the fourth director in 20 years. He also holds a seat on the Arkansas Press Association's Education committee and serves as the state representative to the American Democracy Project's Southern Consortium.

Sitton's research interest focuses on media framing of social issues and, most recently, on journalism education. He has presented his work to the Arkansas Press Association, the Midwest Association of Public Opinion Researchers and at the University of Tennessee's Communications Research Symposium.

In addition to his academic work, Sitton has worked for Arkansas newspapers and started an online magazine, The Southerner. An LSU graduate student referenced one of Sitton's articles from that publication in a master's thesis. Sitton currently maintains a Web portal page and freelances when time permits.

Sitton can no longer claim a high school alma mater as North Little Rock Northeast was assimilated into North Little Rock High School two years after he graduated. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from The University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a minor in criminal justice. He graduated from the University of Tennessee with a doctorate of philosophy in communication.

The Value of an Education

At one time, Sitton really had to think about the value of an education. Through the guidance of Dr. Luther W. "Sonny" Sanders and Bill Rutherford, he knew he wanted to either become a reporter or teach journalism. Yet after receiving his master's degree in journalism in 1996, he still couldn't find a job that would pay better than the bartending jobs that put him through school.

Ronny anticipates raising his hand in Mrs. Williams' first-grade class at southwest Little Rock's Landmark Elementary in 1976.

At that point, Sitton realized you enter the Communication field for the love of it — not for the money. While Katie Courac makes enough to send us all back through school, many journalists earn just enough to cover food and shelter, and that's about it. Sitton's first journalism job with a bachelor's degree paid $11,000 a year — not even quite poverty level back in 1992.

But it's at such jobs that journalists learn what's really happening in the world. You can stick with it and hope to land a job with a better paper with higher salaries. You can switch to public relations (still not the best of salaries). Sitton went back to school.

Education doesn't always pay the bills; in some cases, the bills add up even higher. But you never meet an uninteresting person in the college environment, nor can you be satisfied with just grazing the top of a subject. Education forces people to look at the world through a wide lens.

Ronny at Aaron's UALR graduation in 1974.

So why did he decide to continue his education in 1997 when at that point he could have been making money in the "real" world and generally having a good time instead of gaining astronomical loans? Part of it was his plan for a future, part of it was being a bachelor without any strings, but primarily Sitton did it for the opportunity to continually learn. To help pay the bills, he worked as a Graduate Teaching Associate for the University of Tennessee's College of Communication while taking classes (read more about the Tennessee years).

From 2002-2003, Sitton served as an Instructor of Journalism at Muskingum College, where he also advised the Black & Magenta and brought it online for the first time, in essence becoming a part of the Muskie Line (read more about the Muskingum year).

Who knows - maybe one day he'll find the answer to all the problems of the world and come up with the comprehensive Theory of Everything. Even if he doesn't, education taught him to respect Everyman's take on the world even when he doesn't agree with it at all. Education is your friend.