Richard Shaw joined the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida in 2017 as an adjunct faculty member, teaching Advanced Photojournalism and an editor in the Innovation New Center for WUFT, the student-produced online regional news organization serving north central Florida.  

He was a faculty member at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, specializing in visual journalism, and director of Pictures of the Year International (POY) for more than 13 years before retiring. Pictures of the Year International is the oldest and most prestigious visual journalism program in the world.  During his tenure with POY, Shaw guided the program’s 74-year competition for visual journalism, coordinated worldwide exhibitions, cultivated the POY Archive, and launched POY Latin America.  Shaw joined the University of Missouri in 2004 as an assistant professor for visual editing and management. In 2006, the Reynolds Journalism Institute named Shaw director of Pictures of the Year International.  

Shaw’s prior news media career spans 27 years in visual editing and management.  He served in a variety of senior editing roles for newspapers such as The Sacramento Bee, The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, The Arizona Republic in Phoenix and the Hartford Courant.  In 1991, Shaw was part of the editing team for The Sacramento Bee that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, responsible for both the photo editing and page design for the series, “The Sierra in Peril.”  Shaw holds a Master of Arts degree in Journalism.