LaReeca Rucker is a writer, reporter, and adjunct instructional assistant professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi, as well as a lecturer at Mississippi State University. With over 30 years of experience in journalism, she spent a decade reporting for The Clarion-Ledger — part of the USA TODAY Network and Gannett News Service, where stories are published in Gannett newspapers across the country. The Clarion-Ledger was also Mississippi’s largest daily newspaper, with a circulation of 100,000 at the time.
Throughout her career there, Rucker served in multiple roles, including religion reporter, trends reporter, features writer and, ultimately, a social media/digital content producer. Primarily working as a general assignment reporter, she covered a wide range of stories — from crime and city government to civil rights, social justice, religion, arts, culture, entertainment, and lifestyle content — for both print and online editions. She was also a contributor to USA TODAY during her tenure.
As the newspaper began transitioning to digital, Rucker became the first reporter at The Clarion-Ledger to create a blog — one that became the most popular on the site. She promoted her work through social media and was a member of the newsroom’s Technology Committee, which explored innovations in tech and social media.
A constant learner and innovator in digital media, journalism, and education, Rucker has taught multimedia journalism, feature writing, and introductory mass communication courses incorporating technology and social media since 2014.
She created Oxford Stories-themed courses at the University of Mississippi and launched the student news website OxfordStories.com, which functioned as a student newswire service locally. Stories were published by local media partners and, in some cases, selected for distribution by the Associated Press.
In 2025, Rucker was selected as one of 15 members of a national Solutions Journalism Educators Academy. The event was a partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network, NEWSWELL and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The academy was designed for university journalism faculty members interested in learning how to teach solutions journalism at the collegiate level. The academy emphasized reporting solutions stories focused on youth mental health. Held at Arizona State University’s California Center Broadway in the heart of Los Angeles, attendees worked and learned in the historic Herald Examiner Building.
In 2024, Rucker completed Introduction to Google SEO from the University of California, Davis Continuing and Professional Education. The course explained how search engines work and how they evolved, and examined SEO strategies used to drive organic traffic to a website.
Two of Rucker’s student teams were selected among the 10 finalists for the RJI (Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute) Student Innovation Competition at the University of Missouri in 2024. Students were asked to conceive an idea that would help journalists and newsrooms tackle the increasing rates of news avoidance.
Rucker earned certification in Youth Mental Health First Aid and Adult Mental Health First Aid from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing in 2024.
She created the blog Rebooting the Basics: A Creative Pivot Back to Old School Journalism in the Digital Age based on her journalism textbook by the same name in 2024.
In summer 2022, Rucker was selected to attend “Covering Jails: A Poynter Workshop for Journalists” in Memphis. The program, led by Al Tompkins, focused on the causes and consequences of jail incarceration and how communities are addressing these issues.
She received an Open Educational Resources (OER) Award in 2022 for her work in JOUR 310: Social Media and Society. Her proposal, funded by the University of Mississippi with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, focused on using free, high-quality online resources like news articles and videos to enhance course instruction. The award provided compensation for adopting, reviewing, and sharing openly licensed teaching materials.
Rucker was a finalist for the 2021 Paragon Award for Excellence in Distance Teaching and was nominated again in 2022. The award honors exceptional online educators based on course design, use of technology, innovation, and student engagement.
In 2020, she received the Eric B. Sager Scholarship to attend the Virtual Investigative Reporters & Editors Conference. The scholarship, established in memory of longtime IRE member Eric B. Sager, supports U.S.-based and independent journalists, particularly those from small outlets and trade publications.
That same year, Rucker was chosen as a Great Ideas in Teaching presenter for the AEJMC Southeastern Colloquium for her submission “Using Black Mirror in the Classroom” — a concept that explores ethics in social media and technology using the popular Netflix series. However, she was unable to attend due to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic.
She was also selected to present a case study at the AACE EdMedia + Innovate Learning 2020 conference on experiential learning in her Oxford Stories courses. Travel was again halted by the pandemic.
In 2017, Rucker was one of 10 educators nationwide to receive the Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education from the Online News Association. The project focused on disrupting traditional journalism curriculum through a teaching hospital model. Oxford Stories served as the central platform, using digital analytics to evaluate reach and engagement. As part of the award, Rucker received training at Columbia University and visited The Poynter Institute, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and City University of New York.
In summer 2018, she attended an audio storytelling course at Columbia University, where she learned more about audio production, radio writing, and Adobe Audition editing under instructor Collin Campbell, now an executive producer at Audible.
That same summer, she completed a video editing workshop at Maine Media Workshops and College in Rockport, Maine, taught by Hollywood editor/director Christopher Nelson (“Bates Motel,” “Mad Men,” “Lost,” and more). Students learned editing principles, storytelling structure, and Adobe Premiere techniques.
Her classroom work using “Black Mirror” was referenced in “Harvard Political Review’s” article “Primetime Paranoia.”
She also helped co-found the Mississippi Capitol Press Corps class at the University of Mississippi, leading students in hands-on state government reporting in Jackson alongside Fred Anklam, a former USA TODAY reporter and Mississippi Today editor, who now works at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Rucker completed the Knight Center course “Building Bots for Journalism,” led by Quartz’s John Keefe in 2018. She learned to build bots using RiveScript that could simulate human conversations across platforms like SMS, Amazon Alexa, and Facebook Messenger.
She has served as campus advisor for the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a regional SPJ judge for the Excellence in Journalism contest.
In 2018, her Oxford Stories class was highlighted in the AEJMC report Ideas for Teaching Diversity for a project marking the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Students interviewed senior citizens who lived through the Civil Rights Era, gaining firsthand experience in social justice reporting.
She has also written travel and food features for WONDERLUST, a national travel site founded by the creator of SPIN magazine, and contributed to Elephant Journal, a wellness-focused publication. Rucker also created MISS. UNDERSTOOD, a student-focused website exploring stereotypes and perceptions about Mississippi.
Rucker has freelanced for The Clarion-Ledger, Mississippi Today, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Mud & Magnolias magazine, Memphis Medical News, The ‘Sip magazine, and others.
She earned her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Mississippi in August 2016, completing both the academic and professional tracks. She was honored with the Graduate Achievement Award in Journalism and was nominated for the university’s Graduate Instructor Excellence in Teaching Award.
She also completed a certification program through The Poynter Institute and Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication for adjunct faculty and journalism educators.
While studying and teaching at Ole Miss, she worked as a part-time reporter for The Oxford Eagle and contributed to The ‘Sip magazine. In 2015, she won a Mississippi Press Association award for Best In-Depth Investigative Reporting for a story about a mother of two sons with epilepsy and the potential of cannabis oil to improve their lives.
Throughout her career, Rucker has gained experience in editing, photography, page and web design, blogging, social media, videography, and digital production. She’s organized photo shoots, led new media seminars, taught journalism courses, and created Mississippi Style, the most-read blog on The Clarion-Ledger’s website.
In 2005, she was awarded a fellowship at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism to study child and family policy, with a focus on universal pre-K education, funded by the Foundation for Child Development. That same year, she received honorable mention for the Mississippi Press Association’s Freedom of Information Award for reporting on police corruption in Canton, Mississippi.
Between 1998 and 2003, while taking graduate-level English courses, Rucker worked at The New Albany Gazette as a general assignment reporter and editor of the award-winning features section Local Color. She wrote “The Lynching of L.Q. Ivy,” a deeply researched story on a 1925 lynching, which won first place among Landmark Community Newspapers.
She began her career interning at WCBI-TV’s Tupelo bureau in 1996 and joined The Lee County Courier in 1997 as a reporter, photographer, and page designer. She covered a wide range of stories, from Elvis Presley’s birthday celebration to gang-related murder trials and interviews with former Ku Klux Klan leaders.
She graduated from the University of Mississippi with triple majors in print journalism, broadcast journalism, and English — creating her own “new media” track, anticipating the convergence of media platforms.
As a student, she was active in SPJ and RTNDA and freelanced for The Daily Mississippian, the campus radio station WUMS, and Channel 12 NewsWatch. Through RTNDA, she traveled to Los Angeles and New Orleans, where she met notable journalists like Peter Jennings, Carol Simpson, Sam Donaldson, Dee Dee Myers, and Bernard Shaw.
Throughout her career, Rucker has interviewed high-profile individuals, including Oscar winners Whoopi Goldberg and Alan Ball, comedian Ray Romano, actress Sela Ward, makeup artist Billy Brasfield, and country and Christian musicians. She has also interviewed media figures such as FOX News’ Shepard Smith, faith leaders like Joel Osteen, and even Kermit the Frog.
In 1999, she spent a month photographing sites across Europe. To date, she has won more than 40 journalism awards for writing, photography, and design, mostly through the Mississippi Press Association.
Her work has been published and distributed nationally via The Associated Press and Gannett News Service to outlets like USA TODAY, The Huffington Post, The Washington Times, Elephant Journal, Wonderlust, RTNDA, New Jersey’s Daily Record, The Daily Journal and The Courier-Post; South Dakota’s Argus Leader; New York’s Poughkeepsie Journal; The Delaware News Journal; Louisiana’s The Town Talk and The News-Star; Tennessee’s The Commercial Appeal and The Tennessean; North Carolina’s The News & Observer; California’s The Fresno Bee, The Tribune and the Merced Sun-Star; South Carolina’s The State and The Island Packet; Georgia’s The Ledger Inquirer and the Macon Telegraph; Florida’s The Miami Herald and Bradenton Herald; Washington’s Tri-City Herald and The Bellingham Herald; Kentucky’s The Lexington Herald Leader; Missouri’s The Kansas City Star; Mississippi’s The Sun Herald, The Mobile Press-Register, The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, The Hattiesburg American, Mississippi Magazine, and numerous blogs and industry publications.
