He came to Alabama after working in radio and newspapers in Calhoun County, and, after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism at UA, he worked as a reporter and editor at The Birmingham News and The State in Columbia, S.C. His research focus is media ethics, and, in 2011, he co-wrote a textbook with Jay Black, who headed the journalism department in the late 1980s. Roberts is serving on the Society of Professional Journalists’ committee to revise its ethics code, and he’s vice chairman of the Council of Divisions for the Association for Journalism in Education and Mass Communication.