Gilbert and Martha Hitchcock Professor Barney McCoy teaches news literacy, multimedia, broadcast news, journalism, documentary, and depth reporting courses at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Before arriving at UNL in 2006, McCoy was a full-time broadcast journalist for 27 years.

McCoy’s creative activity includes several award-winning news, feature, and documentary reports published in newspapers and broadcast on public and commercial television and multimedia outlets in Nebraska and elsewhere in the United States.

McCoy’s scholarly activity primarily involves his multi-phased national surveys on digital distractions in the classroom conducted over the past decade. They have been widely cited and downloaded more than 69,000 times by some 4,200 institutions in 182 countries.

McCoy has worked as a documentary director and producer, television and print news reporter, photographer, news producer, and anchor. He has been honored with six Emmy awards and several other citations for journalistic excellence.
In 2023, he received "Best of Show" awards in the Faculty Audio and News and Sports categories and an "Award of Excellence" for his radio reporting by the Broadcast Education Association.

McCoy was a 2023 regional Edward R. Murrow award recipient from the Radio Television Digital News Association in the radio feature reporting and best use of natural sound categories.

At the 2023 Broadcast Education Association’s fall On-Location Creative Works Competition, McCoy was honored with a "Best of Show" award for his documentary “Seven Years a Correspondent” which premiered in May 2023 as part of Nebraska Public Media’s “Nebraska Stories” series.

The Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association also honored McCoy with a 1st place Eric Sevareid award for Hard Feature radio reporting and an Award of Merit for Soft Feature radio reporting in 2023.

In 2018, McCoy's television documentary "Black Jack Pershing: Love and War" received a national Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, an Award of Excellence Special Mention from the Accolade Global Film Competition, an Award of Excellence from the Impact DOCS Global Documentary Competition, an Award of Excellence from the Broadcast Education Association, and an Eric Sevareid Award from the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association.

The McCoy documentary, "They Could Really Play the Game: Reloaded," was a 2015 Canada International Film Festival Award winner.

The McCoy documentary “Exploring the Wild Kingdom,” was honored with the 2010 Broadcast Education Association Award of Excellence, a 2009 Heartland Regional Emmy Award nomination, was a finalist in the Las Vegas International Film Festival and recipient of an Eric Sevareid Award of Merit from the Northwest Broadcast News Association.

McCoy holds a master's degree in telecommunications management from Michigan State University. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Kansas. He served as a visiting professor at the Kosovo Institute of Journalism (KIJAC) in Prishtina, Kosovo on teaching visits between 2006 and 2010.