John Laurence "Larry" Day received his BA and MA in journalism from Brigham Young University, and his PhD in journalism from the University of Minnesota. Day served as a professor of journalism at the University of Kansas from 1966-1998. Throughout his teaching career, Dr. Day was an active practicing journalist and served as a correspondent in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1982, he covered the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) Conflict between Argentina and Great Britain. His reports were carried by the Scripps Howard News Service, the Kansas City Star, and the Universal Press Syndicate. Day also covered Pope John Paul II's visit to Central America and Florida in 1983 and worked on a team that produced three nationally broadcast television documentaries on Cuba.

Day held three senior Fulbright lectureships, one in Argentina and two in Colombia. He also taught numerous courses, seminars and workshops in Latin America and the Caribbean for the United States Information Agency. In 1997, Dr. Day received an American Society of Newspaper Editors fellowship and served it as a reporter at the Miami Herald. In 2000, he received an award for outstanding service from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and in 2001 he received emeritus status from the University of West Florida, where he retired from teaching. Day publishes under the name "J. Laurence Day" and is the author of "Careers for Foreign Language Aficionados and Other Multilingual Types" (2001).