![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Stanton130925c081.jpg\")
<\/a>Providence is a \u201ctheme park for journalists,\u201d Mike Stanton says, and for two decades he had the run of the place as a member of the Journal\u2019s<\/i> award-winning investigative team. Stanton tackled everything from the Rhode Island banking crisis of the 1990s to the colorful, crooked tenure of former Mayor Buddy Cianci, who was eventually convicted in 2002 of a federal racketeering conspiracy charge. Stanton\u2019s book, The Prince of Providence<\/i>, details the rise and fall, and rise and fall again of the famous mayor, who\u2019s rumored to be considering another run at the city\u2019s top job.<\/p>\n
But when Stanton arrived in Providence, he came as a sportswriter, covering Big East basketball. He started covering sports for the Daily Orange<\/i> newspaper at Syracuse University, where he received his undergraduate degree. He worked for the Associated Press after graduation, and then got his master\u2019s from Northwestern University.<\/p>\n
After another stint with the AP, Stanton came to Providence to cover the scrappy, dynamic Friars basketball team, among other assignments. It was the collapse of a private deposit insurance company called the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corp. that pulled Stanton off the basketball beat, he explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a news background, and so I got pulled into the banking crisis because it was just such a huge story,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
After that, Stanton was detailed to the paper\u2019s investigative team, which soon found another major scoop in digging up corruption in the Rhode Island courts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a source who came to me and complained, which is usually how those stories get started,\u201d he says. \u201cThis source happened to be complaining about patronage in the court system. We pursued it, and wrote a series of stories that played out over a year or so.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the end of the run, two high-ranking officials had resigned, and the team had done the work that won the Journal<\/i> its most recent Pulitzer.<\/p>\n
Leaving all that behind was not an easy decision for Stanton, who has a poster on his Oak Hall office wall for a production of \u201cBuddy Cianci: The Musical.\u201d \u201cTo leave downtown Providence and the newsroom,\u201d he says, \u201cthat was the hardest part.\u201d<\/p>\n
But coming to UConn gives him an opportunity not only to impart his accumulated wisdom and expertise, but to help shape the future of journalism, which is radically different from the days when he started in Providence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been a sea change in the physical delivery of the news, obviously, but the human appetite to know what\u2019s going on goes back to the cave paintings,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The fundamentals of journalism \u2013 fairness, accuracy, the urge to uncover something new \u2013 transcend any individual medium, says Stanton, who hopes to be able to take UConn journalism students on reporting trips, perhaps as far afield as the Arctic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re on this bridge between the past and the future,\u201d he says. \u201cThis generation in college today is going to be the future, and I\u2019m excited to see what they discover.\u201d<\/p>\n