Two Pulitzer Prize Winners Join UConn Journalism Faculty

Two new fac­ul­ty mem­bers join the UConn Jour­nal­ism Depart­ment fac­ul­ty for the 2013–14 school year. They are Steven G. Smith and Mike Stanton.

Steven G. Smith is a  Pulitzer-Prize win­ning pho­tog­ra­ph­er from Col­orado. Smith won the Pulitzer as part of a group award for break­ing news pho­tog­ra­phy of wild­fires, Rocky Moun­tain News, 2003.

Smith received an Amer­i­can Mas­ter Artist Grant from the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts, won Pic­tures of the Year Inter­na­tion­al awards 10 times (five indi­vid­ual and five group), won the port­fo­lio award from the Soci­ety of News Design, as well as many oth­er awards.

His work has appeared in the New York Times Mag­a­zine, Smith­son­ian, Time, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, MSNBC.com, ABC News 20/20, and many more. His work been on exhib­it around the world, includ­ing the New­se­um, Syd­ney Opera House, Inter­na­tion­al Pho­tog­ra­phy Hall of Fame, Poyn­ter, Lon­don, Osa­ka, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, South Korea and South Africa. 

He worked for The Her­ald (Puyallup, Wash.), The (Mem­phis) Com­mer­cial Appeal, Albu­querque Tri­bune, and the Rocky Moun­tain News, doing pho­tog­ra­phy, videog­ra­phy and design.

He taught full-time for two years at North­west Col­lege in Wyoming and for the last four years he has been an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Isaac­son School of New Media in Colorado.

He holds BA’s from East­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty with emphases in graph­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion. His mas­ters is from the School of Visu­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Ohio Uni­ver­si­ty. See some of his work at www.stevengsmith.com.

Mike Stan­ton joins the UConn Jour­nal­ism fac­ul­ty from the Prov­i­dence Jour­nal, where he most recent­ly head­ed up the news orga­ni­za­tion’s inves­ti­ga­tions team. In 1994, Stan­ton won the Pulitzer Prize for Inves­tiga­tive report­ing ( team cov­er­age of cor­rup­tion in the court sys­tem), as well as the IRE medal. Stan­ton is the author of “The Prince of Prov­i­dence” (Ran­dom House), which was a 2004 New York Times best­seller and crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed.

He has been hon­ored with the mas­ter reporter award for career achieve­ment from the New Eng­land News­pa­per Asso­ci­a­tion (1997), a SABEW first place award (2012), the Sev­el­lon Brown Award for Pub­lic Ser­vice from New Eng­land AP News Exec­u­tives Asso­ci­a­tion (2010), their first-place award for inves­tiga­tive report­ing (2012), among oth­er awards.

He has worked at the Pater­son (N.J.) News, the San Jose Mer­cury, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, and the Prov­i­dence Jour­nal, where he has led the inves­tiga­tive team since 1995. His free­lance work has appeared in Colum­bia Jour­nal­ism Review, NPR, the Boston Globe, Yan­kee and the Wash­ing­ton Post.

He taught jour­nal­ism part-time for three years at Roger Williams Uni­ver­si­ty and for 10 sum­mers at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty. He was a lec­tur­er at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in 1995–96, while he was a Knight Fel­low there. He holds a B.S. in polit­i­cal sci­ence and mag­a­zine jour­nal­ism from Syra­cuse and an MSJ in jour­nal­ism and urban stud­ies from North­west­ern. Fol­low  him on Twit­ter at @pro­jomike

Lis­ten to Stan­ton talk about the future of inves­tiga­tive report­ing on Rhode Island Pub­lic Radio (Aug. 15, 2013):