The UConn Journalism Department was well-represented by four grads at the state Freedom of Information Commission’s FOI conference on Sept. 25. Prof. Kate Farrish welcomed the crowd of 230 people on behalf of the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government. Mike Savino, the political reporter at NBC Connecticut and a CFOG board member, gave the keynote address on how he has used the FOI Act to tell compelling stories, and Russell Blair, the commission’s director of education and communications, was an able master of ceremonies. Prof. Marie K. Shanahan also attended the conference.

The student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is off to a great start after its first meeting of the semester. They're planning networking events with our alumni and other journalists this fall led by President Katie Servas, Vice President Mikayla Bunnell, Treasurer Samantha Brody and Social Media Chair Maleena Muzio.

Photo by Maleena Muzio

The UConn Journalism Department has some exciting news to share. Associate Prof. Marie Shanahan has completed her five-year appointment as department head and has returned to teaching, and Prof. Mike Stanton has taken on the role of interim department head this fall.

Prof. Shanahan provided visionary leadership during her tenure, which was marked by growing enrollment among journalism majors and students and her expansion of the introductory courses to UConn’s regional campuses, so that more students could begin their studies across the state and not just in Storrs.

She also was instrumental in co-founding the Connecticut Student Journalism Collaborative, a partnership between UConn and other college journalism programs across Connecticut. The aim of the nonprofit is to have the best student journalism that emerges from the journalism classes to be published professionally by CT Community News at https://ctcommunitynews.substack.com/. The stories, photos and videos are then offered for re-publication by other news outlets, including CT Public, the CT Mirror, the Hartford Courant, WSHU, CTNewsJunkie, The Day and CT Examiner.

Shanahan is teaching the professional portfolio and Newswriting and Reporting II courses this fall. As department head, she instituted a community reporting course at the Hartford campus to cover local news in the city, and she will be teaching the course in the spring semester.

Shanahan also serves as vice president of the collaborative and on the board of the CT Mirror and the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government.

Prof. Stanton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, came to UConn in 2013 from the Providence Journal, where he was an investigative reporter specializing in covering public corruption, politics and government and organized crime.

He is the author of “Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano’s Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World, (Henry Holt, 2019), a biography of the former undefeated heavyweight boxing champion, and New York Times bestseller “The Prince of Providence,” (Random House, 2003), a widely acclaimed book about Buddy Cianci, the felonious former Providence, Rhode Island mayor.

At the Providence Journal, Prof. Stanton was part of the team that won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for exposing corruption in the Rhode Island court system. He teaches students tried-and-true 'shoe leather' investigative journalism. He hopes students will turn his old-school skill set into new-medium magic. Learn more about Stanton at the "Art of Muckraking."

He also serves as board president of ecori.org, a nonprofit environmental news website based in Rhode Island.