Context & Conversation: “The Local Story”
Community Partner: The City of Providence
Inspired by George Brant’s The Prince of Providence, based on the book by Mike Stanton
You do not need to have seen the play to participate in the event – free and open to the public.
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Long before charisma, criminality, and an astonishing talent for comebacks made Buddy Cianci nationally infamous, he was an untested mayor in a dimming city, and the only people paying attention to him were local journalists, asking their questions and filing their stories, day after day. While his antics and deceptions eventually attracted the national press, it was only the local reporters, with their years of daily, up-close experience with him, who could give his story all the nuance and depth it required. One of them, Pulitzer Prize-winning Providence Journal reporter Mike Stanton, eventually wrote a biography of Buddy, The Prince of Providence, now the basis for George Brant’s latest play, premiering as the opening of Trinity’s 2019-2020 season.
Join us for a conversation with Stanton, now an Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Connecticut; The Public’s Radio’s Political Reporter Ian Donnis; Boston Globe Staff Reporter Amanda Milkovits; URI Professor of Journalism and Film Media Kendall Moore; and Providence Public Library’s RI Collection Librarian Kate Wells on the role of local journalism in an era of shrinking newsrooms, diversified delivery systems, precarious business models, and increasing anxiety about the trustworthiness of our news sources.