Sam Stanton

Sam Stanton (’82) was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008.

My fondest memory of the Wildcat is the night we published our Extra to report the details of the documents the university released to us after we won our lawsuit. Although it was Christmas break and there were few students on campus, Judy Nichols insisted that we had to publish, and we worked late into the night to write and edit the stories, then deliver bundles of the Wildcat editions around campus. That was the first of two Extras I’ve been involved with (the second was 9/11).

My second fondest memory is the night I hired Phil Matier. I was the newspaper’s city editor when we ran into each other at a beer cooler inside the Circle K near campus, and although I had never met him before I offered him a reporting job in exchange for him letting me have the last six-pack of Coors in the cooler. It worked out well for all involved.

Sam Stanton is a senior writer at the Sacramento Bee and has been a reporter and editor at the newspaper since 1991. He has covered a variety of national and international stories, including the famine and war in Somalia, the 1996 and 2002 Olympic Games, the Oklahoma City bombing, the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis and eight executions at San Quentin. Sam came to The Bee from the Arizona Republic, where he covered state politics and the U.S. Congress. His honors include a Distinguished Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors and his selection as a finalist for the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in general news for coverage that led to the impeachment of Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham. He was a reporter and city editor for the Daily Wildcat until beginning an internship at the Republic in 1982 and staying on after being offered a full-time reporting job there. He is married to Marjie Lundstrom, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who also works for The Bee. They have two children, Nicholas, 14, and Riley, 9.