LEWISTON — Steve Collins will join the Sun Journal newsroom staff on Monday, covering the State House.

An award-winning journalist, Collins comes to Maine from Connecticut where he was most recently employed at The Bristol Press, covering government and politics in the Hartford area.

Collins and his wife, Jackie Majerus, co-founded the nonprofit Youth Journalism International, mentoring young journalists in the United States and abroad. Founded in 1994, YJI connects student writers, artists and photographers with peers around the globe, teaches journalism and promotes and defends a free youth press.

Among the most recent works are pieces covering a terrorist attack in Pakistan and a first-person account from Auschwitz just before the 70th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation.

A graduate of the University of Virginia with degrees in arts and history, Collins is a past lecturer at Tunxis Community College and senior reporter and columnist at The Citizen, covering politics and government in Auburn, New York.

The recipient of the Selwyn Kershaw Award, the top award from the Syracuse Press Club, for risking jail to protect a confidential source, and the 2015 I.F. Stone Whistle-Blower Award from Catalytic Diplomacy, Collins was recently awarded one of two Ethics in Journalism Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.

The award was given to Collins because he took a stand last Christmas Eve and quit his job at The Bristol Press after learning the newspaper’s owner had placed a plagiarized story with a fake byline in the paper to aid a billionaire casino owner who was in the process of buying the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest newspaper.

The Bristol Press is owned by News & Media Capital Group, the same company buying the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Collins shares the award with five journalists who left their jobs with the Nevada paper over the incident: Editor Mike Hengel, Deputy Editor James Wright, reporters Jennifer Robison and Howard Stutz, and columnist John L. Smith.

“We’re eager to welcome Collins aboard,” according to Sun Journal Executive Editor Judith Meyer. “His unwavering dedication to the ethics of journalism is exceptional,” Meyer said, “and his deep experience will bring our readers an important and fresh look at government and politics in Maine.”

Collins and Majerus intend to move their journalism outreach organization to Maine. The couple has two college-aged children.