Steve McNamara

The astonishing growth of San Quentin News

September 30, 2020 by Steve McNamara

This is a difficult time for the San Quentin News. But it’s not difficult for the reasons that plague nearly every other newspaper in the country. Those newspapers are in trouble because they are running out of readers, who increasingly switch to the internet for their information.

The San Quentin News has plenty of eager readers. Its current problem is that the staff inside the prison’s walls cannot gather for staff meetings to plan and run the paper and cannot easily connect outside the walls to get the paper printed and distributed to all of California’s other 35 prisons and to the hundreds of other people who usually receive it.

The reason, of course, is the COVID-19 pandemic that hit San Quentin harder than perhaps any other place on the planet. The sad fact of San Quentin’s infection rate and lockdown has been covered extensively. Meantime, the paper’s ongoing issues depend on stories written from inside and outside the prison, then laid out and prepared for printing and distribution by former staff members who earlier had been released from San Quentin, plus volunteer advisers who help the process just as they did inside.

But the core value and mission of the paper remains the same as it says on Page 1: Written by the Incarcerated – Advancing Social Justice.

That’s unique. Across America and the world there are a vast number of publications focused on criminal justice, but almost none of them are actually produced by incarcerated persons. At the SQ News it is these people who decide what to write and how to write it — how to approach and improve the system that governs their lives. And how to raise the money to pay for it — the California prison system provides computers and an office, but that’s all. Financial support for printing and distribution comes from outside the prison system.

In time, when COVID-19 recedes and San Quentin is again fully operational, the SQ News will be back as before, entirely the product of its incarcerated staff. Between now and then, it’s a good time to run through the astonishing transformation of the newspaper.

The roots of a paper at San Quentin go back to the 1930s to a short-lived publication named The Wall. It disappeared until the 1960s when a new paper called the San Quentin News emerged. It flourished with local prison news until the authorities grew sufficiently upset by its approach and forced its closure.

Then came an enlightened warden, Robert Ayers Jr., who in 2008 wanted to revive the paper, mainly as a conduit for in-prison news. He wanted freedom of expression — “not just the warden’s newsletter” — but he had no idea how dramatically it would grow.

Ayers didn’t know how to publish a newspaper and none of the incarcerated men in his care knew how. So, he recruited three retired newspaper people and tapped four inmates who were willing to have a go at it. The first issues were 5,000 copies of four pages printed on leftover orange paper on an ancient sheet-fed press and distributed within the prison. Then, to Ayers’s amazement and delight, the paper took off. Today it is this:

• Seventeen incarcerated staff members plus seven veteran newspaper advisers plus another six volunteers from outside the walls work in a dedicated media center.
• A dozen or more incarcerated men learn reporting skills in classes offered by the SQ News Journalism Guild. Successful students move on to staff positions created by the frequent parole of staff members.
• A rate of zero recidivism among paroled newspaper staff members.
•A newspaper staff of four persons without prior experience has blossomed into a large group of accomplished writers whose work has also appeared in outside publications such as The Washington Post.
• Usually 30,000 copies of a 20 to 24-page monthly paper are printed with color on a newspaper press.
• Distribution is to all 35 California prisons, plus county jails, plus some prisons in other states and also to contributing individuals and officials focused on criminal justice.
• A significant annual budget is supported by individuals and a range of foundations including the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
• Laudatory articles frequently appear in major outside publications ranging from the New York Times, L.A. Times and Politico, plus coverage on national TV.
• A website presents current and earlier printed issues in searchable form, plus video.
• There is membership in the California News Publishers Association that includes all of the state’s major newspapers.
• There is membership by staff writers in the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California chapter.
• A Twitter account carries links to SQ News articles.
• San Quentin News Forums: These groundbreaking events pair groups of incarcerated men with groups of officials involved with criminal justice who previously had no personal experience inside a prison. The Forums began in 2011 with the department of San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and have expanded to include district attorneys from throughout the Bay Area and the United States, judges, school teachers, defense attorneys and police departments, most recently the San Francisco Police Department.

What you’re reading now is a stop-gap version of the San Quentin News. So, hang in there. We’ll be back with the real version as soon as COVID-19 allows it.

The Impressive Growth of San Quentin News

June 1, 2015 by Steve McNamara

If you are ever lucky enough to land in San Quentin Prison, walk down the hill to the Lower Yard. Check out the tennis and basketball courts, the baseball field and the drop-dead view of Mt. Tam. Then make your way through the crowd of inmates to the office of the San Quentin News (S.Q. News), one of the few print newspapers in America that is actually flourishing.
Of course it helps that the paper’s main target audience – prison inmates – has no access to the Internet, which is where a lot of newspaper readers outside of prison have taken their business. But even taking that into account, the growth of the paper to its current level of excellence is amazing. The man who planted the seed, former warden Bob Ayers, is himself amazed. “I hoped it would be good, but I never thought it would be this good,” he said on a recent visit to the prison.
San Quentin journalism has quite a history. In the 1920s and 30s there was a paper named Wall City News that claimed to be “The Only Newspaper in the World Published Within The Walls of a Prison.” That paper ceased publication, replaced in December 1940 by the San Quentin News. The father of the News was Clinton Duffy, the famously progressive warden of San Quentin. He wanted the paper to supplant the inmate grapevine and be a more reliable source of prison information.

1930 Wall City News

The S.Q. News had its ups and downs thereafter. A high point came during the 1980s when there were scores of prison newspapers in the U.S. and in one competition the News was judged the best prison newspaper in the country. That was the Golden Age of prison journalism when a succession of court decisions held that prisoner First Amendment rights could be abridged only in pursuit of “legitimate penological interests.” Wardens couldn’t edit stories just to eliminate offensive opinions. But they could deal with publications that bugged them by claiming that prison security was at risk. And so one after another prison newspaper vanished, including the S.Q. News.
Bob Ayers saw things differently. To revive the News in the spring of 2008 he tapped three former newspaper reporters and editors: John Eagan, Joan Lisetor and myself, to be joined later by Linda Xiques. The startup paper had a staff of about four inmates, none of whom had a clue as to how to put a newspaper together, so the paper was largely created by the advisers. But inmate staff members were impressively quick learners and by now have taken ownership of the paper’s production. These days suggestions by advisers are sometimes followed and sometimes politely ignored.
The staff has grown to about 15 inmates plus a farm team of some 20 inmates who meet weekly at the Journalism Guild to learn writing skills, contribute articles and who often move up to slots on the staff.
What started more than 75 years ago as an inside report on prison doings has grown substantially in size and scope of coverage. Articles still focus on San Quentin but there is also coverage of events and issues throughout the country. The monthly issues have gone from 8 pages to 20 (sometimes 24) and the number of copies printed from 5,000 to 13,000. Seven years ago the paper was mainly seen within San Quentin; today it goes to another 20 of California’s 34 adult prisons and to a large number of donors, officials and interested parties involved in the criminal justice system. Plus there is a website that features current and past issues.
The presence of donors is significant. All prison newspapers were once supported by their prison systems. That was the case at San Quentin until early 2010 when the state closed the prison print shop. The paper teetered on the edge of oblivion until its then Editor-in-Chief, Michael (Harry O.) Harris, offered to pay for the paper’s printing at Marin Sun Printing, a newspaper plant I used to own. That kept the paper going until Harris was paroled in October 2011. Then I started a non-profit, the Prison Media Project, got a startup grant from the Marin Community Foundation and ever since we have been privately financed, mostly from foundations. The prison system provides office space, computers and office supplies.
The S.Q. News is one of the very few inmate-produced papers in existence, certainly in the U.S. There are prison newspapers in Texas and Minnesota, but they are produced by prison system headquarters with inmate participation. That’s a big difference from the inmate-directed S.Q. News. The Angolite in Louisiana, a justly famous magazine published six times a year, is probably the only other strong inmate voice in the country.
San Quentin inmates are smart enough to avoid coverage that would infuriate the prison administration and get the paper shut down again. In turn the authorities, notably Public Information Officer Lt. Sam Robinson, oversee the paper with a very light hand. Coverage of criminal justice news is sometimes supportive and positive, sometimes quite critical.
The S.Q. News has received increasing notice and praise from outside. The Society of Professional Journalists conferred a James Madison Award in 2014 and there have been laudatory articles in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee and The Nation magazine. Most recently a team of 11 from CNN spent a week at San Quentin filming for a segment of a new documentary series, “United Shades of America,” due to show early in 2016. Don’t miss it.

Prison’s newspaper celebrates 100th edition

San Quentin News Launches Wall City Magazine

https://sanquentinnews.com/the-100th-edition-san-quentin-news/

Happy Birthday S.Q. News

Surprise Finding Dates Paper to ‘30s

October 6, 2012 by Steve McNamara

In the Background section of the online San Quentin News the founding of the paper is traced to December 1940 when it was established by Warden Clinton Duffy. The implication used to be that this was the start of newspapering at San Quentin. It was not true.
To the great surprise of those of us involved with the current S.Q. News, and of San Quentin officials generally, there was a flourishing newspaper at San Quentin before the News – more than 80 years ago. It was named Wall City News and boasted that it was “The Only Newspaper in the World Published Within the Walls of a Prison.”
This revelation came to us from, of all places, Calgary, Canada. Some months ago I received an email from Larry Buchan of Calgary. He said that not only had there been a San Quentin newspaper before the News, but he had a copy of it, dated September 10, 1930. He subsequently sent photocopies of the paper, Page 1 of which is reproduced here. All four pages are viewable on our website www.sanquentinnews.com. Go to the Back Issues section and scroll down to the year 1930.
On the last page are the times of a recent prison track meet and the prison records in each event. Some of the times are startling. For example, the prison record in the 100-yard dash was said to be an amazing 10.2 seconds. The world record at the time, set three months earlier by Frank Wykoff in Chicago, was 9.5 seconds. The current record, set in 2010 by Asafa Powell on his way to victory in the 100 meters, is 9.07 seconds.
How did Larry Buchan come to have this journalistic gem? He got it from his father, who had been on a trip to San Francisco, in September 1930. Larry’s father had picked up five copies of Wall City News, left folded on a bench on a San Francisco Bay ferry.

A Lesson Well Taken in Journalism

May 29, 2011 by Steve McNamara

Feedback on the S.Q. News website, www.sanquentinnews.com:
I write to a gentleman on death row in your prison and he occasionally sends me copies of your paper. In the issue for September/October 2010 you carried an article which stated that the recidivism rate in Switzerland is 5%. I live in the UK and our government has prepared a Green Paper on Breaking the Cycle which is currently open for public consultation on how to reduce recidivism which in our country is very high rather like in yours. I read the article yesterday and thought that I would have a wonderful contribution to make to the meeting I was to attend today. This was of an organization to which I belong which planned to discuss the Green paper so that we could put forward submissions to the public consultation. However, the 5% figure seemed so extraordinary that I felt I should check it out first and so I did on the internet. Your evangelical minister might be excellent at training future evangelical priests but unfortunately, he did not have the correct information for recidivism rates in Switzerland. Whilst I found that for some crimes the recidivism rate was very low and the rates are lower than in our countries, on average they are nowhere like what he said and you have printed. It always pays to check your facts before publication. You can find what I did here
http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index/themen/19/04/03/01.html
Apart from this, I would like to say that I have always found your paper to be a good and an interesting read and I am pleased that it is now available on the web.
Sandi Beecher
Great Britain
Response: Thanks very much for the supportive words, and most of all for the correction on recidivism in Switzerland. That five percent number did seem miraculously low. Your research is something that we should have done ourselves. A good lesson both for the newspaper staff and the advisers.
Steve McNamara
Adviser

Welcome to the ‘Wonderful World’ Of San Quentin Prison Journalism

May 15, 2009 by Steve McNamara

It’s a world of hurt for America’s newspaper business. Circulation has been sliding for years. Ad revenue has fallen off a cliff. Bankruptcies are in the air. The San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe are hanging by a thread.
With those disasters looming outside prison walls, the situation at the San Quentin News produced by inmates looks pretty good. Circulation is stable. Ad revenue is the same as ever—zero. The publisher, which is the state of California, has big money problems, but bankruptcy is probably not in the cards. That’s the good newspaper news at San Quentin.
Now for the other news. I worked for newspapers outside the walls for 50 years before being asked by former Warden Bob Ayers and Lt. Rudy Luna to join John Eagan, Joan Lisetor and Steve Cook as advisors when the SQ News was brought back to life after almost 20 years. The objectives are the same outside prison and inside prison: find the story, write it, print it and get it to the readers. But a lot of challenges are brand new to Eagan, Lisetor, Cook and myself. Examples:
• Phones. Outside reporters rely largely on phone calls. San Quentin inmate-reporters can rarely use a phone, and only by pre-arrangement.
• Internet. E-mail, Google and other electronic research tools are the life-blood of outside reporters. They are not usually available to inmates.
• Network. At outside newspapers the computers used by writers, editors, designers and production are networked so stories and photos easily move electronically. Not so at SQ News. To move stories requires…
• Flash drives. Even this slower method of story transfer can be challenged because prison authorities are suspicious of flash drives and would be happier if they were banned.
• Photos. Inmates are not allowed to have or use cameras. Getting photos into the paper is a challenge.
• Searches. Inmate newspaper staff members must undergo strip searches when they leave the area where the newspaper office is located, which slows things down and results in some paperwork being confiscated.
• Printing Press. Scheduled print dates fall by the wayside when inmate disturbances cause prison-wide lockdowns, so the April issue came out in May. Also,San Quentin’s press does not have a newspaper folder attached to it so 7,500 copies of the paper must be folded and inserted by hand—a long process.
Despite all this, and despite the fact that the inmate staff had no newspaper experience eleven months ago, the quality result has amazed the four of us on the Advisory Board.
Steve McNamara worked for the Winston-Salem Journal, Miami Herald and San Francisco Examiner. For 38 year was owner-editor-publisher of the Pacific Sun in Marin County. He was also president of the California Society of Newspaper Editors and the National Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.