Libby Rainey is a journalist who works at Democracy Now! Her work has also appeared in Pacific Standard. The Indypendent, The Denver Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Citylab, California Magazine, and Los Angeles News Group. Libby has worked with the San Quentin News since 2014
Bo Kovitz is a documentary filmmaker and visual journalist whose work explores issues in criminal justice, environmental justice, public health and education. She has experience as a director, producer, investigative reporter, videographer and editor. Her credits include documentary projects featured in Sundance, POV, GoodPitch and PBS Frontline. Bo began her career as a city government reporter for the award-winning, independent student newspaper The Daily Californian. She is currently the Marlon T. Riggs Fellow in Documentary Filmmaking at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Bo has been an advisor at the San Quentin News for almost three years.
Michael Bott is a Peabody and duPont Award winning investigative journalist at NBC Bay Area News. He joined NBC Bay Area in 2015, after spending five years at ABC10 in Sacramento as an Assignment Editor and Investigative Producer. Michael has reported on law enforcement’s secret and warrantless use of surveillance technology, Bay Area landlords wrongfully evicting rent-controlled tenants, and California’s drinking water problems, among many other subjects.
Michael began volunteering at San Quentin in 2017, after meeting many of the institution’s incarcerated journalists while covering a story there for NBC Bay Area. He now teachers a monthly course on video journalism. Michael is consistently in awe of the journalists at San Quentin, and hopes to help expose their work to a larger audience.
A native of Oakland, California, Stewart Perrilliat grew-up in a community that was plagued with a number of challenging institutional socio-economic ills. Nevertheless, Stewart escaped the lures of the streets and became a Sergeant with the United States Marine Corp, before becoming the Founder and CEO of Perrilliat Enterprises, a general contracting and engineering firm based in Northern California.
Stewart has a passion for youth and young adult men and his call has become the central focus of his life. Although Stewart is a gifted entrepreneur, he is first and foremost a service-driven person who is passionate about seeing young people live their best life now. Stewart's teaching gift empowers people to improve and enhance their lives. His approach is encouraging, practical, and inspirational, and he is known for motivating others to reach for their highest potential.
Stewart Perrilliat is an ordained clergy member at Allen Temple Baptist church located in Oakland California. He is a graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary, with a Master of Arts degree in Theological Studies and currently working on a doctorate degree in Executive Leadership. He holds certifications in television production from Marin Community Media Center and Berkeley Community Media as well as domestic violence survivor training from the State of California. Father, servant, motivational speaker, and author, Stewart is a gifted individual who has a passion to see broken lives restored and renewed. He is the Executive Director of Man 2 Man-UYA.
San Quentin News
UC Berkeley Students Assistance Program
San Quentin News offers an editorial assistance program for outside college student photographers, writers and multimedia journalists. The students would collaborate with San Quentin News staff and the Journalism Guild to provide research, writing and media support. The students would help cover outside events that feature the formerly incarcerated, criminal justice issues, or public meetings.
Students would be offered college credits for school work and a prominent mention included in the article or project page. They would have an opportuni- ty to gain work experience, putting his or her journalism education into practice. They enhance their experience on resumes and gain first-hand experience in working with criminal justice and public safety topics.
With these students’ help, San Quentin News would have greater ability to achieve its mission, by cultivating sources on the outside, providing additional media content and performing tasks that incarcerated writers cannot. The students would help writers tell better stories and reach an even larger audience. Additionally, the program would track hours worked, travel expenses and costs of collaboration. This data could be used for future grant-writing.
Students would be offered an opportunity to perform a variety of roles to support San Quentin News.
Welcome Berkeley Students!
San Quentin News’ mission is to report on rehabilitative effort to increase public safety and achieve social justice.
Our staff is looking forward to corroborating with you all on this journalistic mission.