The space provided to the San Quentin News in the new Learning Center puts us under a spotlight and at the same time gives us an opportunity to show what we can do.

Since the 1940s, San Quentin News has carried the torch of prison journalism thanks to progressive wardens, facility staff, and an incarcerated population that values the benefit of elevating incarcerated voices, but we have faced many challenges.

Most recently, those challenges included maintaining access to support from outside volunteers for our journalism and professional development, sustaining adequate staff, finding the right balance of news and story coverage, and competition for writing talent from outside publications who offer incarcerated writers payment for their work.

In the past, SQNews had around 30 volunteers, both retired and active journalists, who visited the prison weekly to teach the incarcerated staff, copy edit news articles, and instruct our Journalism Guild.

The number of volunteers has dwindled as the core group aged, and several did not return after COVID-19. The loss of volunteers and advisors disrupted the teaching and development of the incarcerated staff and Guild students who had a passion for amplifying incarcerated voices, but who lacked formal training as writers and journalists.

Thanks to our fiscal sponsor, Pollen Initiative, we now have a small number of young, highly-qualified advisors who are having an immediate impact. They in turn are networked with peers on the outside, and through those networks we believe we will eventually restore the level of support we need. That support will contribute to the quality of the newspaper. 

While we grow our team of outside supporters, the handful of excellent advisers currently in place are training us to serve as our own support system. They are teaching us developmental editing, fact-checking, line and copy editing. The first cohort of six staff have completed the training, and a second cohort is ready to begin their instruction in the near future. 

Under the new regimen, when a writer takes on a story assignment he is connected to a staff editor who works with him throughout the story process from inception to publication. We believe that this process will gradually improve the quality of writing, the focus, and the accuracy of our news stories.

One of the biggest challenges we have faced is that the staff are not sticking around forever. Over the last few years, some have left to pursue a different job, a vocation opportunity, or to focus on earning their freedom at the parole board. The remaining staff have looked to one another for on-the-job training and development.

Prior to moving to the Learning Center, we were down to a staff of eight people at one point and some were doing the work of two or three people just to keep the monthly publication on schedule. Now we have rebuilt our staff to 16.

When I started working for SQNews in 2023, there were 21 incarcerated people on staff and around six volunteers who showed up each week to either teach the Journalism Guild and edit news articles. As new incarcerated journalists were added to the team, they learned the same way I did, from another incarcerated journalist. Each one teach one.

One benefit that we have always had here at San Quentin is access, access to write and sharpen our skills, to cross-train each other to get the job done. But the blind can only lead the blind so far before they all hit the same wall.

Over the last year or so, readers have expressed their disappointment with the newspaper. Largely the complaints are that the articles or stories aren’t relatable or there are too many grammatical errors in the newspaper. We are strengthening our editing regime to address errors. Adding staff means that certain positions are not spread as thin as in recent times. These changes will take time and the resulting improvements will be gradual.

When I hear things like “I don’t read the newspaper because it doesn’t pertain to me” or “there’s too many events in the newspaper,” the goal for me is to find a happy medium. I know that readers enjoy different types of news. We are watching letters to the editor and talking to our readers to gauge what sort of stories and news they want.

We have also dealt with healthy competition, not between prison publications, but with publications that pay incarcerated writers for stories that highlight living conditions inside prisons.

As an incarcerated person with little financial support and restitution to pay off, I can see why someone would be inclined to write for an outside publication, especially when they’re getting paid. San Quentin News cannot compete with that. Those who work for the newspaper will continue to earn pennies per hour.

We appreciate your patience as well as your criticisms, and we humbly ask for your support.