Several students and faculty from The Pioneer, California State University East Bay’s (CSUEB) student-run newspaper, visited San Quentin State Prison and its media center last month.
The visit allowed the aspiring student-journalists, along with CSUEB staff, to have a first-hand look at the prison and its newsroom, where the inmate-run San Quentin News is produced.
“It’s almost unreal. It’s surreal,” said Tam Duong Jr., a visual editor for The Pioneer. “It’s almost a world in itself,” he said, explaining his impression of the prison. He interviewed inmate Arnulfo Garcia, San Quentin News’ executive editor, and may produce a three-minute clip of the experience.
“He (Duong) expressed enthusiasm about seeing a bunch of inmates putting a newspaper together,” said Garcia. “He was amazed at the talent behind the walls of San Quentin and expressed an interest in coming back.”
Marina Swanson, Pioneer production assistant, said, “It looks like our campus,” describing the prison’s upper yard plaza entrance. “I thought it was really pretty until I got to the yard.” That was the moment she walked among hundreds of convicts. “I wasn’t expecting to walk through the yard. It felt much calmer than I expected,” she said.
Inmate Miguel Quezada, managing editor for San Quentin News, spoke with his counterpart, Kali Persall, managing editor of The Pioneer. “She’s been in the position six months, and I’ve been in the position two months,” Quezada said. They exchanged what he called “professional tips” about the responsibility that comes with doing the job.
Persall asked how inmate journalists obtain source material to write news articles as inmates are prohibited from having direct access to the Internet, email or an outside, unmonitored telephone line. She was told that outside SQN advisers are approved to bring the information in on flash drives.
“I’m on social media a lot so I find stories there,” said Persall. She admitted that she has never been in a newsroom outside of her classroom environment. “It’s really similar to ours. You guys have it together. I’m impressed,” she said.
Persall said The Pioneer has frequent turnover. “One of our biggest problems is getting people to stay,” unlike San Quentin News’ staff, who have the opposite problem: they can’t leave. “We want to partner with you guys,” she said.
Leaving the newsroom with the prison’s public information officer, Lt. Sam Robinson, The Pioneer staff took an alternative route past north block and toured other parts of the prison. They walked past the north and south dining halls, east block’s Death Row, and through the south block rotunda on to west block. Once inside the cell block, the students and faculty were able to photograph, videotape, record, and interview many of the 700-plus inmates housed inside the five-tier structure.
“It was super cool,” said Christina Galanakis, who does layout design for The Pioneer. She captured sights and sounds on videotape and commented how going into the prison was not like anything she expected from watching television shows. “It was inspiring,” she said, adding that walking on the yard among inmates “has a school atmosphere.”
Gary Moskowitz, Pioneer faculty advisor, took advantage of the opportunity to speak with men who have been convicted of all kinds of crimes, a starkly different experience from that of many journalists who write about prisons but have never stepped foot inside.
CSUEB students are real “Pioneers” – placing themselves ahead of some seasoned journalists who report from behind a desk. “We’re happy to get our facts right,” Moskowitz said.
Two years ago The Pioneer’s then-student editor-in-chief, Yousuf Fahimuddin, and the paper’s student sales executive, Yesica Ibarra, responded to an invitation to visit San Quentin News. About a year later CSUEB student photojournalist, Valerie Smith, made the same trek into the prison alone.
The CSUEB Faculty Coordinator, Dr. Katherine Bell, suggested this recent group of students visit the prison. “We don’t want this to be the last time,” she said. Initially she had planned to take part in the first Pioneer visit but had other obligations. “We want to make lifelong connections.”
