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.
