This article was first published by San Quentin News, a prison newspaper that reports on rehabilitative efforts to increase public safety and achieve social justice from inside San Quentin State Prison. Visit SQN’s website or follow them on Twitter. The article has been lightly edited to add clarity and conform with PJP style rules.
In a history-making move, the San Quentin News Journalism Guild at San Quentin State Prison in California established its first satellite newsroom at the Folsom Women’s Facility (FWF) on November 1. Students in the program will receive journalism training that will provide them with the skills to bring the voices of incarcerated women to the newspaper on a regular basis.
“The unique partnership will offer FWF incarcerated people journalism training, professional development and mentoring, with the goal of establishing a newsroom staff at FWF that regularly contributes content to the San Quentin News,” said a joint press release from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and Friends of San Quentin News. The first news stories written by the Folsom women are expected to be seen in SQ News early in the New Year.
Former SQ News editor-in-chief Jesse Vasquez, now development director for the organization Friends of San Quentin News, helped facilitate the Journalism Guild’s expansion to the women’s facility.
“We’re thrilled to bring San Quentin’s transformative Journalism Guild to the people at Folsom Women’s Facility,” he said. “I’m eager to see the impact the women at Folsom will make through the program.”
FWF Public Information Officer Valencia, Facility Captain Geis, Associate Warden Caraballo, and the facility’s community resource manager were all instrumental in making the program possible and enabling access for the volunteers.
“We support the value of bringing this program to FWF to teach the population important journalism skills that will enable them to share their unique challenges and rehabilitation experiences in a female institution with a wider audience,” said Folsom State Prison and FWF Warden Rick Hill.
The Folsom Guild classes meet 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Mondays. Ten students attended the first session. The class is taught by Lisa Armstrong, University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism professor and award-winning journalist.
The 26-week course will include instruction in interviewing and research, writing techniques, and The Associated Press style of news writing.
Folsom’s aspiring journalists will have access to resources and research equal to that provided to their colleagues at San Quentin. They will compose their stories on portable word processors called NEOs. Their work will then be uploaded to a computer and sent to SQ News for publishing.
Some of the first topics the student journalists will write about include their experiences with COVID-19, prison diet and food waste, limits on visitation, detainers that restrict access to programming, and the psychological impact of incarceration on parents.
Armstrong will be assisted by Madeline “Maddie” Scott, along with UC Berkeley graduate students. Scott will serve the group as a volunteer coordinator and researcher.
“I honestly had no idea what to expect at the Folsom Women’s Facility. Any anxiety I felt … vanished after just spending a few minutes talking to the women and hearing their excitement to be involved in the Journalism Guild,” said Scott. “Many of the women … (told) us why they wanted to be involved in this project — to have their voices heard through storytelling and explore ideas they are passionate about.”
Mary Palomera is one of the Folsom Guild students.
“Hearing the stories of success from members of the Guild at San Quentin, specifically how the program makes them feel that they are getting their voices heard, has made me eager to join the Guild at Folsom,” she said.
Virginia Cervantes is another member of Armstrong’s class: “I’m looking forward to seeing how my words may promote social justice and inform those outside about the important issues faced by incarcerated women,” she said.
SQ News encourages incarcerated Californians to write and strives to include their many diverse voices.
Vasquez, Armstrong and Scott will make the 105-mile, two-hour commute from the Bay Area to Folsom each week to provide instruction and facilitate the connection between the emerging writers and the San Quentin newsroom.
In an interview with CBSN Bay Area Channel 5 KPIX, Vasquez said that the Folsom writers’ guild is a pilot program. Friends of San Quentin News envisions similar expansions nationwide.
“Ideally we would want to see at least one prison newspaper in every state with high incarceration rates so that the incarcerated have a voice and are able [to] speak to the issues that are relevant in their communities to dismantle those stereotypes and biases,” said Vasquez.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.