The men behind the San Quentin News create the paper they hope will reach beyond the gates of the prison where many of them are serving life sentences.
In December, students from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business presented the newspaper staff with a 12-year business plan, which aimed to get the paper to every inmate in the state, more policymakers and the public.
The paper is based at the state’s oldest prison, in what is now a medium security facility in Marin County. It is the only one in California, and one of few worldwide, produced by inmates.
The paper was founded in 1940. It was reopened six years ago under Warden Robert Ayers. It’s been intermittently shut down, interrupted by lockdowns or suspension.
“We’ve been given a chance to be the voice of the prison,” said editor-in-chief Arnulfo Garcia. “No one else is doing what we’re doing.”
Editors approached William Drummond, a UC Berkeley journalism professor about the idea of expanding the paper.
“A lot of people thought it was a pipe dream,” said Drummond, who formerly wrote about prisons at the Los Angeles Times and had watched as fewer papers devoted resources to the beat. “But they seemed convinced it could be done.”
Drummond contacted the business school and in August, students in a class at the school’s Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership started consultations with the newspaper staff through phone calls and weekly meetings.
The end result of their efforts was a three-phase business plan calling for raising circulation to 122,000, and raising the annual budget to more than half a million.
The paper, which can’t sell subscriptions or ads or manage its own website, relies now on about 100 donors. It would need at least 1,000 to make the plan viable.
Prison administrators review the paper and may demand changes, but mostly the editors try to steer away from stories that might incite violence.
