STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Newspapers in this country have been in decline, but prison newspapers are on the rise. The Prison Journalism Project counts about two dozen newspapers behind bars, an increase in recent years. NPR criminal justice reporter Meg Anderson met the inmates behind one paper.
MEG ANDERSON, BYLINE: Inside a state prison near Stillwater, Minn., tucked in the corner of a computer lab, inmates Paul Gordon and Richard Adams are discussing grammar.
PAUL GORDON: So, you guys tell me what you think.
ANDERSON: They're on staff at the Prison Mirror, a newspaper made by and for the people held here. Gordon is reading Adams a profile he wrote of the prison art instructor.
GORDON: I was curious if there was a certain style or something he preferred to paint. When I get time, I like Bob Ross, the guy that does the painting on the TPT channels.
RICHARD ADAMS: Yeah, it kind of sounds like you're saying you like the guy from the TBT channel. So I'm not - he said, he stated, he replied.
ANDERSON: Conversations like this have been happening here since 1887. This prison newspaper is one of the oldest in the country. The Prison Mirror publishes monthly. The men write book reviews, legal explainers, and briefs on news from the outside. There are essays on being homesick and editorials criticizing lockdowns. The staff has to apply for these unpaid jobs, and they're highly sought after.
ADAMS: It's a lot of reading, a lot of being informative about what's going on around the world, around the community, around the prison. It entails a lot of work.
ANDERSON: Adams says there are challenges. They don't have the internet, for instance. So they rely on print media, and articles printed out by prison staff for most of their research. Also, the prison has to approve everything they publish. The men say that limits what they can write about. But to them, that's not really the point. Patrick Bonga has been in and out of prison multiple times. He says practicing journalism has taught him to think differently.
PATRICK BONGA: For me, for the first 40 years of my life, any other opinion other than mine did not matter. But now just having to put stories together that aren't one-sided, I'm now starting to practice in my own life a lot of fight against bias.
ANDERSON: Gordon says that fight against bias has helped him get along with others.
GORDON: Whether I'm dealing with the guards, education staff, or the inmates, you know, I try to take their perspectives into account and try to have some type of understanding, because it's never just one way. It's always two sides or, hell, four sides to the story sometimes.
ANDERSON: He hopes to write about the harsher elements of prison life. Like, last September, about 100 prisoners here refused to return to their cells. Gordon says they were protesting poor water quality and frequent lockdowns. He thinks he'll have the freedom to write about it.
GORDON: I believe my job is only to lay out the positions and then let people come to their own conclusion. I hope to write something that matters. And through writing, I hope to leave a much different footprint than the one I've already left on the world.
ANDERSON: He's been in prison for 18 years, a life sentence for murder. For him, making the paper is about arriving at a turning point.
GORDON: When we first come to prison, we spend day after day after day on trying to find that one moment, where if we would have made the one decision, everything would have went right. And then we get mad at the people around us for nobody helping us in that one moment. And it's a journey to finally get to the point that we take responsibility for own actions that we can finally grow.
ANDERSON: Adams wants to use the paper to encourage that growth in others. He plans to start an advice column. He's a father, and he thinks a lot of other men will have questions about how to be a good dad, even if the only interaction with their kids is over the phone. Right now, he's writing about side hustles men can get once they're released to make a little extra money, things like driving for Uber and DoorDash, selling flowers.
ADAMS: You have a choice while you're here, where you can change, or you can go back out there and do the same things that got you in here or you can go back out there and try to make a difference. We're not all bad people. We have goals and dreams, too. Like, we just messed up.
ANDERSON: Most people in prison get out. And Adams wants to give them hope and the tools to start over when and if they get the chance.
Meg Anderson, NPR News.
Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.