In the spring of 2023, two journalists drove through North Carolina to meet me at Nash Correctional Facility. Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer—the hosts of the true crime podcast Criminal—had spent about six months pestering the Department of Adult Correction (DAC) for permission to interview me. They wanted to understand my work as the editor of the Nash News (TNN), one of only twenty-one remaining prison newspapers in the United States.
When we finally met, it was in an empty visitation room on a cloudless Monday morning. But we weren’t alone. Two bored associate wardens sat at different tables, watching from opposite angles to make sure no one passed me any contraband. Directly across from me, a DAC communications director sat with his back to the wall, arms crossed, all but staring me down.
Although no administrator had told me what I could or couldn’t say beforehand, the pressure of being watched was enough. Throughout the hour-long interview, I found myself choosing my words carefully and avoiding critiques of the state. “What’s the difference between a prison journalist and one in the free world?” Judge asked at one point, pointing her allotted microphone toward me.
On a basic, physical level, the answer to Judge’s question was obvious. Unlike a journalist on the outside—and evidenced by the circumstances of our interview—I did not have access to private conversations with other journalists. I also had no access to resources that most journalists rely on—everything from the Internet and outside sources to basic tools like microphones, tape recorders, and video cameras. But on a deeper level, the question of what it means to be a prison journalist is far more complicated.
Parties invested in prison journalism hold vastly different views about the role of incarcerated journalists. Many carceral systems that fund prison newspapers expect their journalists to highlight prison programming and downplay the realities of incarceration—promoting, essentially, a happy-slave narrative. A slew of abolitionist nonprofits publish essays, poems, and personal accounts—giving voice to individual experiences and grievances—while avoiding investigative reporting almost completely. Similarly, many mainstream publications predominantly publish only first-person narratives or op-eds from incarcerated people, not fact-based journalism.
Mainstream media outlets, in particular, tend to publish only from reporters they consider “professionals.” Sometimes it’s a matter of bandwidth and access: it is far easier to edit a personal essay grounded in opinion than an investigative report that must be fact-checked inside a notoriously secretive bureaucracy. Certain outlets may not receive many pitches from incarcerated reporters, or may not accept freelance pitches in general. But many editors simply don’t see prison journalists as journalists at all. We are largely self-taught, lacking formal training in grammar, reporting methods, or the architecture of a professional article. And because we are often affected by the very issues we report on, many mistake our proximity for bias.
When studying journalism as an autodidact, nearly every book commanded the same thing: never write yourself into the story. But every publication I pitched wanted my stories to be about me.
In the JSTOR Daily article that put me on Criminal’s radar, I shared how I’d become an autodidact, a writer, and eventually a journalist within North Carolina’s especially restrictive prison system. I had been writing fiction and poetry since being sentenced to life without parole in 2002. Thirteen years later, theNash News inspired me to pursue journalism. I was thirty-seven years old.
Brian Scott and Mark Pieczynski, two men formerly incarcerated at Nash, founded TNN in 2005. From its inception, the paper covered lifestyle topics and current events relevant to residents, continuing the legacy of other historic prison publications in the state. I joined the staff in 2015 as a secretary typing articles, later serving numerous positions from reporter to graphic designer to assistant editor. When TNN printed, we gave all Nash residents a free copy by tossing it in their cells or on their bunks.
The Nash News gave me my first real chance to report. My mission was clear: keep the facility’s 600-plus residents informed about life inside its walls through our quarterly report.
Jesse Vasquez, who was editor-in-chief of San Quentin News from 2017 until his release in 2019, said he understood his own role at that paper in much the same way. “Prison newspapers exist to give the incarcerated information and news they can use,” Vazquez told me over the phone. “Their audience needs to know why it takes the plumber four months to fix a toilet. But they also need us to examine prison policies and publish solutions-based journalism that the mainstream media might report on one time, but ultimately doesn’t care about. The prison community needs their newspapers to talk to them.”
Vazquez’s nonprofit, Pollen Initiative, now works to cultivate media centers that produce newspapers, podcasts, and films in prisons around the country. In 2025 it helped revive the American Penal Press Contest to recognize excellence in prison periodicals. That year, TNN received more awards than any prison publication in the nation.
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Reporting from inside was deeply rewarding, but it came with constant challenges. Early on I learned how TNN self-censored to avoid opposing DAC policies. During Saturday staff meetings we reviewed issues of the Angolite from Louisiana and San Quentin News from California, marveling at their freedom to challenge conditions of confinement. We faced many of the same issues—shrinking food portions, high prices for communication, psychological harm caused by solitary confinement—but we didn’t write about them for fear of being shut down. No warden ever said, “You can’t print that,” yet the threat of retaliation kept us in check. These challenges were not just practical—they reflected the larger tension between prison journalism’s mission and the realities of operating within a tightly controlled system.
TNN is produced in a larger printing plant operated by North Carolina Correction Enterprises. The plant donates overstock paper and ink, allowing us to publish quarterly at no cost—but every issue must be approved by Nash’s wardens before it can reach readers. While all prison newspapers are subject to review by prison administrators, the content of the Angolite and San Quentin News suggests they have freedom to publish material North Carolina would never allow.
When we asked about printing controversial topics, our longtime editor Gary Farlow expressed his fear of being transferred to a more violent prison in retaliation, often saying, “North Carolina ain’t California.” At first, I didn’t question our silence on controversial topics because TNN finally gave me a platform to express myself. Belonging to that newsroom taught me to refine my writing and, more importantly, to center our audience—an essential skill for any journalist, inside or outside prison walls.
In 2021 I became TNN’s first Black editor—a role I saw as an opportunity to publish more impactful content. Even though we pushed the envelope, we still held back from challenging prison policies. For the first time, I had to steer a newsroom while balancing competing pressures: readers’ expectations, editorial integrity, and the strictures of the prison system. That experience taught me just how challenging prison journalism could be.
Still, there were moments that made me feel my work mattered. While covering a graduation at Nash for TNN, Todd Ishee, Secretary of the DAC, approached me in a sharp black suit, already knowing my name. He mentioned he had read my JSTOR Daily piece, which he told me had been reposted on the DAC’s statewide staff news feed. That brief interaction reminded me that, even within the constraints of the system, my reporting could be noticed and taken seriously—an affirmation that encouraged me to double down on my freelance writing while continuing my work at TNN.
To the outside world, what is the role of a prison journalist? “You could say the role of a prison journalist is to illuminate the dark corners of prison,” John J. Lennon recently wrote to me through his publicist. “In the beginning, I did those grievance pieces, published op-eds, investigative features. I wanted to create change!” Lennon, a widely published titan who has helped put prison journalism on the map recently, is serving 28 years to life for murder in New York.
After finding his voice in first-person narrative journalism, Lennon realized his role wasn’t “to make judgements or prescribe solutions—it was to deliver something the reader could not get anywhere else: an experience that left them reeling and thinking and asking questions.” Lennon said imprisoned journalists must always ask themselves: “To what end am I telling this story?”
I came to understand the power of first-person perspective through reading slave narratives.
Memoirs written by formerly enslaved people—such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave—helped forward the abolition of slavery by depicting its atrocities from the perspective of lived experience. Recounting the physical and psychological abuse the authors endured taught those who had never witnessed chattel slavery why it should be abolished.
Douglass’s story resonated with me the most. Freeing himself, he rose from plantations of abuse to hold audiences with presidents. He delivered his renowned “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech to protest the Fugitive Slave Law, a law that would have legally allowed slave catchers to drag him off stage back to a plantation. From Douglass, I learned how anyone can become an agent of change by employing language, instead of violence, as a tool.
Just as Douglass’s firsthand account carried the authority of lived experience, prison journalism offers insights the outside world rarely sees. First-person narratives humanize those behind bars, while meticulous, fact-checked reporting ensures accuracy and impact. Both approaches are essential: together, they give readers a fuller picture of the realities of incarceration. Amplifying these voices is not merely a duty to incarcerated writers—it is a fundamental responsibility of journalism itself: to inform, challenge, and hold society accountable.
Although Lennon does not overtly campaign against the prison system, his success nonetheless drew the ire of the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. In 2023, as reported by New York Focus, the agency quietly introduced a policy that would have curtailed incarcerated writers’ ability to publish their work and barred them from receiving compensation. New York prisons quickly rescinded the policy after receiving public backlash, but fourteen states still totally ban compensation for writing by the incarcerated, while nineteen states have partial bans, according to Prison Policy Initiative.
In 2010 North Carolina’s ACLU successfully settled a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Correction after the agency punished Victor L. Martin for publishing his novels. The settlement required North Carolina to allow incarcerated people to publish without retaliation and even potentially receive payment, so long as an outside family member handled all related business.
Even journalists outside prison face pressure and retaliation. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump waged war on publications such as theNew York Times, which he claimed “has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame” him. He attempted to sue the publication for $15 billion, though a federal judge recently dismissed the case as “decidedly improper and impermissible.” Trump also attempted to slash $1.1 billion in federal funding for NPR and PBS, filed a $10 billion defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal over its Epstein reporting, and barred the Associated Press from select White House press-pool briefings—a move a judge later noted likely implicated the First Amendment.
In many ways, the challenges facing prison journalism mirror those in the outside world: declining readership, shrinking opportunities as papers close, and pressure from authorities to suppress inconvenient truths. Journalists inside prisons, like those outside, must resist these pressures to compromise their integrity, cut corners, or self-censor, even when doing so carries real personal risk.
I entered prison as mass incarceration neared its peak. In my lifetime, draconian sentencing laws swelled North Carolina prisons from about 18,000 in 1990 to 40,000 by 2010. Doubling the prison population lessened my access to medical care, forced me to live in overcrowded dorms, and made my family pay prison profiteers exorbitant prices to make sure I could eat a decent meal and call home. These are all things I write about.
Wanda Bertram, communications strategist for Prison Policy Initiative, told me that imprisoned journalists are in the best position to shine a light on the injustices of incarceration because we are so intimately affected by it. We are in the best position to highlight how crime and punishment affects everyone. “If we consider prisons an important part of society,” Bertram wrote in an email, “then the prison beat is important (just like war reporting, business reporting, etc), and it’s essential to have people on the inside who are on this beat.” Bertram also said outside journalists ask her basic questions about prison life because so much remains hidden from public view. “In an ideal world, the ‘free world’ journalism industry would see prison journalists as indispensable collaborators.”
Journalists exist to report news affecting their community in an uncompromising way, no matter the consequence, and prison journalists are no different.
During my tenure as a freelancer, I’ve been lucky to have published both first-person essays and hard-nosed reporting. I’ve learned that prison writing can encompass an array of genres, from intimate personal narratives to investigative pieces, and that each requires a balance between honesty, objectivity, and the realities of the system. Flexibility is essential: sometimes the story you want to tell must be shaped by what you can safely report, by what your audience needs, and by the ethical responsibility to those whose lives are on the line. Doing what you can—while maintaining rigor, clarity, and empathy—is often the most powerful form of journalism available behind bars.
In the fall of 2024, I was transferred from Nash without requesting it. Before then, numerous staff members told me of the warden’s displeasure with my writing. Prison officials couldn’t infringe on my First Amendment right to free speech, but they could subject me to what prison officials call “diesel therapy.” I had been at Nash for fourteen years, facilitating about a dozen issues ofTNN as editor, and spearheading the creation of a statewide publication called the North Carolina Prison News Today. When I was transferred, I lost my position as editor of TNN and many good friends and colleagues. Despite such losses, I remain determined to continue writing and serving my community through freelance journalism at Neuse Correctional Institution, where I am now housed.
By telling TNN’s stories, I served my carceral community. I showed the beauty of an ugly environment where glimpses of the bright blue sky are marred by razor wire and tall brick walls. I wrote about the harms of life without parole sentences, the school-to-prison pipeline, drug addiction, and how those issues affect society at large. Despite losing so much, I am proud of the legacy I left behind.
Now, I freelance with renewed focus, using the time and perspective I have to create work that matters. I write about the rising cost of communication in prison, people sentenced to life without parole as juveniles, and insufficient medical care in an overpopulated carceral system, among many other topics. Prison isn’t a weekend in the hills. I am sentenced to live and die here because of my past mistakes—but that does not justify an inhumane cage. I write to improve the quality of life for myself and those housed with me, and to share our stories with the world. This is the only life I have left, and writing gives it purpose.
Image: Sergey Koznov / Unsplash
