What Can Mainstream Journalism Learn From Prison Journalism?

Funding cuts, misinformation, corporate buyouts, and steep declines in readership have put journalism into a crisis. But scholars at the Annenberg School for Communication, Associate Professor Sarah J. Jackson and doctoral candidate Liz Hallgren, have found a place the mainstream press can look to for inspiration, guidance, and hope — non-profit prison news.

Their research focuses on News Inside, an award-winning print publication created by the nonprofit news and advocacy organization The Marshall Project that includes reporting from incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, along with journalists on the outside. News Inside is circulated free of charge in hundreds of prisons and jails across the United States and available digitally to all on The Marshall Project’s website.

In an analysis of the first four years of News Inside, published in the journal Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Jackson and Hallgren found three main characteristics of the publication’s practices that mainstream journalism could emulate: redefining who counts as an expert, intentionally interacting with readers, and a focus on depth of reporting.

“Reaching numbers of readers unseen by any other prison newspaper, News Inside makes an apt counterpoint for mainstream U.S. media, given its familiar structure — a print and digital presence, full-time and guest reporters, a consistent set of topics and publishing schedule — and national circulation,” Jackson says. “Its reporting can be a model for publishers on the outside.”

Stories that Center the Incarcerated

News Inside covers news that speaks directly to its audience’s lived experiences, Hallgren and Jackson note — from stories on navigating romantic and family relationships while in prison to articles on how particular economic policies impact incarcerated people and their families — all the while depicting universally human experiences that readers, regardless of their legal status, can relate to. 

“Popular media tends to dehumanize incarcerated people, wrongfully making them out to be different from and worse than people on the outside,” Hallgren says. “News Inside flips this script and does what all good journalism should: bring people together around our shared humanity, allowing us to see each other as full people.” 

Many of these stories are written by reporters who have experienced the issues they report on: Jackson and Hallgren’s analysis found that nearly 30% of News Inside pieces are written by currently or formerly incarcerated individuals. News Inside is also more diverse than U.S. journalism as a whole: only about 40% of journalists nationwide are women, and 18% are members of a racial or ethnic minority, according to the American Journalist Study. Of the 112 articles in News Inside that Jackson and Hallgren studied, 52% were written either solely or jointly by women, and 45% were written either solely or jointly by a person/people of color.

The articles in News Inside also often break with mainstream journalism’s tendency to primarily source quotes from society’s elites; articles quote incarcerated individuals as subject matter experts, instead of relying on “official sources” like prison staff or lawmakers. “Incarcerated individuals are often afforded the coveted position of first and last quoted in news articles, considered the prime areas for reader eyeballs,” Hallgren and Jackson write. 

“Journalism on the outside could learn from News Inside’s willingness to report on the mundane, everyday experiences that people in their communities face, and to prioritize community voices over society’s elites,” Hallgren says. “Doing these two things could make for richer, more humane journalism.”

Connecting the Inside and the Outside

In their analysis of 15 issues of the publication, Jackson and Hallgren found that many News Inside articles address readers directly, invoking an imagined “you”: a style that invites readers to see themselves as members of a community that cares about criminal justice, regardless of whether they have ever been incarcerated. Articles like “Your Zoom Interrogation is About to Start” and “What’s really in the First Step Act?: Too much. Too little. You be the judge” create an implied 'us,’ positioning all readers as equal stakeholders, they argue.

News Inside also asks readers for feedback and engagement through quizzes, letters to the editor, advice columns, and personal essays, another way to create a shared community between readers on the inside and the outside.

“Using these varied forms of direct address, News Inside provides opportunities for readers to speak with one another around shared goals despite the extreme ways they may be separated socially,” Hallgren and Jackson write. “This imagined community is particularly notable because it challenges so many of the taken-for-granted boundaries (physical and socio-cultural) that have made it difficult for members of the U.S. public to imagine incarcerated people within the public sphere.”

Taking it Slow

Creating a publication meant to circulate in prisons naturally takes a lot of time, Hallgren and Jackson point out. Staff not only have to distribute copies through snail mail, but they also have to navigate strict guidelines laid out by different institutions. News Inside Director Lawrence Bartley once told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that “one sentence could be objectionable to a prison administrator on page one. That would cause the whole publication to get banned.”
Due to these limitations, News Inside cannot compete with the speed of mainstream news, which operates 24/7. Jackson and Hallgren see this as a good thing, however, something that mainstream news could learn from.

“Mainstream news can be understood as an information flood, providing constant updates, keeping consumers hooked. News Inside, by contrast, operates as a slow drip, where information cannot flow constantly due to the constraints of its production and circulation,” they write. “Each issue must be carefully conceived, with only the most pertinent and comprehensive information, because for most of its readers, News Inside is the only available news source.”

Mainstream journalism often sees news as a product, rather than a service, Jackson and Hallgren argue. During the 2020 election season, News Inside’s political coverage focused on “must-know” information in contrast to the horse-race election cycle coverage of mainstream news. “News Inside reveals another model for journalism, one that is responsive to the needs of its readers and current events, without operating on a 24-hour basis,” Jackson and Hallgren write.

Humanist Journalism

By redefining sourcing practices and who “counts” as an expert, creating a community between readers on the outside and the inside, and covering issues in depth, News Inside offers a model for mainstream journalism to emulate, Hallgren and Jackson argue, a radically humanist form of journalism that makes  “those rendered invisible and absent from public life, recognizable as living, precious human subjects.”

“It matters that News Inside uses many of the trappings of mainstream journalism to do its unique work, because it gains credibility from the industry and attracts outside readers,” Hallgren says. “However, News Inside selectively shirks journalistic norms that don’t serve their core audience — like emphasizing elites and reporting 24/7 — resulting in a depth of information that is practical, educational, and most of all — humane.”