At San Quentin A Graduation Ceremony Celebrates Aspiring Journalists

by Ali Mosely, Prison Journalism Project

More than three dozen men who completed San Quentin’s journalism training program were honored earlier this year

On March 15, 2024, 39 men at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center graduated from the San Quentin Journalism Guild’s training program, which teaches the skills necessary to write for San Quentin News, the leading prison news outlet in California.

The graduation ceremony was held in the largest of three prison chapels to accommodate what was the largest graduating class in the program’s decade-long history.

SQ News is run entirely by incarcerated journalists. It produces a monthly newspaper with a circulation of about 30,000, and operates a closed-loop television station for residents of The Q, as we call our facility.

Graduates included 19 people who were part of the Spanish Journalism Guild. 

On a sunny but nippy morning on the San Francisco Bay, the ceremony started a little awkwardly. The chapel opened its doors an hour late, so we had no caps, gowns or dress rehearsals. 

The SQ News camera crew and reporters quickly set up while tables with decorative centerpieces were arranged in the cavernous room. Moments later, both graduates and outside guests flooded into Chapel B.

Journalism Guild instructor and University of Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism professor Lisa Armstrong delivered a moving keynote address to an audience of about 100 people about why journalism behind bars is important. The graduate pool responded in true jailhouse fashion to each speaker like late-night talk show host Arsenio Hall’s Dog Pound fans. In street parlance, the ceremony was “lit.”

The highlight of the day for graduates, including me, was the crispy fried chicken from the Safeway grocery store and triple-chocolate muffins donated by sponsors. 

In his speech, Jesse Vasquez, former editor-in-chief of SQ News and current executive director of Pollen Initiative — SQ News’ outside nonprofit group — quipped that the men were more excited to see the fried chicken that he brought in than to see him. 

Fried chicken is a delicacy in the state’s prisons, in part because there are no fried foods on the prison menu or at the commissary. I deboned my chicken like a vulture, licking my fingers and lips afterward.

Afterward, I sunk my teeth into one of the muffins and, just like that, my mind went sailing away on a chocolatey river. 

But the memory I’ll take away with the certificate I received was meeting a former Guild instructor, who posed for a photo with me and gave me a fresh feeling that would last longer than that chicken and muffin.

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This story was originally published by the well known and much celebrated Prison Journalism Project

Author Ali Moseley is a writer incarcerated in California. He writes under a pen name.