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I never expected to be a real reporter. While other students in my first journalism class could go into the community to interview sources, my options were limited. As a prisoner, I could only interview other prisoners and guards.
It was 2010, and I was a 28-year-old alcoholic serving a year-long sentence in a Wisconsin county jail. I was convicted of burglary after breaking into a bar and leaving with a bottle of liquor. It was a crime, and it was well-timed—a culmination of wrecked cars, lost jobs, and alcohol-fueled arrests. When the judge sentenced me, he said I exemplified the “wasting of human life”. He was not wrong.
During those first months behind bars, there was no sun, no night sky. I measured the time by opening and closing the steel cell doors. But in the middle of my sentence, as is common in many cases, the judge gave me the option of working during the day or taking classes at a nearby university.
I took a job as a janitor in the community, enjoying being out of my cell. One morning while I was vacuuming, I grabbed a Rolling Stone magazine from the coffee table. A flyer slips for a college journalism contest; Winning entries will appear in the magazine. Only college students could enter.
I knew nothing about journalism, but I had a strange sensation—an intuition—that I had finally found something I didn’t even know I needed. That day, I enrolled in the university closest to the prison.
That’s how I found myself, weeks later, interviewing my correctional officer for a story in the student newspaper. We had never spoken to each other so thoughtfully or precisely. This was someone who, at any other time, had absolute power over me. Yet in that moment, while visiting him, I felt a subtle and palpable shift of power.
I could sense him calculating what he wanted to say, and leaving out words that might get him into trouble. I felt empowered to pursue that pregnant break, find the truth, and bring order to the world around me. The experience was liberating. It shows that even a prisoner’s voice can be heard if facts and rigorous research support what he or she has to say.
After my release, I stayed in school, eventually earning a master’s degree in journalism. And I kept writing. Story by story, and with the help of patient editors, I learned how to report and write better and faster. I calmed down. Eventually, I landed a reporting internship, then a full-time job.
In the years since, I’ve been a reporter in California and returned home to take up a reporting job with him Wisconsin Watch – The place that offered me my first internship.
And then, last June, 13 years after I wrote my first article from a Wisconsin prison, I began covering the state’s prison system as a local investigative fellow for the New York Times. The fellowship program is designed to strengthen the power and reach of local journalism.
By then, I had a mounting stack of letters from men housed at Waupun Correctional Institution who had been confined to their cells for months without regular access to showers, fresh air, family visits and timely medical care. In August, guided by a team of editors that included Dean Baquet, former executive editor of The Times, I broke the story that the state was closing prisons because of staff shortages.
In February, we revealed that the state had known for years that it was losing guards faster than it could replace them. Then in June, I reported on the extraordinary arrest of nine prison employees, including a former warden, in connection with inmate deaths.
Our recent article brought to light another fact: About a third of the 60 staff physicians the correctional system has hired over the past decade have been disciplined by state medical boards for misconduct or ethics violations.
My past has put me in a unique position. As a reporter, I purposely distance myself from my investigations to pursue the truth, wherever it leads. I value freedom. But, like anyone else, I am shaped by my experiences. I know the smell of prisons and the constant hunger pangs of prisoners. I know what it means to be denied fresh air for months. I have also seen unexpected acts of kindness happen behind bars.
My experiences inform who I talk to — and who talks to me — and how I approach my reporting. For better or worse, I am a member of this community forever. And that is the spirit of local journalism.