In the World by Richard Stratton

Author:Richard Stratton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781628727296
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2020-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

PRISON LIFE MAGAZINE, like many other print publications, is struggling to stay afloat. Kim and I buy out the original publishers and move the magazine from its Manhattan offices to the basement of our home in the Hudson River Valley to cut down on overhead. It’s a gamble, of course, and hardly a sure bet. The HBO deal looks like it could provide the financial shot in the arm we need to keep the magazine alive, and possibly help boost circulation, but it’s definitely a day-to-day struggle.

My history in the magazine business dates back to the founding of High Times in the early 1970s. High Times was a phenomenon, profitable after its first few issues for the very good reason that it offered a unique opportunity for manufacturers and distributors in the burgeoning drug paraphernalia industry to advertise their wares in the only magazine devoted to the illegal marijuana trade. Rolling papers, various pot grinders and joint rolling machines, bongs, roach clips, hemp products, and on and on: High Times drew advertisers in droves. Not so Prison Life. It is 1995 and yes, the US prison population is exploding; we have a captive—actually a captured—market. But for the most part our readers have very little disposable income, and often do not have ready access. They can’t get to the newsstands to buy our magazine, and prison authorities around the country have already mounted a campaign to keep Prison Life out of prison.

So the purchase of the magazine is quickly perceived by its new publishers—Kim and me—as a failure in good business planning. Add to that the fact that the magazine industry as a whole is about to go into a nosedive as the internet comes online and eventually decimates print media, threatening the survival of even the most profitable and established publications. For me, it was never about the money. It never is. Even my criminal enterprise was always about more, about the cultural struggle. It is always about the issues, the subject matter, the human stories, and the larger social and political story of the drug war and the massive build-up of the criminal justice system juggernaut and its impact on American society. My goal for the magazine is to have it act as what we call the Voice of the Convict, to give voice to the voiceless. The stories, poems, and essays are all written by prisoners or ex-convicts. The artwork also is created by prison artists; we run an annual Art Behind Bars contest that draws dozens of submissions and provides us with exceptional prisoner art to illustrate stories in the magazine and to exhibit in galleries.

Prison Life soon becomes a succès d’estime, if not a financial success. We win awards, including a prestigious Utne Reader independent magazine award. We are written up in Time and Newsweek magazines and in the New York Times. Simultaneously, the magazine is seen as a security threat and banned in different prisons around the country and in the entire California prison system, which only adds to its credibility and allure.

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