The History of the Prison Mirror

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In 1800, a lawyer named William Cateltus couldn't pay his debts and was sent to prison. The oldest continuously operating prison newspaper is the prison mirror founded in 1887 by a group of men incarcerated at Stillwater State Prison. It still exists today, with the slogan, it's never too late to mend.

A little over sixty years ago, there were 250 prison newspapers being published on a regular basis. Today, there are 26. We visit Nash Correctional Institution in North Carolina to meet Phillip Vance Smith, II, the editor of The Nash News.

Learn more about the American Prison Newspapers digitization project here. Listen to more of Fresh Air’s interview with Angolite editor Wilbert Rideau here. Special thanks to Terry Gross and Fresh Air, which is produced at NPR member station WHYY and distributed by NPR.

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