J-School grad discusses Inside Knowledge mission and the future of carceral journalism
In early 2025, when my journalism mentor Marcus “Wali” Henderson was still alive and reflecting upon his five years as the Editor In Chief of the San Quentin News (SQN) newspaper as we contemplated a pedagogical curriculum for confined journalists, he told me about this young Iranian woman from Italy attending the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism who, long after her class with UC Berkeley’s Professor Drummond had concluded, kept volunteering on her weekends in order to travel into “The Q” and assist the staff with copy and video editing. Most of the SQN volunteers are newsroom veterans twice her age; the young folks who slide through with Drummond’s class usually do the minimum, check the social justice virtue signal box, and dip out for greener pastures when the semester is over. Not Denis.
Ghost: You wrote for the University Times while pursuing a degree in Computer Information Systems at Cal State LA, minored in Journalism, and then jumped feet first into J-School at Berkeley. You earned a top-shelf internship at ABC7 in San Francisco, where you got to learn the breaking news production process, hit the streets with the news van crew and get your own grabs for stories, and you won the Jim Marshall Fellowship for photography. With your resume, you could’ve easily opted for a cozy studio gig with any newsroom or production company in the city. What drew you to this place called prison – what kept you driving back into San Quentin?
Akbari: It started with a simple but persistent curiosity. Who are the people we lock away? What happens to them once they’re inside? Who decides what we get to learn about them or the prison system itself? I’d always been drawn to stories from the margins, and prison felt like one of the most hidden corners of society, where narratives are controlled, distorted—as with Attica—or, just completely erased. I wanted to look for the humanity behind those walls and interrogate the systems that keep people confined. That curiosity deepened when I took Professor Drummond’s class at Berkeley Journalism. He helped me see Journalism not just as reporting on communities, but reporting with them. He introduced me to the San Quentin News and a model of journalism that’s collaborative, justice-driven and rooted in civic repair. That class reframed my role, from observer, to that of an enabler—a builder of a media infrastructure that brings power and agency to people inside.
Ghost: What misconceptions did you have, or do you think free world people have generally, about the shadowed souls who are thinking, writing, and creating while engaged in the craft of journalism from prison?
Akbari: One of the biggest misconceptions is that prisons are devoid of talent, creativity, or complexity—that the people inside are stagnated or somehow less capable—lesser, period. My time at San Quentin News shattered that. I witnessed incredible creativity involving confined journalists generating a monthly paper under constant resource constraints, curating a powerful and evocative film festival, and working with a level of seriousness that would shame most free world newsrooms. Prison can be a vibrant working environment if we treat it like one, because confined journalists are subject matter experts in areas none of us will ever be. They take their work more seriously because its not just copy or content to them—it’s advocacy. It’s testimony from a systematically silenced community.
Ghost: You kept coming back after Drummond’s class ended—why?
Akbari. Professor Drummond didn’t just deploy us—he volunteered his own time too on the weekends, picked us all up, drove us all in, and was right there with us. That form of outside-in collaboration isn’t just work, that is a sort of solidarity. His advocacy was infectious—he modeled for us how there is real power in proximity. When I finally stepped into a prison newsroom, it didn’t feel like charity, it felt like joining a team of professionals who, for them, because they’re speaking for people who often can’t speak for themselves, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Drummond inspired me to go, but it was the seriousness of the work that kept me going back—and though I’m leaving Berkeley and starting a News Fellowship in Sacramento at PBS KVIE, I will continue to support in-person carceral media practices that center the most marginalized and use it to build bridges over the walls where feasible.
Ghost: As a Harvard-Yale IPIPS [Institute on Policing, Incarceration and Public Safety] Journalism Fellow, what exactly will you be doing for the Inside Knowledge platform coming to Edovo?
Akbari: Lots! I am honored to be aligned with women like Elizabeth Hinton, Kristine Guillaume, and the many confined creators who will populate the Inside Knowledge platform with the teachable moment life-affirming messaging and information we need to curate and point back into the carceral state. My immediate tasks will include managing the Witness platform, folding that archive into an Inside Knowledge-branded digital newsletter for Edovo consumption, digitizing the portfolio of work generated by the Carceral Studies Journalism Guild for the 2026 publication of IPIPS’ Inside Knowledge Quarterly literary magazine, and developing the web presence for each. I’m especially eager to contribute to the CSJG’s forthcoming curriculum, An Introductory Guide To Independent Newsmaking From Prison, and deploy it.
Ghost: You know this landscape Denis—you have worked within the nation’s most widely distributed prison newspaper newsroom, attended the nation’s first ever in-prison film festival, and consumed content produced by The Marshall Project, Prison Journalism Project, and the smattering of audio content allowed to e s c a p e from prisons abroad. You know that some of these platforms are either censored, point their content only outwardly toward the public, withhold pedagogical tools from confined residents, or erect self-serving award societies that prop up the content they grant-chase funding for—while not compensating their confined contributors, though they publicly claim to do so. You could have leaned into any of them. Why IPIPS, why Inside Knowledge?
Akbari: Harvard-Yale IPIPS is the definitive convener of interdisciplinary discourse concerning all things carceral, and Elizabeth Hinton has committed her institute to this very critical work. Inside Knowledge is not just about reporting on prisons, its a complete reimagining of how media is made, distributed, and used within the carceral state. The existing two-dimensional paradigm is flawed: there are those reporting on prison from the outside, for the public; and those reporting on prison from the inside, for the public. Nobody is actively curating media from within prison, in order to use it as medicine for those surviving prison. Few are innovatively bringing the academy responsibly to the cellblock. We’re talking about creating an infrastructure for confined people to access high-quality, life-affirming content, mentorship, curriculum, and civic literacy in forms that are designed for them, by them. IK will curate a community driven by free digital mentorship on an uncensored platform that rejects the extractive model and enables an internal media ecosystem that equips confined people with the tools and agency to become creators, scholars, and civically engaged members of their own communities.
Ghost: You belong to the Society of Professional Journalists, our Witness platform is affiliated with the Independent News Network, and the Edovo platform will put Inside Knowledge in the hands of over one million residents of the carceral state. What makes the IPIPS Carceral Studies Journalism Guild and its curriculum so critical in this moment?
Akbari: The CSJG started at Valley State Prison, a place that lacked a media program or media tools of any kind, and grew into a national movement supported by allies at top-tier institutions. The CSJG advisory community, arguably the most accomplished assemblage of volunteer scholars, creators, and organizers ever aligned in common cause to support a justice-impacted writing community, includes a diverse mix of editors from across the experiential landscape. The CSJG curriculum is a collaborative effort to codify our consensus approach to carceral media from the inside out, that can onboard skills on day one. Its not a toolkit for reporting, its a roadmap for reclaiming narrative agency, built from the ground up, with guidance rooted in both justice-impacted lived experience, and radical solidarity – provided by people like Wali, who I had the honor of meeting at San Quentin before his release. Its not about grant-chasing. Its grassroots. Its revolutionary. To be clear, storytelling in this context isn’t just about humanizing incarcerated people for the outside works—yes, that matters—but what matters more is elevating confined intellectuals and organizers to be recognized as colleagues, not just subjects. Through curriculum, research, and co-authored pedagogy, we’re positioning the incarcerated to become shapers of civic knowledge, not just participants in someone else’s framework. Ultimately, the objective is to normalize agency, facilitate empowerment, and democratize speech in all its forms, despite and across the carceral divide. IK is the engine, and the CSJG will help steer the direction of that futurity.
In California, where 38% of the adult prison population is deemed functionally illiterate owing to not having earned a high school diploma or GED, and more than half can’t read at the ninth grade level of comprehension, literacy has become a criminogenic public safety issue. On July 9, 2025, the Harvard-Yale IPIPS team, including Hinton, Guillaume, and Akbari will travel to Valley State Prison in California to present to youth offender residents the Inside Knowledge Carceral Studies Journalism Guild workshop—a filmed interactive journalism experience that will air on the IPIPS Inside Knowledge channel on Edovo.
