by Shawn Powell, Prison Journalism Project
October 23, 2025
Incarcerated students earning journalism degrees through San Diego State University’s Vista program are sounding the alarm: They’re not being given the same educational tools or opportunities as their peers on campus.
Journalism students on the SDSU campus benefit from industry-standard tools like cameras, microphones and Adobe Creative applications. But prison Vista students, of which I am one, are limited to restricted, camera-disabled laptops with only Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Publisher, an app for creating newsletter layouts.
This gap undermines the program’s promise of hands-on learning and leaves incarcerated students unprepared for industry expectations in the job market.
At Centinela State Prison, where I’m incarcerated, SDSU launched its bachelor’s degree program in journalism and media studies in fall 2023. The two-year Vista program is designed to offer hands-on, experiential learning, culminating in a capstone project such as a publication, radio program or other media project.
But students say the lack of equipment, including cameras, audio recorders and robust editing software, makes it nearly impossible to complete these projects and fully engage with the coursework.
Moises Flores, a student in the first Vista cohort that started in fall 2023, said lacking technology hampered the learning experience.
“Capstone projects such as podcast creation, documentary, short film and radio program were not available to us due to the restraints,” Flores said.
“Whoever is in charge is doing us an injustice,” Vista student Blaze Lopez said. “We are taking a digital media class, which should teach us how to use all this technology that is not available to us. If I go to get a job and I have a bachelor’s degree, employers are going to expect me to know how to use these programs and technology. Anyone else who holds a degree in this field is going to be familiar with these concepts, so whom do you think they are going to hire? Not having hands-on experience will make it harder to get hired.”
SDSU journalism professor Austin Brumblay, who teaches digital media principles and design, says on-campus students typically use cellphones to shoot short-form videos ranging from 30 seconds to two minutes and have the benefit of software programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Premiere Pro to name a few.
According to Brumblay, not having access to these programs “is a disservice to students” that hinders their learning.
According to an article in Learning to Do It All, a periodical for the American Journalism Review, “employers expect students coming out of college to know the basics of video, audio and web coding at a minimum and are expected to be well-versed in mobile journalism and social media.”
In the same article, Chris Harvey, a former digital editor at The Washington Post and now director of the Graduate Multimedia Certificate Program at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, adds that even if you are a print reporter you should be able to take headshots or collect 30 seconds of video as a baseline.
Other prison journalism programs in California, such as those at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, Mule Creek State Prison and Lancaster State Prison, provide media equipment and support for in-house publications, including newspapers and podcasts.
Vista students are left questioning why they’re held to the same academic standards without access to similar resources.
Brumblay told me he believes this is due to security issues; all equipment must be approved by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Through written correspondence, the public information officer at Centinela State Prison told me that the lack of equipment isn’t due to security restrictions, but instead is due to the fact that this equipment needs to be introduced and approved through the proper channels.
Brumblay has offered to bring equipment for us, but that has not worked out. I’ve tried to get answers from higher-ups within the Vista program but have been unsuccessful.
Arthur Santana, an academic advisor to SDSU’s School of Journalism and the Vista program, said these challenges could turn out to be helpful adversity for students.
“At the end of the day, I think that — despite our limitations to equipment — we are still successfully accomplishing our learning tasks at each class,” Santana said. “It’d be nice if you have the same equipment and technology as students on campus, but the reality is that it’s simply not possible, and we all must accept this. This actually turns out to be a good journalistic lesson in adapting; any good reporter will take the situation at hand and make the best of it, even [if] it means working just with a pencil and paper, which I have done.”
The first Vista cohort graduated in May without having the educational benefit of learning how to use technological tools of their craft. The second cohort will graduate next year — most likely with the same outcome.
For students like Gabriel Madrigal, these bureaucratic delays carry real consequences.
“Not being able to use proper equipment required in the field of journalism creates a discrepancy between incarcerated students and those on campus,” Madrigal said. “Although I am grateful for my education, a major downside is that I will not know how to use the equipment I am expected to know how to use.”
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