Word: rideau
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...Whitley sounds like the hero of a Frank Capra movie. He is open-minded, impartial, considerate. In a closed society where everyone constantly scrutinizes everyone else, he merits the highest compliment: he is straight up. "With Whitley, what you see is what you get," says veteran inmate Wilbert Rideau, who edits the prison's hard- hitting magazine, the Angolite. "He's the best warden we've ever had." Whitley earns praise even from those who know he may preside over their execution. "The warden's pretty cool people," says Curtis Kyles, one of 35 inmates on death row. "He sees...
Editor Wilbert Rideau and Associate Editor Billy Sinclair cannot afford to play fast and loose with the facts. For one thing, they have to live close to their readers. For another, their readers include murderers, rapists, armed robbers and other criminals with a history of violent overreaction when provoked. Explains Rideau: "You're in a world where everybody plays for keeps...
Their world is the sprawling 4,100-inmate Louisiana state prison complex in Angola, 35 miles northwest of Baton Rouge. Their voice is the Angolite, the most probing and literate inmate publication in the U.S. Last week Rideau, 38, and Sinclair, 35, both convicted murderers serving life terms, won a prestigious George Polk Award for special-interest reporting. One article cited was Rideau's chilling account of homosexual rape and subjugation behind bars. Another story submitted to the Polk judges was an investigative report by Sinclair raising the possibility of misfeasance in the murder of a prisoner five years...
...Angolite is not a reflexive advocate. Not long ago, for example, the magazine raised inmate ire by publishing an editorial criticizing a prison-reform advocate. An associate warden reads the magazine before it goes to press, but mainly for journalistic quality. Not a single story has been killed in Rideau's four years as editor...
Neither editor made it past the ninth grade. "I'm black and urban," says Rideau. "Billy's cowboy and conservative." Rideau has written articles for national publications and is under contract to write a book upon his release. His sidekick has won tentative acceptance to law school and hopes to be a legal investigator some day. For the time being they will remain jailhouse journalists; both recently lost bids for clemency. Says Rideau: "We are sitting on a mountain of stories...