Two Open Campus reporters won a first-place prize from the Colorado chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists.
Charlotte West, our staff reporter covering higher ed in prisons, and Jason Gonzales, our reporter at Chalkbeat Colorado, were recognized in the Top of the Rockies feature-writing category for their January 2024 profile of David Carrillo.
At the time, Carrillo held a rare role: he was an incarcerated professor teaching incarcerated students. Carrillo received clemency from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis shortly before the story was published.
Top of the Rockies is a regional journalism contest presented by the Colorado Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, honoring news outlets and reporters from Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico. In all, the contest received more than 1,850 entries.
Gonzales is a member of Open Campus’s Local Network, a group of 17 newsrooms where Open Campus has helped put reporters full-time on the higher-ed beat. Reporters in the Local Network are employed at their local newsroom and supported by our team of subject-matter expert editors who provide essential story coaching, editing, and coverage planning.
“The key to this story’s success was combining my subject matter expertise in prison education with Jason’s local knowledge of higher education in Colorado,” West said.
Gonzales and West — who writes College Inside, a newsletter about higher education in prisons — collaborated on the story for several months. Gonzales visited Carrillo’s class and told the story of how he connects with his students. “To be able to help these guys realize that they are capable of doing so much more — that’s a reward right there,” Carrillo said at the time.
The story garnered state and national attention, and was Chalkbeat Colorado’s most highly read higher-ed story of the year. Following the story’s publication, several prison education programs ended up contacting Adams State in the hopes of replicating the teaching model.
Gonzales and West continued their reporting partnership to follow Carrillo’s time after exiting prison. Chalkbeat Colorado and Open Campus also reported on the first bachelor’s program at a Colorado women’s prison, where Serena Ahmad followed in Cariillo’s footsteps to become the first incarcerated woman in the U.S. to teach as an adjunct professor.
About Open Campus
Open Campus is a nonprofit news organization that ensures communities have the independent information they need about higher ed. By placing expert reporters in local newsrooms across the country, we help people understand and influence the institutions that shape their future opportunities.