The manager wrote up a damning report anyway.
In retrospect Keilin says she should have known. But she was so busy in her multiple roles at the agency that she was simply unprepared when her boss, Art Mosley, stepped into her office on February 8 and gently announced The Echo was dead. For security reasons. He cited concerns in the wake of the Connally escape. The paper would reopen when an appropriate location was found, Mosley assured.
Prison scribe: Renaud has refined his craft
during three stints in the pen.
Prison scribe: Renaud has refined his craft during three stints in the pen.
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But Keilin was done.
"It's very, very clear that you don't like the direction I've taken the paper in," she recalls telling him.
Weeks later, Keilin left the TDCJ to take a job at the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. She says the timing was coincidental, that she had wanted to move to Austin for a long time.
As for Renaud and his colleagues, they were shipped off to other units and given temporary new jobs -- washing dishes.
TDCJ officials last month announced the resurrection of The Echo, promising a decidedly less ornery animal. The paper would have a new home, a different staff, a new supervisor and a retooled purpose. The picture that emerged was of a reformed rebel, a hell-raiser like Randle Patrick McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, after a final round of electroshocks.
A pair of twentysomethings with little journalism experience would now deliver the Texas prison news. One was David Graham, the former Air Force cadet who murdered a 16-year-old girl at the urging of his jealous fiancée, in a case that became TV movie fodder. Graham is serving a life sentence. He was to share editing responsibilities with Clifford Barnes, who is doing 12 years for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Harris County.
The paper, which has moved to the Wynne Unit in Huntsville, now falls under the umbrella of the Windham School District, the educational system for convicts. TDCJ spokesman Castlebury says that making the district responsible for The Echo sends a powerful message.
"That message is one of rehabilitation and education, because that is what Windham is exclusively devoted to," he says.
"Censorship" is the word that pops into Ray Hill's head. The radio host explains that under a Supreme Court ruling, school administrators have sweeping powers to censor student publications. Those powers go well beyond what a prison can do to an inmate newspaper, he says.
"They moved [The Echo] physically into the Windham School District shelter because they're sitting on this Supreme Court case," Hill says. Hargrove seconds that argument. In a letter to the Press, the former editor says he was invited to work on the new Echo but politely declined, fearing it would become a "highly censored…vehicle for promoting [Windham's] academic and vocational programs."
The paper's new supervisor, Leigh-Anne Gideon, promises to lead The Echo in a kinder, gentler direction. Gideon, a former reporter for The Huntsville Item whose father worked for TDCJ, declined comment to the Press.But Lisa Trow, Renaud's ex-wife and Gideon's former editor at The Item, calls her very much "a child of that system."
"Will she represent the wishes of TDCJ's administration? Yes," Trow says.
With the overhaul, TDCJ officials have had to amend their original claims that The Echo was shut down because of concerns over the security of the old office site. Spokesman Larry Todd says that the previous staff relied too heavily on feel-good materials lifted from other newspapers.
"Knowledge is very important to an inmate just like somebody on the street. Maybe more so," he says. "Little warm and fuzzies cut out of a paper and put in there -- we didn't think that was appropriate."
The spokesman makes little effort to defend that argument when it is pointed out that the stories of the past year were mostly staff written, and not particularly warm or fuzzy. "I'm not going to discuss the reasons [staff members] were changed. There's no need to go into that," he responds.
Following the February closure, the ACLU of Texas threatened to sue the TDCJ for violating prisoners' First Amendment rights. But the agency effectively shielded itself when it revived the inmate publication, even under new staff, says the ACLU's Harrell. Prison jobs are privileges, not rights.
But for Harrell, there is little doubt why the agency pulled the plug.
"They got too effective," he says. "They were too good at what they were doing."
This year, David Hargrove took top prize in the prestigious PEN Prison Writing Awards for a story he wrote about the 1998 execution of Karla Faye Tucker. Renaud won awards in poetry and fiction. He also was honored in nonfiction for his article about the March 2000 TDCJ lockdown.
"It doesn't matter how good Jorge was," Castlebury says. "If the [TDCJ] deemed that David Graham, in supervision by Windham in location at Wynne, serves a greater benefit than the distinguished work of Jorge at the Walls Unit, then the agency was wise to go with that which was an even greater benefit."
The TDCJ may indeed have reaped great benefits with Graham at The Echo. No one will ever know for sure. Before a single issue appeared, agency officials yanked the ex-cadet from the paper this month, citing his notoriety and his long sentence.
They have yet to announce a replacement.
