Established 2023
Eastern Echo is very different from the earlier four-page newletters published at Eastern State Penitentiary.
Printed on modern equipment, it was a color magazine written, edited, and designed by incarcerated men for national circulation.
Because it was written for a national audience, including those untouched by the prison system, it includes a wide range of articles.
Not only prison news but crossword puzzles, book reviews, poems, and longer essays on topics like rehabilitation and vocational training appear in its pages. Scholars outside the prison, like Dr. Negley K. Teeters, sometimes published essays in Eastern Echo as well. Many essays attempt to share with a general audience what the experience of incarceration is like. Incarcerated people designed and produced the art for each issue.
Eastern Echo was printed on modern equipment. An article in the Fall 1966 issue shows images of linotype machines, cylinder and platen presses, offset duplicators, and workshops for binding and cutting paper. Each issue was cleverly designed so that pages printed with a color illustration were conjugate. Many issues reproduce photographs.
