presshappenings

PRESS HAPPENINGS

Some of the "press" we have been getting on the site.

Contact our office... If you see PrisonPenPals in any magazine, paper or television media. We would appreciate it if you would email us the event or article.

We have been getting so much press, it is next to impossible to keep up with. Our first priority is getting prisoners mail, and posting their ads. Please forgive us for not putting on EVERY bit of press about our site.

We appreciate all the stories (good and bad) that are ran by the newspapers all around the world. We can not list all of them here and we are sorry for that! There have been dozens of articles that people have clipped and sent us and we enjoy reading all of them.

It always amazes us that no one really looks for the good in a story or the positive. It is so easy to label prisoners as "bad" that we suppose it would be a shock to the public to know that there are prisoners that are innocent, sorry, helping others, encouraging fellow inmates, supporting their family with art and so many more good things!

We CHALLENGE a person from the PRESS to do a POSITIVE story about PrisonPenPals or prisoners!

Cosmopolitan

November 2000 - Great article about writing prisoners (and of course they list the bad stuff first) but an overall good article. Well worth reading and some direct quotes from the founder of PrisonPenPals.

MSNBC's "Homepage" Television Show

August 2000 - PrisonPenPals founder was filmed at NBC's studio in NYC. The segment was a pro and con issue on whether or not prisoners should be allowed to post pen pal ads on the Internet.

The New York Times

By George Robinson - March 25, 1999 - An insightful article that dealt with our site as well as two other sites. Very well written you can find it in the New York Times archives at New York Times.

We appreciate articles like this because they can open so many doors for our prisoners. Bringing new viewers to the site has unlimited pen pal potential!

The Press of Atlantic City

By W.F. Keough - March 2, 1999 - An article about a person who knows someone on the site who had murdered her mother. The article talks about the site and the person being upset by our presence on the Internet.

Very well written, and we highly recommend reading this article. It is important for everyone who feels strongly about freedom of speech.

Town Meeting on KOMO TV

Seattle Washington USA - Aired February 28, 1999 - This was perhaps the best show we have ever been on! It was very informative, many varied opinions, and even two of our prisoners got to be on the show by phone.

The big issue against the site seemed to be that the crime the prisoner was incarcerated for was not posted in their ad. We are considering adding that feature to the site as a result of the show.

I encourage everyone out there to contact the television station and see if they can get a copy of the show if it was not available for viewing in your area. It was most informative, well ran, and wonderfully hosted. It was also the 700th episode of the show, and we congratulate them on a job VERY well done!

The Ricki Lake Show

We went to New York City on September 9, 1998 for a taping of a show that will air about 3 weeks from that date. The show involved women who write to prisoners, and even had a live satellite hook up from a prisoner who is involved with one of the women on the panel.

The women who were writing to prisoners were all positive, beautiful women with true caring hearts, and although some of their family members did not agree with what they were doing, I think you will agree when you watch the show that the women are all doing the right thing.

Time prevented us from being able to make the comments that we would have liked to, but they are doing a follow up show and we will hopefully be able to participate in it.

Watch for our url, PrisonPenPals.com to pop up on the "DID YOU KNOW..." features. Hopefully it will direct thousands of people to the web site, and they will write to a prisoner!

We would like to say a big thank you to Alyssa, Gladys and to Ricki Lake for the show. They were so wonderful! We really appreciated everything that they did for us.

St. Petersburg Times

August 17, 1998 - A great article by Mr. William R. Levesque that featured a lot of the prisoners on our site, and best of all listed our url, PrisonPenPals.com that led a lot of new users to our site! Thank you Mr. Levesque for doing such wonderful writing and reporting.

The Record - Bergen Newspaper

Wednesday, March 18, 1998 - There was a wonderful article in which one of our prisoners actually was interviewed by reporters and his story of success on our site was told. This paper also has an on-line addition and we are working with their copyright office to try to get permission to post the article here for you to read! It was really great and some positive things have came from it. Prisoners that were featured in the article tell us about a rise in letters, as well as visitors to the site that week were really on the rise. We thank this great paper for doing such a terrific job.

DO YOU KNOW???

It has been reported to our office by visitors and prisoners that they saw articles about us in the following magazines. We did not run ads in these magazines, so we are hoping that they did stories about our site. We have contacted the magazines and are waiting for a reply, perhaps you have read the article, or still have it and can forward it to us. The magazines reported were, "Vibe" and "Rolling Stone". We appreciate any information you can provide our office with.

Houston Chronicle - Sunday Edition

January 1998 -Business Section/Computer Article - Houston Texas - Readers were pointed in our direction when searching for a pen pal in prison.

105.7 The Edge - Radio Talk Show Topic

The program topic was "Should Prisoners Be Allowed To Have Ads On The Internet?" The show lasted three hours, and the question was proposed to the public. The callers were overwhelmingly in favor of the prisoners being able to write to people they met though the Internet ads they placed. Many said that they knew a person in prison, and one female caller even announced that she had met someone in prison and was writing to him. There were several callers that felt it was a bad idea, and was exposing the public to the criminal element. The evening was filled with interesting comments, wild responses and some heartfelt calls.

Croatic Local Students Newspaper

Article on prison inmate communication.

Bennetton Colors Magazine

December 1997 issue had an article in it about nice things to do for the holidays, and one was to write an inmate! They listed our URL address.

UK Publication "Escape Magazine"

Feature presentation dealing with prison culture on-line.

MEDIA EVENT - Television show "TV.COM"

This national television show, which deals with exciting things on the Internet, aired an episode featuring Prison Pen Pals.com the third week of February, 1998.

HAVE YOU SEEN OUR URL OUT THERE?

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