Word: taliaferro
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Keeping an editorial balance among publicity seekers, black culturalists, bonsai growers and softball teams complaining of favoritism is physically demanding. Taliaferro measures up to the job. "I'm 6 ft. 7 in. tall and weigh 200 lbs.," Taliaferro says. "I came out of other systems where you had to be tough." Readers and staff writers who disagree with the editor are sometimes - invited to the prison gym to put on boxing gloves. "I'm not afraid to fight for my opinion, be it ever so humble," the editor says. "And I'm not afraid to be locked in the hole...
Power in prison falls to those who gather it, and Taliaferro prefers to hire men who, like himself, were convicted of capital offenses and therefore face long prison terms. "Short-timers have an ax to grind. They never learn anything in here. They blame everyone else, and they just can't wait to get out and screw up again. Then they come back. I committed murder. Homicide. I put myself in here. I take that responsibility, and I will deal with that...
...Taliaferro illustrates the theory that serious crime makes a good prisoner. A former drug addict who killed his wife, he has become a productive citizen of the Stillwater prison. He has almost completed his bachelor's requirements, and hopes to become a college professor someday...
Hovering over his keyboard, Taliaferro cradles the telephone receiver just above the monogrammed RT on his black jersey. Like the capable editor of a small-town newspaper, Taliaferro has the reader by the pulse. He is a leader of his captive constituency: vice president of the Jaycees' Star of the North prison chapter, a leader of a black-culture group and a big editorial voice inside these walls. "I'm a black redneck," he says with a casual smile. If he were free, he'd have voted for George Bush for President even though he thought his candidate didn...
...Taliaferro wanted to capitalize on his prison term and invested his time in the Mirror, where he's made big changes. He dropped "Prison" from the masthead, gave the front page a USA Today look, and brought into the cellblocks a broader view of things, quoting frequently from such outside papers as the nearby St. Paul Pioneer Press & Dispatch...