Holdup or Holdout

Louisiana State penitentiary inmates produce an award-winning publication.

By Elizabeth Conlin | 
 

Publishers Wilbert Rideau and Ron Wikberg are under the gun to find new investors. But the plot is a little thicker than your average company-needs-money adventure.

For starters, Rideau and Wikberg are serving time at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, both for murder. Their behind-bars business is an award-winning magazine, The Angolite. Exposing everything from criminal justice cover-ups to unsafe health standards, the magazine reaches beyond the barbed wire to paid subscribers across the country and abroad.

But the magazine's future became shaky when its major capital source, the Inmate Welfare Fund, dried up. Angolite reporters allege that state officials indulged in their own brand of thievery -- dipping into private prisoner monies to pay state expenses. Rideau and Wikberg expect to begin the hunt for "outside" investors soon.

-- Elizabeth Conlin

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