Street News

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Street News was a street newspaper sold by homeless people in New York City. Established in 1989, it was founded and launched by Hutchinson Persons and Wendy Oxenhorn. This was the starting of the American street newspaper movement, and provided a way of self-sufficiency to the many homeless and unemployed people in New York. The starting price was $1 with 25 cents being used to maintain the business and 75 cents as profit for the vendors.

Contents

History

Street News began publication in October 1989, founded by its Editor-In-Chief, rock musician Hutchinson Persons, founder of Street Aid and Wendy Oxenhorn (then Koltun). [1] [2] [3] It was funded by individuals and Corporations like Cushman and Wakefield as well as selling advertising space in the paper. New York Times president Lance Primis joined the organization's Board of Advisors and gave special assistance.

Launching

It was launched with advertisements on subways and buses donated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the homeless salesforce promoted Street news, weeks after panhandling was declared illegal on the subways, but the vendors were allowed to sell the Street News in the surroundings of metro train areas. Former homeless man and crack addict Lee Stringer was first vendor and then editor and columnist for Street News. [4] He is now a writer and motivates young people to stay away from crime. [5] [6]

Growing business

The New York Times came out with the first article written by Sam Roberts which then garnered wide media attention. Sales grew very quickly from an initial 50,000 copies to over a million sold in its first four months of publication. Celebrities such as Paul Newman, Liza Minnelli and the Beach Boys contributed opinion pieces. [2] [7] It sold for 75 cents, with the sellers getting 45 cents (plus the first 10 copies free). [8]

Problems

Co-founder Wendy Oxenhorn left Street News after the first year as stated in a NY Times article over "philosophical differences on how to run the organization." The initial media and public excitement about the paper eventually faded, and the paper experienced financial troubles in the early 1990s. [2] [9] Some staff left and started the short-lived Crossroads Magazine. [10] In 1991, New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority instituted a policy prohibiting the hawking of newspapers on the subways and putting the vendors in jail while they were working in their best selling places; this added to Street News's troubles. [8]

Its printer, Sam Chen of Expedi Printing, became the new owner after Persons left the paper. [9] Chen attempted to turn a profit from Street News, but financial problems continued into the mid-nineties, with changing public attitude towards the homeless, low content and attempts by the city to sweep away homeless people. [5]

By the mid-1990s, Street News' sales had dropped significantly [11] and some predicted that the newspaper was going to end. [7] Janet Wickenhaver became its editor and associate publisher and revamped the dropping business changing the focus on celebrities to add more content on social issues, eventually, though, the paper survived and revitalized, [2] but never reached the circulation of the first few months.[ citation needed ]As of 2002, the editor was John Levi "Indio" Washington Jr. Street News prints 3,000 copies of six issues per year, sold by 15 people getting 75 cents out of the $1.25 price. [12] [13]

Cancellation

It has since ceased to exist. As of current time, Street News is no longer an active publication and New York City has no official street paper.

Legacy

The creation of Street News quickly inspired the founding of many other street newspapers, including Chicago's StreetWise [7] Boston's Spare Change News and the UK's The Big Issue ; [14] the paper has been called a "pioneer" for the street paper movement. [15] Street News and The Big Issue have become prototypes of street papers worldwide. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>The Big Issue</i> Street newspaper that supports homeless people

The Big Issue is a United Kingdom-based street newspaper founded by John Bird and Gordon Roddick in September 1991 and published in four continents. The Big Issue is one of the UK's leading social businesses and exists to offer homeless people, or individuals at risk of homelessness, the opportunity to earn a legitimate income, thereby helping them to reintegrate into mainstream society. It is the world's most widely circulated street newspaper.

<i>Real Change</i> Newspaper in Seattle, Washington

Real Change is a weekly progressive street newspaper based in Seattle, Washington, USA written by professional staff and sold by self-employed vendors, many of whom are homeless. The paper provides them with an alternative to panhandling and covers a variety of social justice issues, including homelessness and poverty. It became weekly in 2005, making it the second American street newspaper ever to be published weekly. Real Change is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with an annual budget of $950,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Street newspaper</span> Newspaper sold by the homeless or poor

Street newspapers are newspapers or magazines sold by homeless or poor individuals and produced mainly to support these populations. Most such newspapers primarily provide coverage about homelessness and poverty-related issues, and seek to strengthen social networks within homeless communities. Street papers aim to give these individuals both employment opportunities and a voice in their community. In addition to being sold by homeless individuals, many of these papers are partially produced and written by them.

<i>StreetWise</i> Street magazine

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Penny press newspapers were cheap, tabloid-style newspapers mass-produced in the United States from the 1830s onwards. Mass production of inexpensive newspapers became possible following the shift from hand-crafted to steam-powered printing. Famous for costing one cent while other newspapers cost around six cents, penny press papers were revolutionary in making the news accessible to middle class citizens for a reasonable price.

<i>Spare Change News</i> Street newspaper for the Greater Boston Area

Spare Change News (SCN) is a street newspaper founded in 1992 in Boston, Massachusetts for the Greater Boston Area and published out of the editorial offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts through the efforts of the Homeless Empowerment Project (HEP), a grassroots organization created to help end homelessness.

<i>Street Sheet</i> San Francisco newspaper

The Street Sheet is a street newspaper published and sold in San Francisco, California which focuses on the problems of homeless people in the city, and on issues of poverty and housing. Founded in 1989, the Street Sheet is second only to the Street News as the oldest extant street newspaper in the United States and currently has the largest circulation of a street newspaper with 32,000 papers distributed monthly.

<i>Street Sense</i> (newspaper) Street newspaper in Washington, D.C.

Street Sense is a weekly street newspaper sold by self-employed homeless distributors ("vendors") on the streets of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It is published by the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Street Sense Media, which also produces documentary filmmaking, photography, theatre, illustration and poetry. The organization says this media, most of which is created by homeless and formerly homeless people, is designed to break down stereotypes and educate the community.

<i>Street Roots</i> Homeless advocacy group and newspaper in Portland, Oregon, United States

Street Roots is a Portland, Oregon, United States–based homeless advocacy group and a weekly alternative newspaper that covers homeless issues. The newsprint is sold by and for the homeless in Portland. The paper is published every week and sold through vendors who are currently or formerly homeless. The paper's editorial position is homeless advocacy. Vendors purchase the paper for 25 cents and sell them for $1 and keep the difference of 75 cents. The paper features alternative news, interviews, and poetry written by local journalists as well as the homeless and those who work with them.

<i>Hobo News</i>

Hobo News, alternately "Hobo" News, was an early 20th-century newspaper for homeless migrant workers (hobos). It was published in St. Louis, Missouri, and Cincinnati by the International Brotherhood Welfare Association (IBWA) and its founder James Eads How. Hobo News was important for legitimatizing the hobo identity and has been credited as a predecessor to the modern street newspaper movement.

The Homeless Grapevine was a street newspaper sold by homeless in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was published by the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless (NEOCH) from 1992 to 2009. Vendors bought the paper for 25 cents per copy and sell them for 1 dollar. The papers attempted to be a voice for the homeless and content was entirely dedicated to homeless issues, much of it written by current or former homeless. It was a monthly magazine of 16 pages and as of 2004 had a circulation of 5,000 copies sold by 15–20 vendors. Sellers were often at The West Side Market, Public Square, E. 9th St., East 12th and Coventry.

<i>Quicksilver Times</i>

Quicksilver Times was an antiwar, counterculture underground newspaper published in Washington, DC from 1969 to 1972. Terry Becker Jr., a former college newspaper editor and reporter for the Newhouse News Service, was the main instigator in the founding group of antiwar activists.

<i>The Big Issue Malawi</i> Magazine sold by the homeless in Malawi

The Big Issue Malawi is a street paper in Malawi. It is a bimonthly magazine sold only by homeless individuals. The project's facilitator is a local charity known as the "Culture Awakening Society"

<i>The Contributor</i> (street paper)

The Contributor is a bi-weekly street newspaper published in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. The publication's content focuses on primarily social justice issues as they are framed by politics, music, art, culture, sports, homelessness and poverty. It is written by local journalists as well as people experiencing homelessness or working within the homeless community. The magazine's editors are Amanda Haggard and Linda Bailey.

Word On The Street was a street newspaper in Baltimore, Maryland.

<i>The Bridge</i> (newspaper)

The Bridge is an American street newspaper that aims to give people who are currently or formerly homeless an opportunity for self-expression and sustainable income. The Bridge trains and certifies people with experiences of homelessness to be independently contracted vendors of the paper. They purchase each paper for 25 cents and sell it on the street for one dollar, keeping 100% of the profit.

Wendy Oxenhorn a.k.a. "The Barefoot Baroness," is the founding director and vice chairman of the Jazz Foundation of America, co-founder of Street News, a Reverend, a blues harmonica player and an NEA Jazz Master.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newspaper hawker</span> Street vendor of newspapers

A newspaper hawker, newsboy or newsie is a street vendor of newspapers without a fixed newsstand. Related jobs included paperboy, delivering newspapers to subscribers, and news butcher, selling papers on trains. Adults who sold newspapers from fixed newsstands were called newsdealers, and are not covered here. The hawkers sold only one newspaper, which usually appeared in several editions a day. A busy corner would have several hawkers, each representing one of the major newspapers. They might carry a poster board with giant headlines, provided by the newspaper. The downtown newsboy started fading out after 1920 when publishers began to emphasize home delivery. Teenage newsboys delivered papers on a daily basis for subscribers who paid them monthly. Hawkers typically purchased a bundle of 100 copies from a wholesaler, who in turn purchased them from the publisher. Legally every state considered the newsboys to be independent contractors, and not employees, so they generally were not subject to child labor laws.

The Big Issue in Australia is a street newspaper which began in 1996. The Australian edition of the paper is a project of the UK-based The Big Issue. The first magazine was launched in Australia on the steps of Melbourne’s Flinders Street railway station on 16 June 1996.

References

  1. ↑ Brown, Ann M. (2002). "Small Papers, Big Issues". Ryerson Review of Journalism . Archived from the original on September 11, 2007. Retrieved 12 February 2009.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Heinz, Teresa L.; Levinson, David (2004). Encyclopedia of Homelessness (illustrated ed.). SAGE. p. 539. ISBN   0-7619-2751-4 . Retrieved 2009-02-12.
  3. ↑ Although Portland, Oregon's Homeless Times was founded before it, Street News is the earliest-published paper that is still active (North American Street Newspaper Association 2008). The first volume of Homeless Times was published as early as 1986 ( "Guide to the Housing and Feeding the Homeless Program, 1981-2000". Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 2005. Retrieved 25 February 2009.).
  4. ↑ Stringer, Lee, Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street, 1st ed., New York : Seven Stories Press, 1998. ISBN   1-888363-57-6. Cf. Chapter 6, "West Forty-sixth Street, Winter 1989" which is about his experiences with Street News. "We all had money to burn. Street News was sweet news. We bought the papers for a quarter each, sold them for seventy five cents. Three bucks for every dollar invested. The papers flew out of our hands, for all over the city the streets were filled with homelessness and compassion. Even a mindless schnook can take home sixty dollars a day. For those of us with demons to feed, the easy money rendered thoughts of larceny obsolete, and for those who only suffered from cruel circumstance, it was a chance once again to dare to flirt with dreams."
  5. 1 2 Swithinbank, Tessa (2001). Coming Up from the Streets: The Story of The Big Issue. Earthscan. pp. 21–33. ISBN   1-85383-544-7 . Retrieved 2009-03-11.
  6. ↑ Silberstein, Judy (2006-02-16). "Mamk's Lee Stringer Gives "Internal View" of a Difficult Life". Larchmont Gazette . Retrieved 2009-03-13.
  7. 1 2 3 Green, Norma Fay (1998). "Chicago's StreetWise at the Crossroads: A Case Study of a Newspaper to Empower the Homeless in the 1990s". Print Culture in a Diverse America. eds. James Philip Danky, Wayne A. Wiegand. University of Illinois Press. pp. 34–49. ISBN   0-252-06699-5 . Retrieved 2009-03-11.
  8. 1 2 Harper, Phillip Brian (1999). Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations. NYU Press. p. 105. ISBN   0-8147-3594-0 . Retrieved 2009-03-11.
  9. 1 2 Howley, Kevin (2005). Community Media: People, Places, and Communication Technologies. Cambridge University Press. pp. 65–66. ISBN   0-521-79228-2 . Retrieved 2009-03-11.
  10. ↑ Green, Norma (August–September 1999). "With a Name Like Stringer, He was Born to Write..." The Homeless Grapevine, Issue #37. Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. Retrieved 2009-03-20.
  11. ↑ Barron, James (21 December 1994). "Street News, Sold by Poor, Falls on Hard Times Itself". The New York Times.
  12. ↑ Fried, Joseph P. (2002-12-08). "Following Up". The New York Times. pp. section 1 page 57 of the New York edition. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
  13. ↑ Rosenbaum, Andrew (2003-02-10). "The News from the Street". Time Magazine. Archived from the original on December 9, 2004. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
  14. ↑ "The Big Issue History". The Big Issue. Archived from the original on 1 March 2009. Retrieved 13 January 2009.
  15. ↑ Magnusson, Jan A. "The transnational street paper movement". Situation Sthlm . Archived from the original on 29 June 2006. Retrieved 12 February 2009.
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