right|250px|thumb|A street newspaper vendor, selling [[Street Sheet, in San Francisco]]
Street newspapers (or street papers) 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.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries several publications by charity, religious, and labor organizations tried to draw attention to the homeless, but street newspapers only became common after the founding of New York City's Street News in 1989. Similar papers are now published in over 30 countries, with most located in the United States and Western Europe. They are supported by governments, charities, and coalitions such as the International Network of Street Papers and the North American Street Newspaper Association. Although street newspapers have multiplied, many still face challenges, including funding shortages, unreliable staff and difficulty in generating interest and maintaining an audience.
Street newspapers are sold mainly by homeless individuals, but the newspapers vary in how much content is submitted by them and how much of the coverage pertains to them: while some papers are written and published mainly by homeless contributors, others have a professional staff and attempt to emulate mainstream publications. These differences have caused controversy among street newspaper publishers over what type of material should be covered and to what extent the homeless should participate in writing and production. One popular street newspaper, The Big Issue, has been a focus of this controversy because it concentrates on attracting a large readership through coverage of mainstream issues and popular culture, whereas other newspapers emphasize homeless advocacy and social issues and earn less of a profit.
History
Historical foundations
thumb|An early [[Hobo News front page]]
Although the modern street newspaper began with the 1989 publication of Street News in New York City, and the Street Sheet in San Francisco, 1989, newspapers sold by the poor and homeless to generate income and to bring attention to social problems date back to the late 19th century; journalism scholar Norma Fay Green has cited The War Cry, created by the Salvation Army in London in 1879, as an early form of "dissident, underground, alternative publication". The War Cry was sold by Salvation Army officers and the working poor to draw people's attention to the poor living conditions of these individuals. Another precursor to the modern street newspaper was Cincinnati's and featured writing from prominent labor and social activists as well as Industrial Workers of the World members, alongside contributions of oral history, creative writing, and artwork from hoboes, or itinerant beggars. Most street papers published before 1970, such as The Catholic Worker (founded in 1933 Like workers' papers and other forms of alternative media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, early street newspapers were often created because the founders believed mainstream news did not cover issues that were relevant to ordinary people.
Modern street newspapers
Modern street newspapers began to emerge in the United States in the late 1980s in response to increasing levels of homelessness and homeless advocates' dissatisfaction with the mainstream media's portrayals of the homeless. At the time, many media outlets portrayed homeless people as being all criminals and drug addicts, and suggested that homelessness was a result of laziness rather than societal or political factors. Thus, one motivation for the creation of the first street newspapers was to counter the negative coverage of homeless people that was coming from existing media.
Street News, founded in late 1989 in New York City, is frequently cited as the first modern street newspaper. Many more street papers were launched in the early 1990s, crediting the high-profile New York paper as their inspiration, such as Spare Change News in Boston founded in 1992. During this period, an average of five new papers were created every year. sprung up in over 30 countries. By 2008, an estimated 32 million people worldwide read street newspapers, and 250,000 poor, disadvantaged, or homeless individuals sold or contributed to them. mainly in the United States and Western Europe. Street papers have been established in some cities in Canada, Africa, South America, and Asia. Even within the United States, some street newspapers (such as Chicago's bilingual Hasta Cuando) are published in languages other than English.
In the mid-1990s, coalitions were established to strengthen the street newspaper movement. The International Network of Street Papers (INSP) (founded in 1994) and the North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) (founded in 1997) aim to provide support for street papers and to "uphold ethical standards". In particular, the INSP was established to help groups that were starting new street newspapers, to bring more mainstream media attention to the street newspaper movement during the 1990s, and to support interaction and cross-talk between street paper publishers and staff from different countries. The INSP and the NASNA voted to combine their resources in 2006; they have collaborated to found the Street News Service, a project which collects articles from member papers and archives them on the internet.
Description
right|thumb|A vendor for [[StreetWise in Chicago]]
thumb|[[Faktum is a Swedish street paper.]]
Most street newspapers have three main purposes:
- To provide income and job skills to the homeless and other marginalized individuals, who act as vendors of and often contributors to the newspapers
- To provide coverage of, and to educate the general public about, issues pertaining to homelessness and poverty
- To establish social networks within homeless communities and between homeless individuals and service providers
The defining characteristic of a street newspaper is that it is sold by homeless or marginalized vendors. While many street newspapers aim to provide coverage of social issues and educate the public about homelessness, this goal is often secondary: many people who buy street newspapers do so to support and express solidarity with the homeless vendor, rather than to read the paper.
Operations and business
Most street newspapers operate by selling the papers to homeless vendors for a fraction of the retail price (usually between 10% and 50%), after which the vendors sell the papers for the retail price and retain all the proceeds from street sales. The income vendors earn from sales is intended to help them "get back on their feet". Vendors for most newspapers are identifiable by badges or messenger bags. or otherwise "clean up their act". Nevertheless, not all vendors are homeless; some have stable housing situations but are unable to hold other jobs, while others started out homeless but were eventually able to use their income from sales to find housing. In general, the major American street newspapers do not require prospective vendors to show proof of homelessness or poverty, and they do not require vendors to retire once they find stable housing. In the United States, during and after the Great Recession, there were many vendors who became "newly needy"—only recently homeless, or with only temporary financial difficulty—as opposed to the "chronically homeless" who have traditionally made up the majority of the vendor force. These vendors are often well-educated and have extensive work experience, but lost their jobs.
Street papers start in a variety of ways. Some, such as Street Sense, and coalitions such as the International Network of Street Papers and the North American Street Newspaper Association provide workshops and support for new street papers. For most papers, the majority of revenue comes from sales, donations, and government grants, while some receive advertising revenue from local businesses.
Specific business models for street newspapers vary widely, ranging from vendor-managed papers that place the highest value upon homeless empowerment and involvement to highly professionalized and commercialized weeklies. There are papers that are very successful, such as the UK-based The Big Issue, which in 2001 sold nearly 300,000 copies a week and earned the equivalent of 1 millionUSD in profits, but many papers sell as few as 3,000 copies a month and barely generate a profit at all for the publishers. Many feature contributions from the homeless and the poor in addition to articles by activists and community organizers, For example, the first edition of Washington, D.C.'s Street Sense included a description of a prominent homeless community, an interview with a congresswoman, an editorial about the costs and benefits of taking a job, several poems about homelessness, a how-to column, and a section for recipes. much of this content was submitted by the homeless. The writing style is often simple and clear; social scientist Kevin Howley describes street newspapers as having a "native eloquence".
According to Howley, street newspapers are similar to citizen journalism in that both are a response to the perceived shortcomings of the mainstream media and both encourage involvement by non-professionals. A major difference between the two, however, is that the citizen journalism movement does not necessarily advocate a particular position, whereas street newspapers openly advocate for the homeless and poor.
Unlike most street newspapers, the UK-based The Big Issue focuses mostly on celebrity news and interviews, rather than coverage of homelessness and poverty. Many offer additional programs to vendors, such as job training, housing placement assistance, and referral to other direct services. Others operate as a program of a larger social services organization—for instance, Chicago's StreetWise can refer vendors to providers of "drug and alcohol treatment, high school equivalency classes, career counseling, and permanent housing". Furthermore, many of the more activist papers fail to sell well because their writing and production are perceived to be unprofessional and lackluster. Topics covered are sometimes seen as lacking newsworthy content, and of little relevance or interest to the general public or the homeless community. Organizations in Montreal Some newspapers sell well but may not be widely read, as many people will donate to vendors without buying, or buy the newspaper and then throw it away. Howley has described readers' hesitance or unwillingness to read the papers as "compassion fatigue".
Other difficulties street newspapers face include high turnover of "transient" or unreliable staff, lack of adequate funding, lack of journalistic freedom for papers that are funded by local government, and, among some demographics, lack of interest in homeless issues. For example, journalism professor Jim Cunningham has attributed the difficulties in selling Calgary's Calgary Street Talk to the fact that the mostly middle-class, conservative population has "not enough sensitivity to the causes of homelessness". On one side of the debate are papers that seek to function like a business and generate a profit and a wide readership in order to benefit the homeless in a practical way; on the other are papers that seek to provide a "voice" to the homeless and poor without watering down their message for a broad readership. The Big Issue is mostly a tabloid covering celebrity news; while it is sold by the homeless and generates a profit that is used to benefit the homeless, the content is not written by them and there is little coverage of social issues that are relevant to them. The reaction to The Big Issue raised what is now an ongoing conflict between commercialized, professional papers and more grassroots-style ones,