The power in paper: 35 years of street news

Street newspapers, like the one you’re reading now, have been in circulation since the late 80s. Originally inspired by the need to elevate unhoused people’s stories through their own words, street newspapers often counter the problematic narratives regarding poverty and homelessness published by mainstream media outlets.

In 1989, Street News was launched in New York City, becoming the seminal publication of the modern street newspaper movement. Street Sheet followed soon after, appearing on the streets of San Francisco later that year. Moving into the early 90s, street newspapers began popping up in major cities across the United States, but with little to no coordination between their respective organizations, let alone knowledge of each other’s existence.

“Street Sheet in San Francisco had already been publishing, but nobody knew it outside of San Francisco,” said Tim Harris, founder of Seattle street newspaper Real Change.

“It was just kind of the right idea at the right time. Homelessness was exploding. People were looking for a way to connect all the homeless people they were seeing on the street that didn’t sort of reek of the charity panhandling relationship, and the street paper was a way to do that.”

Before moving to Seattle, Harris was working as an organizer with unhoused people in Boston and helped establish their local street newspaper Spare Change in 1992.

“It became clear to me that, you know, I could talk people into doing a tent city or going and getting arrested at the state house and whatever, and it was probably not going to make any immediate difference in that person’s life,” said Harris. “But the street paper idea was a way to engage people in organizing, build leadership, [and] do an empowerment-based newspaper.”

Paul Boden, now the Executive Director of Western Regional Advocacy Project, recounted the inception of Street Sheet during his time organizing with the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco.

“First we did a newsletter, but that was, like, dweeb shit. Then these poetry guys came into our office on Hyde Street and gave us some leftover papers they had. And we’re like, ‘who the fuck reads poetry?” But we started giving them out to [unhoused] people, and they came back saying, ‘motherfucker, give me more of those, they’re selling like hotcakes!’ And that was it.”

Street Sheet’s presence on the streets of San Francisco quickly became an effective organizing tool for the Coalition on Homelessness, as growing sales and readership led to greater involvement from the city’s housed and unhoused communities.

“Everybody [involved] was suddenly connected to the organizing, that was really the reason for [the Coalition’s] existence,” Boden said. “We had our own voice and our own outlet.”

In 1994, a number of street newspapers organized to establish the International Network of Street Papers (INSP), which currently supports 90 street publications in 35 countries. Newspapers in the network maintain editorial and organizational independence, and although they’re united under a common cause, papers across the globe operate using a number of different organizational models. 

Whereas many publications in Europe utilize a more commercial model that includes advertising and a broader topic focus that spans beyond homelessness, many street newspapers in the United States operate under a “social service” model, which focuses on homeless advocacy through a mixture of journalism, commentary, and the arts from professional writers as well as individuals who have experience with homelessness. Other publications reject any commodification of their output, stressing that a newspaper’s core message is diluted if it is not written by people with direct experience on the streets.

“I’ve seen [commodification] kill a lot of fucking papers and I’ve seen it kill the spirit of even more papers,” Boden said. “You’re [no longer] a voice of the revolution. You’re a commodity in the market. Commodifying the existence of homelessness.”

Harris believes it’s more effective and practical to strike a balance between commercial and grassroots approaches to street newspapers.

“There was this sort of idea that you were either this highly professionalized commercial model of a street paper, or you were this, like, raggedy grassroots paper that didn’t know what the fuck you were doing in terms of journalism. I decided to, like, sort of shoot for the middle,” said Harris, of his time at Real Change.

Regardless of a street newspaper’s operational structure, Mike Findlay-Agnew, Chief Executive of INSP, said the unifying mission of the network is to help change the narrative around homelessness and poverty, and that’s most effective when viewed through the lens of those who experience it first-hand.

“The media industry, particularly in the UK and the US, [is] dominated by an upper-middle class elite,” Findlay-Agnew said. “We need to get better at creating pathways and opportunities for people with direct experience of the issues to get into journalism so [readers] can get more accurate reporting that way…I think that’s hugely positive because it’s hearing directly from the experts who have lived experience.”

While editorial approaches have shifted over time, distribution of street newspapers has remained the same for decades. Unhoused and formerly unhoused vendors still sell papers directly on the streets of their cities, many of whom develop long-standing relationships with their customer base over the years. Harris believes this plays a major role in a larger community’s engagement with street newspapers.

“It shifts the way homeless people are viewed,” said Harris. “Proximity creates understanding, and street papers remain an excellent tool for that.” 

Some publications, like Street Sheet, provide papers to vendors free of charge, who then keep 100 percent of the proceeds from their sales. Others, like Big Issue in the United Kingdom, sell papers to vendors who then resell them at a higher price. But common among all street newspapers is the freedom this type of work allows for vendors, who may need flexible work schedules.

Findlay-Agnew says this flexibility can be empowering for vendors who face overlapping struggles. 

“We find that is quite typical of vendor populations…that kind of intersectional side of things,” Findlay-Agnew said. “A lot of single parents sell street papers as a means of getting back on their feet. And they run [what are] almost micro enterprises. So bigger than selling, you’re deciding your own way of working. You’re deciding your own way of selling. You’re dictating your own hours.”

But in a changing media landscape that relies less on print newspapers, circulation has decreased over time, and in-depth reporting on homelessness—once unique to street newspapers—has entered the mainstream news cycle. Harris has witnessed these shifts over the past 30 years.

“For God’s sake, the Seattle Times created a whole department around reporting on homelessness and got a lot of private sector funding, and kind of moved to a grassroots funding model,” Harris said. “They sort of stole our gig, you know…those ideas are no longer unique.”

While major news publications have expanded their reporting on homelessness, many street newspapers still retain a more first-person, advocacy-oriented approach to their reporting, which continues to play a vital role in uncovering the nuances of poverty, housing, and homelessness.

According to Boden, this remains the true mission of street newspapers, despite the decline of print media production.

“I think it’s clear that when you look at social media and you look at the mainstream media, we’ve completely lost any focus on the realities of why so many fucking people are living in the streets,” Boden said. “We’re further away from people having a core belief and understanding that the issue of unhoused community members is connected to the dearth of affordable housing.”

“I would hope that the street papers are seeing the writing on the wall,” Boden said, “we need to.”