Street Sense goes to Chicago for annual conference
Street newspapers, dedicated to news of poverty and nearly always sold by homeless men and women, are often shoestring operations by nature, and, like their vendors, simply struggling to survive.
This year, the nonprofit trade group representing more than 30 street papers throughout the United States and Canada is also going through tough times. At its annual conference, held in Chicago from July 29 to August 1, North American Street Newspaper Association board chairman Israel Bayer announced the organization was forced to lay off its sole staff member.
Citing the nation’s ongoing recession and fundraising difficulties, Bayer told delegates that due to a lack of funds, the board had no choice but to lay off executive director Andy Freeze at the end of August. Freeze, whose office is in Washington, D.C., was hired in late 2008, but grant money that paid his salary has been spent and no new funding is on the horizon. Prior to hiring Freeze, NASNA, like many of its member papers, was run through volunteer efforts. Bayer, who is executive director of the Portland street newspaper, Street Roots. said for the time being, NASNA’s member services will be provided out of Oregon, from Street Roots offices.
NASNA has 31 members, 23 in the United States and eight in Canada. Several more are in various stages of development. These small publications comprise a diverse group. Chicago’s StreetWise, which helped host the conference, is a glossy weekly magazine with plain yet comfortable offices and professional staffers. But others are humble tabloid newspapers, published twice a month or monthly. Some have no paid employees at all and a few do not even have an office to call their own.
All, however, see their mission as informing the public about issues of poverty and homelessness. And nearly all the publications are sold or distributed by poor or homeless vendors who, with the help of their newspapers, are trying to work their ways off the streets. The journey is seldom easy for the vendors, or for the papers themselves.
At the conference, newspaper directors, editors and vendor managers exchanged stories of hard luck and success, strategized about how to keep their publications alive and readable and how to assist their homeless salespeople to reach their goals of self-sufficiency.
Host publication StreetWise nearly closed last year due to declining revenues, but ultimately won a second chance after rallying community support. At this year’s NASNA conference, StreetWise Executive Director Bruce Crane outlined his hopes for the magazine’s continuing survival through aggressive reorganization and fundraising. He said he has been busy cultivating “angels,” who donate everything from office supplies to food for the vendor’s lunches to help keep StreetWise offices open.
“We even have a paper towel and toilet paper angel,” said Crane.
