Street News was a street newspaper sold by homeless people in New York City, New York. Established in 1989, it launched the American street newspaper movement. It aimed to provide a way of self-sufficiency to the many homeless and unemployed people in New York. The creation of Street News quickly inspired the founding of many other street newspapers, including Chicago's StreetWise and Britain's The Big Issue; the paper has been called a "pioneer" for the street paper movement. Street News and The Big Issue have become prototypes of street papers worldwide. 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. As of current time, Street News is no longer an active publication and New York City has no official street paper.
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. 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. It was launched with advertisements on subways and buses donated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the homeless salesforce was given permission to sell Streetnews on the trains, weeks after panhandling was declared illegal on the subways. 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. It sold for 75 cents, with the sellers getting 45 cents. Co-founder Wendy Oxenhorn left Streetnews 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; Some staff left and started the short-lived Crossroads Magazine. The paper was taken over by its printer, Sam Chen of Expedi Printing, and Persons left the paper. 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. Furthermore, in 1991 New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority instituted a policy prohibiting the hawking of newspapers on the subways, which had been vendors' main selling place; this added to Street News troubles. By the mid-1990s, Street News sales had dropped significantly and some predicted that the newspaper was going to end. Eventually, though, the paper survived and revitalized, but never reached the circulation of the first few months. It has since ceased to exist. Former homeless man and crack addictLee Stringer was first vendor and then editor and columnist for Street News. He is now a writer and motivates young people to stay away from crime.
