Past Issues :: 2007 May 1:: Column: Director’s Desk
Director’s Desk
Street Roots, along with the North American Street Newspaper Association,
is featured in the Utne Reader this month. The article is a great
look at the growing movement of street papers in North America and
around the globe. The article also charges that street newspapers
throughout North America are straying away from our grassroots upbringing
in favor of “moving product.”
While it’s true street papers, in particular Street Roots, has moved to a more professional design and journalism — we have not moved away from our grassroots base. Several years ago vendors came to Street Roots and asked us to recreate the newspaper in a way that individuals would be proud to sell it.
We redesigned the paper with the help of professionals in the field. We hired a professional managing editor that has dedicated her life to community journalism. And we decided to broaden the scope of our news coverage to include a wider social justice movement. Over the years, Street Roots has featured regular columns by Sisters in Action, the Oregon Law Center, Northwest Constitutional Rights Center, Sisters of the Road and many more. We also decided as an organization to cover topics including immigration, environment, media consolidation, labor, and the war, along with issues related to poverty — locally, nationally and internationally.
Both the North American Street Newspaper Association and the International Network of Street Papers, a network of 80 papers in 27 countries, created the Street News Service. The news service allows street papers to share content worldwide. We can now rely on the voices of people on the ground around the globe, and not just those of Americans or high-minded intellectuals relaying messages from beyond our borders.
Street Roots, along with a growing number of street newspapers are starting to gain a voice in their respected communities by covering hard news, offering opinions, art and poetry from the streets and by incorporating the communities collective voice. For years homeless groups have been alienated from larger movements like affordable housing and labor because we where concentrating solely on the homeless individual — not what leads to homelessness. Now we are concentrating on both.
Is it possible to create new dialogues about issues that effect the entire community, including the poor, through collective journalism? We think so! And we hope to bring you that change through the pages of the newspaper — because that’s what we do.
Thank you for being a part of that experience!
