Reflecting on a powerful year in print journalism

Every Friday at 8 a.m., someone shouts out the same question in the Street Roots office: What’s in the paper, Joanne?

The call is to Joanne Zuhl, the executive editor, who holds the attention of a crowd of 50 or so vendors, sprinkling jokes into her synopsis of the new issue of Street Roots. While she talks, the truck filled with 10,000 papers pulls up. Ken, the driver, is never late, leaving early in the morning from Oregon Lithoprint in McMinnville. He knows that Street Roots vendors depend on his timely cargo for their livelihood.

Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at
kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand

Once the vendors buy their papers, some immediately embark to their posts, while others linger to read the new issue over a cup of coffee.

That’s how it goes, week after week. In the totality of it — all 52 issues — we are mighty proud of what we churn out of our Old Town office. After all, we are committed to journalism as integral to democracy. We do this with one full-time editor, one reporter and one editorial producer, as well as a fleet of professional freelance writers.

Street Roots is part of the International Network of Street Papers, or INSP. In 100 cities across the globe, papers like ours join forces in this effort to connect journalism with income-earning enterprises for people in poverty. This year, the INSP launched a North American bureau, headed by Israel Bayer.

It’s no accident that we combine producing an independent newspaper with creating a livelihood for people who are homeless and poor. After all, we are committed to an informed, enlivened democracy and insist that the poorest of our residents be central to that democracy.

The two go together. A democracy that discounts the poorest of its people is a sickly system.

This past year we’ve covered a lot of ground, and in some cases, we’ve catalyzed fast-moving change. The most dramatic case was our introduction in March of a plan for non-police first responders for street crises, the Portland Street Response. In less than 10 months, this plan was launched as a pilot program by the city. In addition to the initial concept, we gave the bigger picture on policing in Portland, the reliance of mental health crisis response on police accompaniment, the high arrest rates of unhoused people in area emergency departments, and the violence inflicted on people living outdoors.

Street Roots reporting led to other local changes. After Street Roots reported that 31 residents at the Lincoln Hotel faced eviction, Multnomah County and CareOregon committed $100,000 to pay for a year’s worth of rent assistance, case management and housing placement services for those residents, and Street Roots covered that, too.

And sometimes coverage catalyzed individual change, such as when Rob and Rebekah George reunited with their father, Cesil George, after reading about him in our paper.

The same day we published an editorial calling for a consideration of a fareless transit system, our own vendor, Mark Rodriguez, was slapped with a fine for not tapping his monthly HOP card. With the media attention and public interest in this issue, it will no doubt be an important discussion in 2020.

Our editorial positions this past year include a call that the state Legislature halt mortgage-interest deductions on second homes, bolster the state’s public-defender system, and stop playing games when the GOP gummed up the entire system. We supported the Portland City Council withdrawal from the Joint Terrorism Task Force and backed the Fair Access in Renting that tackles rental barriers. Count on Street Roots to take editorial positions that help you navigate local issues.

This past year, we’ve addressed federal and local aggression toward immigrants, sexual assault allegations at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, and The Poor People’s Campaign, gentrification, Measure 11 reforms, and the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion efforts for climate justice.

We are also committed to supporting Native Journalism, joining the Native American Journalists Association and partnering with both the Grand Ronde newspaper, Smoke Signals, and Pollen Nation, a Native-led and edited online magazine.

Street Roots also kept a steady eye on local services for unhoused Portlanders, following the opening of the River District Navigation Center managed by Transition Projects, the innovative Stone Soup restaurant program, the re-opening of SAFES and the closing of Sunnyside Community Center. We marked 40 years of Sisters Of The Road hospitality, and followed the implications of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision on the criminalization of homelessness, a decision with many ramifications to come in our own city.

We are proud of the independent, spirited, scrappy, quality newspaper we put out, week after week. And as we end the year, I ask that you support us as we embark on another. Your contribution supports this journalism. And every newspaper we publish returns tenfold for our vendors, putting at least $10,000 in the pockets of unhoused and poor Portlanders.

Our vendors are contributors to the paper as well, writing poems and even commentaries. Annette Johnson, Paulette Bade and Dan Newth all shared their stories in our pages this year. We launched the Life on the Streets series, which will continue in 2020, in which we ask Street Roots vendors about the big and little things. And from our earliest days, our vendors have shared their lives in the weekly profile.

Read these profiles and you’ll get to better know the heart of Street Roots, and the power of the voice that threads through our organization – from the vendors to the newspaper to the readers like you.

Thank you for sharing this year with us and thank you for the years ahead!

Director’s Desk is written by Kaia Sand, the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand.