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Street newspapers are newspapers that provide employment opportunities, community, and a voice to homeless and other economically vulnerable people. While the idea of a newspaper sold on the street as a means of providing income to poor people dates back to at least the late-19th century, Street News, founded in 1989 in New York City, is normally cited as the first modern street newspaper.

Although there were others already in existence, such as California's Street Sheet, many if not all of the influential street papers launched in the early 1990s (Chicago's StreetWise, Boston's Spare Change, and United Kingdom's The Big Issue), credit the high profile New York paper as their inspiration. Since 1989, the concept has spread to include more than 100 papers located in at least 28 countries.

The majority of street papers give new vendors a small quantity of free copies when they sign up, and then charge the vendor twenty-five to fifty percent of the cover price thereafter. The vendors retain all post-investment proceeds from street sales. Most papers require vendors to sign a code of conduct and to wear visible vendor badges.

Many papers offer additional programs to vendors, such as job training, housing placement assistance, and referral to other direct services, or operate as a program of a larger social services organization. Most are also engaged in some form of organizing and advocacy regarding homelessness and poverty.

Specific models for street newspapers vary widely, and range from vendor-managed papers that place the highest value upon homeless empowerment and involvement to highly professionalized weeklies that draw upon socially entrepreneurial business principles.

The International Network of Street Papers and the North American Street Newspaper Association are membership organizations that are dedicated to building the street newspaper movement. These organizations voted to combine their resources in 2006.

Resources

• The Street News Service is a publicly accessible street newspaper article-sharing site operated by the INSP and NASNA.

• Up-to-date street newspaper directories can be found at:
  • International Network of Street Papers
  • North American Street Newspaper Association

• A street newspaper start-up guide is available from both the INSP and NASNA.

• Street newspapers
• Homelessness