Toledo Streets newspaper saves lives

\In a media landscape increasingly dominated by television and the internet, it’s easy to question whether a newspaper can matter at all—but the simple truth is that you’re reading one right now. The convenience and accessibility of old-fashioned paper and print allows for things that aren’t possible in other forms. Newspapers can inform and entertain, sure, but as a new paper, Toledo Streets, is demonstrating, they can also give struggling people a way to save their own lives.

Toledo Streets, founded last year by Amanda Moore, is the latest example of the growing global phenomenon of the street newspaper—publications produced for the benefit of society’s most vulnerable members, the poor and homeless, and designed to be sold, for profit, by the very people the publication intends to help.

“Street papers have been around for a few years,” Moore said. “I stumbled across them in 2008, while doing research on ways to help the homeless. I thought it was a really cool idea.” Around the same time, Moore read an article describing how, while traditional newspapers struggled, street papers were beginning to thrive. The idea for Toledo Streets clicked into place. “Nobody else is doing it,” Moore thought, “So I might as well get busy. It took off from there.”
The paper’s first issue was produced in the fall of 2009, with Moore—who, in addition to her voluntary work on the Toledo Streets project, also works full-time as a marketing associate for a Temperance-based window company—managing, editing, and doing layout and design. “I have several people I rely on to provide content,” she said, but in addition, publications like the Street News are able to receive support from larger groups created for that  purpose, including the North American Street Newspaper Association, founded in 1997, and the Scotland-based International Network of Street Papers. These groups, analogous to the wire services used in traditional journalism, allow small operations like Toledo Streets to share resources and content, and to create a much more attractive and viable product than they would be able to do on their own. “Street papers in 40 countries put content into these services,” Moore said. “That allows us to have exclusive articles with people like Paul McCartney, even, or Bob Dylan.”

There is, of course, Toledo-based content too, including the work of local poets and reviews on local services for the homeless. There is even a healthy dose of humor as a regular “Hoboscope” column dispenses street-themed “astrological” advice. This helps to drive home the point that while poverty might be unfortunate, it is not an aberration or a disease, and that the individuals highlighted in street papers are people.

Who are the vendors who sell and distribute Toledo Streets? Moore describes “someone who’s unhoused, or struggling to stay housed. They can use the income from selling the paper to bridge the gap in their finances. They can get a room, get some food, get a pair of shoes.” The vendors are self-contracted, not employed by the paper. They are given a chance to work for themselves, to make their own hours, and to better their own situation. “It gives a person who’s been down on their luck the opportunity to do something for themselves,” Moore said, “which can give somebody the dignity to move forward.”

Toledo Streets sells for $1 (75 cents goes directly to the vendors) and is published the middle of each month. For more information, visit www.toledostreets.org.