bye bye street news?

New York's "Soul and Spirit of the Street," as Street News, a paper sold by homeless people, calls itself, is in jeopardy. This is due in large part to the city's decision to enforce codes against panhandling and selling on the subway (over 70 percent of its readers were riders). Publisher Sam Chen decided he could no longer afford to carry the paper's losses, and put out a "Bye Bye" issue
 in January.

Still, the inspiration of Spare Change in Boston, The Big Issue in London and Glasgow, Streetwise in Chicago, Spare Change in Toronto, Street Sheet in San Francisco, and La Rue and Macadam Journal in Paris, is not about to give up without a fight. Editor-in-chief Janet Wickenhaver and four staff members working on a volunteer basis put out a spring issue and hope to keep Street News alive.

They can point to some positive developments: circulation had grown from a low of 8,000 in 1983 up to 20,000 in February 1994 when the subway crackdown began. Its quality has varied in the past, but recently Street News was producing compelling stories like "The Suzi Chronicles," the story of a young mother's battle to get straight from drug addiction, and "Back from Crack," true tales of overcoming. On a lighter side, the publication recently boasted of "over 250,000 copies confiscated by the MTA." Wickenhaver agrees that the paper must change to survive, that it "can't survive by continuing to appeal to sympathy alone."

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