A-Infos (en) Big Issue editorial

["Lyn Gerry" <redlyn@loop.com>]

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------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Tue, 10 Feb 1998 14:39:53 -0800 (PST)
From:          Bathrobespierre <norse@netcom.com>

The following editorial was published in the February issue of Street
Spirit.  Editor Terry Messman is now suggesting a boycott of The Big Issue
and/or The Body Shop (its financial backer) TBI violates its own charter
and moves into Los Angeles/Santa Monica in a move that some predict will
destroy the local homeless newspaper Making Change.  Both NASNA and the
National Coalition for the Homeless have both publicly opposed The Big 
Issue's move into L.A. and supported Making Change.  Neither have taken 
any position on the proposed boycott, nor do the opinions in the 
following editorial represent their position.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 98 12:10:13 -0800
From:spirit@afsc-pmr.org
To: Robert Norse <norse@netcom.com>
Subject: Big Issue editorial

THE BIG ISSUE MEANS BIG BUSINESS AS USUAL
Editorial by Terry Messman

At the Seattle founding convention of the North America Street Newspaper 
Association (NASNA) last September, Big Issue representative Ruth Turner 
told the assembled street paper editors the Big Secret of Big Business. 
"There is so much money, money, money available from advertising," Turner 
said with great relish. "It's money for nothing."

It was a revealing self-portrait of an acquisitive corporation ruled 
by the profit motives of Big Business. For although the Big Issue is 
sold by homeless people, in truth it is a multinational corporation 
that cultivates advertising more than it fosters activism. As we are 
seeing in Los Angeles, it is more likely to emulate the hostile 
take-over strategy of big corporations than to demonstrate the kind 
of mutual support and solidarity that must be the hallmarks of the 
homeless movement. Founded and funded by the Body Shop corporation, 
the Big Issue has launched a major bid to take over the large 
"market" for street newspapers it perceives in Los Angeles, 
arrogantly shouldering aside a pre-existing street paper, Making 
Change, produced by Jennafer Waggoner, a homeless woman and dedicated 
nonviolent activist. The Big Issue is charged by Waggoner with 
violating the Charter of the International Network of Street Papers 
(INSP), which prohibits members from staging hostile or competitive 
infringements on another street paper's territory. Waggoner recently 
wrote to Big Issue Editor/Publisher John Bird: "Does not your INSP 
Charter state a member will not invade the established selling area 
of an existing charter member? My paper is a member of NASNA. NASNA 
is a member of the INSP. This means Making Change is an INSP member 
whose territory you are violating. How can we not see your moves and 
your motives as hostile?"

By ignoring its own INSP Charter, the Big Issue has triggered deep 
resentment in some homeless advocacy circles. NASNA's Executive Committee 
met on January 8 and agreed that it was "unanimously opposed to the Big 
Issue setting up in Los Angeles." The NASNA body discussed ways of 
"turning up the heat on the Big Issue," including "mobilizing allies in 
the global streetpaper movement to register protest, arranging a picket 
of their London headquarters, and registering complaints with their major 
funders." The Executive Board of the National Coalition for the Homeless 
also approved a resolution opposing the Big Issue's actions.

Big Issue Editor Bird wrote to NASNA that he was "very disturbed" by 
its opposition to his Los Angeles venture, and quickly reached for 
legal muscle to protect his business interests. Bird wrote: "It would 
seem that we have so outraged NASNA that we are now threatened by 
you. I am not sure of the legality - or otherwise - of your threats 
(to protest the Big Issue), but I shall certainly be taking legal 
advice as to whether you are within the law to make such threats."

Uh oh! Big Lawyers! Big Trouble! Big Legal Bills! Big Business As 
Usual! The fight between the Big Issue and its small opponent is 
hardly a fair one. It is an unseemly spectacle to have such a large, 
well-funded company running roughshod over a homeless woman who puts 
out a grass-roots newspaper with next to no funding, no advertising, 
and no corporate deep pockets to draw on. The Big Issue, on the other 
hand, is a multi-million-dollar corporation founded and funded by the 
Body Shop in London in 1991.

This is not the first time the Big Issue has tried to seize the 
market in a U.S. city. It made similar unsettling moves in San 
Francisco in 1994 and New York in 1997. Paul Boden, director of the 
S.F. Coalition on Homelessness, told the London paper in no uncertain 
terms that he would consider any attempt to set up a Big Issue clone 
in the Bay Area an unacceptable attack on the Coalition's Street 
Sheet.

In New York, the Big Issue was planning on driving the Street News 
out of business, an especially cold-blooded proposition considering 
that Bird acknowledges getting the idea for his paper from the New 
York street paper. 

NASNA Chair Tim Harris attended the General Assembly of the 
International Network of Street Papers in London in 1996. In an 
article about the conference, Harris reported the thinking behind the 
Big Issue's craving to grab the Big Apple. 

"Bird claimed that New York's Street News, which has inspired the Big 
Issue and numerous other papers since it began in 1989, is on the verge 
of complete failure because the paper is 'unreadable.' The New York paper 
has, in recent years, focused editorially on poverty issues, but has been 
racked by internal difficulties. While no formal announcement was made, 
several lower-level Big Issue staff confirmed rumors that The Big Issue 
plans to begin a competing paper in New York, probably before the summer 
of 1997."

To my ears, this strategy sounds similar to a vulture carefully 
keeping a death watch on the weakest animal in the herd, but in the 
world of venture capitalism such behavior is all too often the norm.

Gordon Roddick, chairman of the Body Shop and co-founder of the Big 
Issue, reportedly held talks with Bird about funding a competing paper in 
New York in October, 1997, with moves into Los Angeles and San Francisco 
to follow. The New York attempt was thwarted, but the move into Los 
Angeles, alas, proceeded.

Because of these repellent machinations, I personally will never 
again buy anything from the Body Shop. I join Street Sheet Editor 
Paul Boden's call for people to refuse on principle to purchase the 
Big Issue. The paper and its corporate backer must be held 
accountable for this Machiavellian marketing strategy.

The Big Issue identified the largest market where they perceived some 
weakness in an existing street paper, and went after it in an 
ill-disguised takeover bid. New York City was the largest market with a 
seemingly weak paper. But the prediction of the impending demise of the 
New York Street News was premature. The Big Issue ran headlong into the 
steadfast fighting spirit of Street News Editor Indio Washington. 

The result? Street News is still going strong, so Bird took the 
traveling, colonizing roadshow to the West Coast, where Los Angeles 
beckoned with the second largest media market in the country, and only a 
tiny street paper edited by Jennafer Waggoner in the way. A push-over.
But Waggoner is a dedicated activist who stands up for the human rights 
of homeless people, and has been arrested for her principled acts of 
civil disobedience, most recently for occupying the vacant Flamingo 
Motel. Her paper, Making Change, is born out of the struggles of homeless 
people in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. The Big Issue is born out of a 
London-based corporation's grandiose ambitions to colonize ever-new 
territories to further the expansionist drive of a paper "empire."

Waggoner's paper, and her entire activist life, is based on advancing 
the human rights of homeless people and conducting the kind of 
hard-hitting reporting on justice issues practiced by most North 
American homeless advocacy papers. 

The Big Issue, on the other hand, is a paper that, as Bird himself 
wrote in a letter to NASNA on January 9, has "an editorial balance of 
20% social matters and 80% general interest." This means that by his 
own estimate, the Big Issue consists disproportionately of 
entertainment fluff, rock star bios and celebrity coverage. Add in 
all the column inches devoted to advertising, and a true picture 
emerges of where the Big Issue's heart is - and isn't. 

They concocted their "editorial balance" as shrewdly as they crafted 
their move into Los Angeles. Infotainment sells, and bland editorial 
content doesn't offend advertisers or challenge the public with too much 
hard-hitting reporting about "difficult" subjects.

USA Today and People Magazine also feature entertainment journalism 
and eschew outspoken political advocacy, but they do not promote 
themselves as a street newspaper, nor do they compete with 
grass-roots homeless papers, nor try to knock them out of business. 

In his article about the INSP conference, Harris reported that Bird 
said he was committed to spreading his paper's model of "general 
interest entertainment journalism and corporate support," and that 
the major function of street newspapers is to be a "business." 

"The Big Issue is not a homeless paper," Bird said. "It never has and 
never will be. It is a paper sold by homeless people. While we have a 
ghetto in the paper for the homeless called Streetlights, we want to 
break people out of that."

It is insufferably demeaning for Bird to dismiss the one part of his 
paper where homeless people express themselves as a "ghetto" that they 
must break out of - presumably so they can write about more commercial 
subjects such as Madonna, Oasis, or people addicted to playing the 
Lottery.

There is an urgent need for the kind of passionate, politically 
committed journalism practiced by Making Change and many North 
American street papers. The real threat posed by the Big Issue is 
that with its big budget and big corporate backing, it will engulf 
and devour smaller papers and replace their crusading reporting with 
its dumbed-down entertainment journalism (and its 20% reporting on 
what Bird blandly calls "social matters").

The most important goal of homeless newspapers is not to attract 
advertising revenue but to fearlessly tell the truth about the injustices 
suffered by poor people and to build a movement to safeguard basic human 
rights. A street paper with a conscience must join in solidarity 
struggles with the homeless community and promote activist campaigns to 
win decent housing, jobs, welfare entitlements, health care and 
disability rights.

In his letter to NASNA on January 9, Bird wrote: "Many of your 
members will no doubt see The Big Issue as a piece of fluff, too 
slick by half. I would be very surprised if it were different. Their 
vision of a street paper is totally opposite to that of The Big Issue 
as it is represented in its UK incarnation." 

"A piece of fluff, too slick by half." Finally we can agree on something.



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