Montreal Gazette Story on 'Street Paper' Quotes Prof. Kevin Howley

August 31, 2009

August 31, 2009, Greencastle, Ind. — A story in the Montreal Gazette, which examines tomorrow's 15th anniversary of L'Itinéraire -- a newspaper "which was initiated and is partly produced by the homeless" -- includes analysis from an associate professor of communication at DePauw University. The Gazette's Ambreen Walji writes, "The demographic of street-paper readers is consistent across the country. Professor Kevin Howley, who teaches a course on grassroots journalism at Indiana's DePauw University, says the readers of Halifax's street newspaper, Street Feat, self-identified as 'the upwardly mobile middle class.'"

The text continues, "The mainstream media often reports on the homeless ephemerally, 'usually when the weather drops below the freezing point,' Howley says. Street newspapers offer an opportunity for issues of economic injustices, job opportunities, health care and community activism to be addressed in more depth."

Walji notes, "The paper operates as a micro-credit project: vendors buy the paper for $1 at a distribution point and sell it for $2 outside of métro stations, cafés, liquor stores and pharmacies around the city. At a time when conventional newspapers are losing readers ... the biweekly paper sells 60,000 copies an edition."

Read the full article -- "A paper with street credibility" -- at the Gazette's Web site.

Kevin Howley authored the book Community Media: People, Places, and Communication Technologies. The professor also wrote an essay, "A Poverty of Voices: Street Papers as Communicative Democracy," which was published in 2003 in the peer-reviewed journal, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism.

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