Chris Collins
"You get some jerks, but the nice people make it worth it," Richard Gunderson says of potential customers. "Most people are really nice."
Over the years I've written for a lot of fine newspapers: The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the pre-merger Milwaukee Journal, The Capital Times, Isthmus. But there's one truly great newspaper I hope I never have to work for. It's Street Pulse. It's put out by Madison's homeless. I never miss an issue.
If you live or work downtown you can hardly avoid it. Sidewalk vendors are easily found on State Street and the Capitol Square. Coverage is both substantive and delightfully idiosyncratic. Recent issues of the monthly publication have shared news on shelters, loitering, media, our new Central Library, art, poetry and God.
"Vendors have actually gotten out of homelessness through their income with Street Pulse," says Noah Phillips, past editor in chief. He continues to help with production.
"I've been homeless three-quarters of my life," says Richard Gunderson, 43, a four-year veteran of the paper. He's usually found selling Street Pulse on lower State Street. The Madison native went to La Follette High School but didn't finish. He's no longer homeless, and sales of the paper helped him furnish his apartment.
"You get some jerks, but the nice people make it worth it," he says of potential customers as they walk by. "Most people are really nice."
"To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" is said to be the mission of journalism. If that's so, Street Pulse is a very fine newspaper indeed.
"It tackles homelessness on two really creative fronts," says Phillips, a native of Washington, D.C. He's a geography undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin"Madison.
"One front is the actual income you give to the vendor. You're not giving to an agency, you're not doing it through your taxes. You're giving income to someone, and not because they're panhandling but because they're providing a service."
The other front is simply providing a voice. "You have poetry in there, and artwork," he says. "That can really help an individual who is suffering, to be able to express themselves and have an outlet."
Street Pulse started in 2005. "There were a bunch of people getting together to look at homelessness in the community," says Jessica Koehn, a UW major in social work and sociology who serves as the paper's director of operations. "At that point, panhandling was at its highest point in Madison. They decided they wanted to do something about it. They wanted to give people who are homeless something to put on their resume, so you didn't have that gap in years. So instead of saying, 'I was in the street panhandling for two years for an income,' you could say, 'I worked for a newspaper.'"
Madison-Area Urban Ministry gave a big early boost and acted as fiscal receiver. Street Pulse recently completed paperwork to become a freestanding nonprofit. Circulation currently is 3,800. This summer it peaked at 4,500.
Koehn's own involvement was motivated by an abrupt transition from the comfortable suburbs of the Twin Cities to Madison.
"I was seeing these homeless people left and right, and they were starving and hungry and cold," she recalls. "I was buying Street Pulse all the time. I would buy it and not read it. I finally read it one day and realized all the help they needed. I started volunteering."
Although the paper has student leadership and features writing by area activists, the homeless also serve not only as distributors but as reporters, artists and poets. Much of the raw copy is necessarily handwritten. Notes Koehn, "We get a lot of submissions that are four or five sentences long."
Newspapers created by the homeless have a long history. Hobo News was published in Cincinnati from 1915 to 1930. The modern era of homeless papers began in 1989, when Street News was launched in Manhattan.
Street Pulse's model is simple. Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative, 426 W. Gilman St., graciously serves as distribution center. Vendors purchase papers for 25 cents and sell them for $1. Reporters get free copies in exchange for writing their articles. There are currently 33 vendors, most downtown, all but four of them male. Homeless women tend not to vend "because they don't know what to do with their children," says Koehn.
The organization has a short but critical list of needs. Financial contributions are welcome, as are bus passes, to allow vendors and reporters to travel. Incubator office space is desired. Vendors, artists and writers are always sought. Winter clothing is also needed; staff request that it be given to downtown churches that will not sell it at thrift shops.
For the first time, Street Pulse is actively pursuing advertisers. "Really cheap," promises Koehn.
"What we need is a sustainable future," she says. "It's not that hard to maintain this newspaper, but we need people who are going to be supportive for the long haul."
For information on how to help, contact the paper at madstreetpulse@gmail.com.
