One Voice
Common Voice
Common Change
Shared Change
One Step Forward
Loud and Clear
People’s Press
Street Press
Progressive Ink
These were some of the first names we toyed with just seven weeks before the first issue launch of the DC Street Newspaper project nearly 19 years ago. The name “Street Sense” wasn’t even in the running until a month before the first issue. A volunteer named Brad McCormick came upon it, and much like selecting the name for your child, Ted and I and the other founding volunteers immediately knew it was the one. And thus Street Sense was born.
Despite not actually having a name for the paper until a few weeks out, we worked for months on issue 1. We planned and designed and made everything look perfect with our high tech digital camera of the early 2000s, top-of-the-line Pagemaker software, and J-school rules freshly hammered in our brains. And it really did look sharp.
And then there was issue 2. And as we had promised monthly issues to this newly named Street Sense, we only had four short weeks to get the next issue together, which seems like a few short hours by today’s standards. It was not the best-looking design or cleanest copy but it did establish an important precedent – a consistent frequency. That precedent – we WILL come out every month – definitely pushed us through issue 9 and 10 as well. In the heat of July and August when volunteers and the workers in the city (the main Street Sense customers) thinned out, Ted and I were just about ready to call it quits.
And here we today, 19 years later hitting issue 500. Five– freakin’- hundred!! And during those 19 years all 500 issues – from monthly to semi-monthly to weekly – Street Sense always came out on time. And not only on time, but packed full of quality journalism and interesting perspectives on homelessness and poverty. That one thing that has also never wavered during 500 issues and tens of thousands of pages – journalistic integrity. I am so proud of Street Sense for staying strong yet feisty and being the first to report on several big stories, always scoring interviews with major public figures and eventually winning real journalism awards.
I am also equally proud that what we started so many years ago has made the difference in the lives of so many homeless individuals, and the consistent frequency definitely helped. This is really the greatest accomplishment from issue 1 to 500, and I am so humbled to be part of its origin story. Street Sense (and I can’t imagine calling it anything else at this point) has given hundreds – if not thousands – of homeless individuals a voice, self-confidence and an income. Or as our original tag line said a place “to earn and give their two cents.”
