Changing Spare Change

By Randi Saba11/18/04 -- On a cold day in Harvard Square, 30 people walked by Spare Change vendor Joe Manuel but only one stopped to buy the newspaper he was selling.

"Some days people just don't feel like readin'," said Manuel, a tall, neatly dressed man who has been selling the weekly newspaper devoted to empowering the homeless for about a dozen years.

This morning's only customer is banker Nelson Goddard, who pays Manual $1 for every issue. The loyal customer confesses he does not read it; he buys Spare Change solely to help the homeless.

"There are so many homeless in Cambridge and I can't help them all, but I know buying this paper helps," said Goddard.

Goddard's disinterest in the newspaper's content is not unusual. According to a survey conducted by the Spare Change administration earlier this year, the majority of people who buy the paper do so merely to give the homeless money and ultimately throw the paper in the trash without reading a single article.

Spare Change's editor, Samuel Scott, would like to change that practice. Scott, a Boston University graduate and former reporter for the Boston Courant, a Back Bay newspaper, says he was hired in April to make Spare Change a newspaper people want to read, not just buy. He is the first professional journalist the paper has ever hired.

Just recently the paper made cuts to its staff. Though it carries numerous distributors and vendors, Spare Change only has three regular employees who deal with the paper's content and layout -- an editor, a layout designer, and an intern.

Started in 1992. Spare Change is printed every other Thursday and sold by homeless vendors. They buy the paper from distributors based in Cambridge for 25 cents per copy and use the 75-cent profit to pay for things such as food, transportation and laundry.

Despite the lack of permanent staff members, Scott has already made numerous improvements to the layout and content in order to make the paper more appealing. His goal is to increase the paper's current circulation of 10,000 to 20,000 or more in the next five years.

An increase of that magnitude will require a shift of the paper's focus from pure advocacy to more newsworthy and objective content, Scott believes, a change he's begun to put in place by seeking and coaching volunteer writers from Boston-area journalism programs.

Spare Change publishes content on many topics not often covered in larger newspapers such as The Globe and The Herald. The paper is divided into sections housing editorials and op-eds, local, national and international news, poetry, and personal essays from the homeless.

"There are many articles in Spare Change News that you will not get in a regular newspaper," said Scott, "we give the homeless and poor a chance to have their voices heard."

A story on the front page of the most recent issue bylined "special to Spare Change," helps prove Scotts point. It is an interview with a photographer fired from her job in Kuwait for the content of the pictures she took. No other newspaper has published anything similar.

Lack of shelter space, pollution in the Charles River, and a meeting of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless (MCH) are three other stories featured on the cover of the latest Spare Change.

But Scott won't feel satisfied until he sees more customers like Goddard who actually open the paper after buying it. Only then will their contribution also turn into their education.