Real Change
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| Type | Weekly street newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Compact |
| Founder(s) | Tim Harris |
| Editor | Aaron Burkhalter |
| Founded | 1994 |
| Circulation | 16,000 weekly |
| Website | realchangenews.org |
Real Change is a weekly progressive street newspaper based in Seattle, Washington, USA written by professional staff and sold by self-employed vendors, many of whom are homeless. The paper provides them with an alternative to panhandling and covers a variety of social justice issues, including homelessness and poverty. It became weekly in 2005, making it the second American street newspaper ever to be published weekly. Real Change is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with an annual budget of 950,000 dollars.
Real Change has been published by the Real Change Homeless Empowerment Project since 1994; the paper's founder, Tim Harris, founded the Spare Change News street newspaper in the Boston area in 1992. After moving to Seattle in 1994, he started Real Change as a monthly paper with only one staff member. Later, the paper started producing every other week.
In February 2005, Real Change began publishing weekly due to increasing interest and sales, making it the second street newspaper in the country to do so. In addition to becoming a weekly newspaper, it hired several professional journalists shifting its focus to become a broadly progressive alternative paper. As a biweekly, it sold 18,000 copies every two weeks; and now has a weekly circulation of 16,000 papers. In April 2013, the paper's price increased from one dollar to two dollars and was the sixth street newspaper to do so.
In 2012, it sold 872,562 copies and raised 957,949 dollars: 68.42 percent from donations and grants; 31.26 percent from circulation, advertising and subscriptions; and 0.32 percent from other sources.
The topics covered in Real Change are a mixture of progressive local news and information specifically pertaining to the homeless and poor. Though it covers local news, it still openly advocates for "social justice" and attempts to educate readers about homelessness. Some readers, though, admit that they buy the paper more to help out and interact with the vendors than to actually read the contents; this pattern of buying is common among street newspapers. Part of the reason for the paper becoming a weekly publication in 2005 was to attract more readers and move the newspaper's image from a "charity buy" to a legitimate source of news.
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