Is it News, or Is it Clutter?

The decline of the American newspaper is hardly news – the industry’s ongoing death spiral has been well documented by journalists (and it was the theme of The Wire’s worst season) (RIP, DeAndre). Yet New York City’s tabloids persevere, with seven dailies still in existence. Yes, one of those is the headline driven New York Post and another the Daily News, with its own curious content. And yes, seven is less than the nineteen dailies Gotham once boasted. But newspapers still exist in New York, no mean feat.

What seems to have gone the way of the dodo is the newspaper vending machine. This once ubiquitous corner mainstay have been replaced, almost entirely, by free newspaper boxes.

And what do these boxes contain? Okay, there’s The Onion, one of the best things you can get for free, and certainly my go-to when I’m heading to the subway empty handed. The Village Voice used to be worth reading, but those days seem to be a distant memory. I don’t have much patience for the free dailies they hand out at subway entrances, which cull the day’s least interesting stories from the Associated Press. Does the AP charge more for relevant news?

Still, I don’t begrudge the alternative rags or local weeklies that probably tell their advertisers they have a circulation of 100,000 even though 90,000 are still sitting in the boxes when the next week’s edition arrives.

The problem lies with the items that are in no shape or form news. The catalog for Gotham Writers’ Workshop, the Homes & Land real estate ads…clutter.

Is there a first amendment issue here that allows for-profit businesses to lay claim to a portion of the sidewalk? The walkways of our fair borough are crowded enough. Do we really need these eyesores on every street corner? They are just as likely to contain garbage as paper. And there’s always the remote possibility they could turn on us.