Episode 22: Tim Harris

Tim Harris is the Executive Director of the street newspaper, Real Change and currently serves as the North American representative to the International Network of Street Papers. I recently sat down with Tim to discuss the roles street papers have within the multiple public spaces of the city: the physical public space where the vendor sells the paper, the civic space, where his paper influences the ongoing public dialogue in the community, and, finally, the political space that is expanded when street newspaper vendors are encouraged to use their latent political power to show up at council meetings or at the voting booth. Yet before we got there, I started our conversation with a more fundamental question: What is a street newspaper and what is the function it provides?