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Extra! Publishers go to bat for news boxes and racks

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Jennifer Goodstein, C.E.O. and publisher of NYC Community Media, left, and Jeanne Straus, publisher of Straus News, testified at a June 23 City Council hearing on street newspaper boxes and racks. Photo by Yannic Rack

BY YANNIC RACK | A boon for New York’s sidewalks, or a kick to the curb for its newspaper boxes?

In an effort to clean up the sidewalks, the City Council is pushing for tighter rules governing the roughly 10,000 newspaper boxes across the five boroughs. But the proposed legislation is facing heavy pushback from newspaper publishers, who say the measures are an unnecessary burden and will put a dent in their distribution.

A set of five bills, introduced by various councilmembers last week, would set stricter requirements for how often newspaper distribution boxes must be stocked, cleaned of graffiti and garbage, and where they can be placed.

The Council’s Transportation Committee heard testimony on the proposal from city officials and the newspaper industry on June 23.

“It’s an issue familiar to many New Yorkers — of newsracks sitting empty and filled with garbage,” said Ydanis Rodriguez, the committee’s chairperson. “These bills are about ensuring that the dispensaries for these papers are clean, regularly filled and attractive to passersby.”

The city’s Department of Transportation, which oversees public sidewalks, backs the legislation, and the bills also enjoy support from some business improvement districts, including the Times Square Alliance and the Garment District Alliance.

The proposed rules would require newsracks — both single boxes and modular racks that contain multiple publications — to be registered with the city and provide certain information on annual basis, including delivery schedules and insurance certificates.

The legislation would also set additional standards for maintenance and placement, including tighter deadlines for empty or cluttered boxes to be cleaned and restocked, and a ban on any boxes near taxi stands. (Current laws already mandate other placement restrictions.)

Owners of modular racks would also have to submit a plan for approval, and give local community boards opportunity for comment, while single boxes would be banned from blocks that already contain a modular rack.

“Taken together, this will strengthen cleaning and maintenance requirements,” Vincent Maniscalco, D.O.T.’s assistant commissioner for highway inspection and quality assurance, said of the package of bills. “What we are looking for is better compliance,” he added. “We want to work with the industry.”

But publishers argue that most of them already diligently maintain their boxes, and that the added restrictions would burden an industry that is already struggling to provide vital news to local communities.

“We aren’t the ones filling our racks with garbage or painting them with graffiti,” said Michelle Rea, executive director of the New York Press Association. She added that current regulations are already so onerous that the number of boxes registered in the city has declined 25 percent from three years ago.

“More regulations aren’t the answer,” Rea said. “Enforcing the current regulations is a better solution.”

Jennifer Goodstein, C.E.O. of NYC Community Media and the publisher of The Villager, Downtown Express, Gay City News and Chelsea Now, said readers rely on the news boxes and racks to get their newspapers.

“Without the ability to walk down the street and find a local paper in a newsrack, the very citizens who need to read our coverage will not be able to find it,” she said. “Newsracks play a very important role in the city. They play a very important role in branding our product. We ask that the rules be enforced, not expanded, and that communication between publishers and the Department of Transportation be improved through the use of e-mail or another form of electronic communication.”

D.O.T. officials said the city receives several hundred complaints about the boxes every year — mostly about dirty and graffiti-covered boxes used as trash bins — with most complaints coming from Community Board 8 on the Upper East Side.

In the last fiscal year, the agency issued more than 2,200 notices of correction for noncompliant boxes. But these resulted in only around 350 summonses — prompting even Rodriguez, playing devil’s advocate, to note how low the number was.

“If we rely on those numbers, we can say that most are not being targeted by D.O.T. because they comply,” he suggested to the agency brass.

But D.O.T. representatives maintained that the new rules’ stricter enforcement would simply keep city sidewalks cleaner.

“It will make our streets safer and cleaner, and the publishers will still have their papers out there,” Maniscalco said. “We’re not against newsracks. If we issue a notice of correction and it’s corrected right away, we won’t issue a summons.”

The current laws governing the boxes, instituted in 2002 and amended in 2004, mainly rely on self-certification by the newspapers’ owners to show that they are kept in shape, only mandating that “best efforts are being made” to keep them clean and stocked, according to Maniscalco. Under the new regulations, there would now be an actual mandate to keep the boxes clean and stocked at all times, he said.

If the bills are enacted, D.O.T. would still issue notices of violation to publishers for dirty, damaged and emptyboxes, but the agency would be able to issue fines more quickly if the problems are not rectified in a timely manner.

“While most publications try to make sure their boxes are clean and stocked, many newsracks remain a blight on our sidewalks,” said Bronx Councilmember James Vacca, a member of the committee and the sponsor of one of the bills. “And our existing rules don’t go far enough to address that,” he said of boxes in bad condition.

Some at the hearing one-upped the councilmembers, suggesting the bills could be more severe.

Christine Berthet, former chairperson of Community Board 4 and a founder of the Clinton Hell’s Kitchen Coalition for Pedestrian Safety, said she would like to see even stricter rules enforced — including bolting down boxes on the sidewalk and banning any racks within 25 feet of pedestrian crossings.

“We wish this legislation would go further,” she said. Fewer newspaper boxes would increase safety for the 75 percent of New Yorkers who walk at some point in their daily commute, she said.

In the end, Rodriguez promised to discuss the legislation further and hear out its opponents, to ensure that any new rules would be fair to the newspaper industry.

“We will continue this conversation,” he said. “We’re not in the business of creating a hardship.”