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Suzanne Hanney in her Scottish grandmother's clan tartan and Reah Medenilla of the Philippines' Jeepney magazine at the International Network of Street Papers conference

Sometimes you need someone to state the obvious, for then you know the solution is to dig deeper right where you are.

That was my experience at the 13th annual conference of the International Network of Street Papers (INSP), June 19 to 21 in Glasgow, Scotland. As editor of Chicago’s weekly StreetWise, I was among 95 delegates from 32 nations. We discussed not only good journalism,

but ways to achieve social justice for the homeless or low-income people who sell our products. We were also honored to meet Glasgow City Councillors and the head of Scotland’s government, First Minister Alex Salmond.

A street paper in New York City first caught the attention of Gordon Roddick over 18 years ago.

Roddick, whose wife was Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, brought the paper back to John Bird, who had grown up Irish and poor in London. Bird had been homeless, incarcerated, a drinker – and a printer. When Roddick told him about the 54-year-old New York street paper vendor who had also been in prison but was now given an opportunity to earn and spend his own money, Bird was intrigued.

This was neither a handout nor psychiatric help, “but just straightforward work,” Bird said in his keynote to INSP delegates.

Bird took the New York model to the United Kingdom and founded The Big Issue in 1991. This June, he and Ian MacArthur, group managing director of The Big Issue, received Ernst & Young’s award as Social Entrepreneurs of the Year, for helping the arts and current affairs publication reach 175,000 weekly circulation – and for earning its vendors 200 million British pounds in profits since its inception. MacArthur told me that he improved the paper six years ago, “by getting closer to the vendors.”

Ricardo Grassi, director of the independent news agency in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2007, elaborated on this advice when he told us that anyone could be trained to gather news. As editor of a leftist paper, he infiltrated a factory by instructing its workers on what to observe – and what to report back. He wound up with news that mainstream publications lacked.

A Danish street paper, in fact, was already working with an editorial advisory board of vendors, hand-picked to ensure their ideas went beyond their own self-interest. I remembered the enthusiastic response to a “Bike Chicago” story where I had interviewed four vendors who saved money commuting by bicycle.

Paul, McNamee, editor of The Big Issue Scotland, told me that I needed scoops, which would attract attention, which would in turn attract writers, which then would induce newsmakers to be interviewed.

“But you know this,” McNamee said, “you went to journalism school.”

Well, yes.

Journalism schools, however, are not turning out people with “the heart and the passion” for investigative reporting, said Silja J. A. Talvi, a senior editor at In These Times and author of Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System. Her statement was not surprising, given the labor intensity of investigative work.

Still – why are we ignoring the best way to score scoops?

Talvi, who calls herself a “muckraker,” said it will be up to street papers to be the storytellers for the people we care about. She told how on her arrival in Glasgow, she wandered without a map, “shut off her logic.

“Go with your instinct, because we are animals,” Talvi added. “The best reporters are drawn to it because they trust their instincts.” She wound up in one of Glasgow’s two strip clubs, where she spent five hours talking to the women – and wound up with at least five story ideas.

It was a mirror image of advice I had gotten from University of Missouri consultants years ago on a startup paper I edited: meet five new people a week on the street and ask them what was news to them.

But if I had to summarize Talvi’s whole presentation, I could do it in one word. You can interview anyone of any background if you let them know upfront that they have your

-- RESPECT.

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