With the influx of give-away papers hitting city streets, Sydney’s Lord
Mayor Clover Moore plans to introduce a new policy regulating the
distribution of newspapers and magazines. Today’s Sydney Morning Herald reports
that the Sydney City Council could start demanding fees from papers
and mags sold at street level, such as the Green Left Weekly and The
Epoch Times, although there would be criteria for waiving fees or granting concessions to papers that are community operations.

With the recent extension of News Limited’s free daily newspaper, mX,
to the Sydney market, the introduction of a fee system could bring a
new level of competition to the street corner. Crikey has
heard
that the company keeps the council happy with a payment of around
$360,000 for the right to distribute its papers on the streets for a
year, so it could be a hard task for the
smaller players to keep up.

One of these smaller players is The Big Issue, a magazine
sold by homeless and unemployed people. Editor Martin Hughes says The Big Issue risks
becoming “the innocent bystander” in Sydney’s street paper wars, and a rumoured year-long campaign
by mX to win over the Sydney market could have a devastating effect on
the magazine’s sales. A shorter campaign in Melbourne saw sales
plummet, though sales of the mag have since risen by more than 60% – a
figure which could be jeopardised by a concerted street pitch from mX.

Hughes says the issue is not one of regulation, as when and how the magazine is sold is
already highly regulated by the council. It’s more an issue of falling
prey to a commercial competitor. And while a fee-based regulation
system is a possibility, Hughes says that The Big Issue’slong
relationship with the council will most likely rule it out, considering the publication’s special needs.