The Quarter Final

Once an essential part of city life, newspaper boxes may soon go the way of the pay phone

LAST MARCH, 1,500 publications got word from a metal manufacturer in Texas that the company would be leaving the newspaper box industry it had helped start. The manufacturer, Kaspar Cos., claims to have invented the first coin-operated sidewalk newspaper box, in the 1950s. But with the rapidly changing print journalism market, and having already cut its number of employees from 800 to 60, Kaspar decided to abandon the boxes. So newspapers placed their final orders, and in August the assembly line at the 170,000-squarefoot plant in Shiner, Texas, groaned out its lastever box. The machinery was then sold for parts.

Newspaper boxes (sometimes called newspaper vending machines, newspaper racks, news racks or honor boxes) are ubiquitous along city streets so it’s easy to overlook them. Made of metal or plastic, some coin-operated or chained to street signs, the boxes have lost value at a time when news consumers carry around iphones instead of coins and publications tend to get thinner and thinner until they disappear completely. Soon these boxes could go the way of the pay phone.

Their demise isn’t really surprising, given how many print media shake-ups have occurred in just the past year. In October, Philadelphia City Paper, which was available for free in orange metal boxes, went out of print. Around the same time, The Village Voice, which in New York City comes in red plastic boxes, announced it had a new owner. In December, Seattle Weekly, in red metal boxes, reportedly laid off nearly a third of its employees because of costs.

In Philadelphia, where city code requires licenses, there were 527 boxes in 2015, the city says. A decade ago, the number was 1,401. In New York, where the Department of Transportation regulates the boxes, 10,000 were registered in 2015, the city says, down from more than 12,500 three years earlier. Seattle estimates it has 2,500 boxes but doesn’t require licenses, which has made it easy for boxes to fall into disrepair. Responding to complaints by locals about the boxes, the city launched a Web portal in September so people can submit requests for maintenance or relocation directly to the publishers.

The current state of newspaper boxes is far from what industry insiders say was a boom in the 1980s and early 1990s. USA Today, founded in 1982, is widely credited with driving that surge; its white boxes, shaped like television sets, were pervasive. Kaspar Cos. claims to have manufactured most of those boxes. “We were tripleshifting our factory, working around the clock. That was a wild couple of years,” says CEO David Kaspar, whose grandfather invented the first coin-operated box and whose great-grandfather founded the company in 1898.

A competing manufacturer, K-jack Engineering Co., also takes credit for the USA Today boxes. “We couldn’t get them out fast enough,”

says Sales Manager Steve Ruitenschild. “It was very lucrative.” (Kaspar Cos. once successfully sued K-jack for patent infringement.)

“After USA Today launched, all the other papers started jumping on,” says Kathy Kahng, owner of Cityrax, which manages multipublication newspaper box units for business improvement districts.

Newspaper box sales began dropping off in the late ’90s, and publishers slashed locations. According to the Newspaper Association of America, in 1996 newspaper boxes accounted for 46 percent of single-sale daily newspapers. In 2014, that percentage was down to 20.

In 2009, CNN reported that The New York Times had 5,678 boxes, down from 13,300 a decade earlier. Now, a spokeswoman for the Times tells Newsweek, the number is 39. “It’s not been a little decline,” says Ruitenschild. “It’s fallen off the cliff.”

Publishers and box manufacturers blame different factors: the Internet and declining print readership; an increase in sales at indoor locations; the economic recession; the rising price of single-sale newspapers. “Unless you’re traveling to the laundromat, nobody walks around with eight quarters,” Kahng says.

Kaspar Cos. now focuses on metal pickup truck accessories and buying and selling precious metals. K-jack has scaled back too. “We’re lean and mean,” Ruitenschild says. “We really cut it to the bone.”

Some people don’t feel nostalgic for the boxes. Community groups and city officials around the country have launched campaigns or been involved in lawsuits against publishers who use them; two cases even went to the Supreme Court. Quality-of life-watchdogs in New York City have protested them, arguing that lack of upkeep makes them eyesores. In the early 2000s, Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged the city to pass new restrictions on their placement and maintenance. Publishers found to be in violation reportedly could get ticketed.

The expenses involved in owning boxes— which can run between $200 and $400 for dispensers of free papers and up to $600 for a coin-operated one—can add up, leading some publications to go “cold turkey” and pull all of their boxes, says John Murray, vice president of audience development at the Newspaper Association of America. Jay Sterin, general manager of Philadelphia Weekly, which acquired the Philadelphia City Paper’s intellectual property, says most of City Paper’s boxes were picked up and put in storage. Other City Paper boxes will be repurposed with the Weekly’s logo.

Boxes aren’t always so lucky. Tiffany Shackelford, executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, says that when a pub- lication closes, some boxes get sold as assets or scrap. Others can be “left to languish until the city does something about them.”

Because alternative newsweeklies, like The Village Voice, are typically free and don’t rely on the boxes to make money, those publications tend to have more fun with them. In some cities, alt weeklies have even invited artists to decorate the boxes. “It certainly is one of the things that is great for morale,” Shackelford says of seeing the boxes with your paper’s logo on street corners. After cities tried to restrict boxes, the Supreme Court ruled in 1988 and 1993 that they were necessary symbols of a free press. But on a more local level, Shackelford says, “these are definitely sort of a nod and wink to those in the know that this is kind of the cool paper in town.”