Green, too, has heard assorted theories about why he vanished, which he blames on the lack of those pesky boxes: "They're very inconsistent about getting them in there," he says. But he swears there's nothing mysterious going on, despite a flood of very entertaining rumors that continues unabated. "My wife retired in September, so some people think I'm retiring -- but I'm not. I still have four or five years left on my contract. I just wanted to take some time off." He says he'll be back in the Post on April 19, then leave for a long weekend a week later, after which "I'll be around until my next journey."
To put it another way, his long, strange trip at the Post isn't over just yet.
Mark Andresen
Mark Andresen
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Rack job: For free-distribution newspapers (like this one), news racks are vital -- the primary way the publication reaches the public. But the racks are seen by many business owners as irritating nuisances that clutter up the sidewalks in front of their establishments, and if they had their way, they'd either reduce the number or eliminate them entirely. The result is a conflict that pits press rights against an interest in tidiness -- and while journalists would seem guaranteed to win such a contest on merit, members of the neatness brigade often have the muscle to get things done their way.
That's the fear of newspaper representatives in Boulder, whose city council is scheduled to hear a plan on April 16 that would force publications wishing to distribute their papers downtown to place copies in "newspaper condominiums" -- a series of identical racks that are mounted to sidewalks and linked together in a line. Supporters of these condominiums, which can already be found in spots along Boulder's Pearl Street Mall, see this approach as a way to increase the uniformity and stability of the boxes as well as to increase safety for pedestrians and drivers.
"We've gotten a lot of complaints about lighter boxes tipping over and all the publications flying about in the wind," says Boulder public-affairs director Jana Peterson. "And we've also heard about their proximity to curbsides. People have told us some of their customers who try to parallel park can't get out of their cars because of newspaper boxes on the curbs. There's only a limited amount of sidewalk space in Boulder, and with the growing number of boxes, we're experiencing growing infringements on rights of way."
Publishers like Randy Miller of the Colorado Daily and Stewart Sallo of the Boulder Weekly (not to mention representatives from Westword) counter that reducing the opportunity for readers to receive a variety of information is a greater infringement.
"To me, this is a First Amendment issue," Miller says. "Some people are concerned that the ordinance might give advantages to larger, paid daily newspapers, because it's not clear how it would be determined what papers would be allowed to go where. But there's no question that the proposal also aims to reduce the number of outlets downtown."
The likelihood that the city would ultimately be in charge of administering the boxes is equally troubling to Sallo. "The First Amendment doesn't envision the government and newspapers doing business together -- and whenever that happens, you have a tremendous potential for corruption. As an alternative newspaper that takes more seriously our role as a watchdog on city government than do mainstream newspapers, that would put us at a disadvantage, because mainstream newspapers are more willing than we are to sidle up to the city to achieve their business objectives."
Newspaper condominiums have already come to Denver: Over twenty of the units will eventually be installed along the 16th Street Mall, and publications that want a slot in them must pay the city a fee for the privilege to cover maintenance and other costs. John Desmond of Downtown Denver Partnership says the condos address "aesthetic and safety concerns," and dismisses the notion that certain spaces in the racks, which were built under the auspices of the Denver Newspaper Agency, are better than others. "It's not like one's along the ground and one's way up in the air -- and I don't see how much of a difference being two feet further down would make."
Such platitudes don't reassure the Weekly's Sallo. "The city wants to expand these boxes to most areas of downtown and University Hill, and if this passes, you have to wonder where they'll want to go next. Which is why we're going to fight like hell to make sure it doesn't pass."
