The Vendor Issue
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 04:31PM By Tim Covi
This issue of the paper is dedicated to Denver VOICE vendors, the hardworking folks that hustle hour after hour each day peddling this monthly newsmagazine.
It’s not an easy job. It takes no small amount of grit to handle such a social enterprise, one that involves as much rejection as it does reward. Almost every vendor doubles down on the emotional impact of the work: most people who are homeless at some point internalize that state of being. They begin to feel that they’re not capable of accomplishing much; their self-worth decays; their self-image gets as beat up as hanger meat. So every “no” can be potentially personal at first. And the flip side, every “yes” can be potentially transformational. If you’re reading this, you’ve taken part in that.
I can be pretty disconnected at times from the street side of the paper as an editor. My focus is on putting together a product that will make our vendors’ jobs easier, a product that people will want to pick up each month. Of course some buyers will simply give our vendors a dollar, take the paper and toss it. But our hope is that by constantly improving our content, we’ll help our vendors get out of that charity niche. Maybe I’m naively optimistic, but I imagine that very few people actually want to live off charity. When it comes to our vendors, I’m quite sure that most want to work for their money, and take pride in their jobs.
I think this synthesis between our vendors and our newspaper is crucial to our product.