Real Change - History and Circulation

History and Circulation

Real Change has been published by the Real Change Homeless Empowerment Project since 1994; the paper's founder, Tim Harris, had founded the Spare Change News street newspaper in the Boston area in 1992, and started Real Change when he moved to Seattle. It started off as a monthly paper with only one staff member, but later became bi-weekly. In February 2005, because of increasing sales and interest in the paper, Real Change started to be published weekly, making it the second weekly street newspaper in the country. In addition to becoming a weekly newspaper, it hired several professional journalists and shifted its focus so that it also covered mainstream news, rather than only poverty issues.

As a biweekly, it sold about 18,000 copies every two weeks, and after becoming weekly it sold 11,000 copies a week in 2005, making it one of the most widely circulated street newspapers in the United States; it sold slightly over 450,000 copies total in 2004. In 2008 it sold about 72,000 copies in the month of December.

The paper is funded mainly by sales and advertising, which made up 40% of its revenue in 2004, and by private donations, which made up about 35%.