1/31/2024 0 Comments Newsrack corralsThe publishers eventually split into two groups, with the daily papers and free periodicals each going their own way. “The boxes were plastic and gray and we weren’t allowed to advertise our name anywhere on them - except in plain white with no logo or anything else identifying the paper.” It’s gotten to the point where there needs to be some rules.”Īccording to Camuto, downtown property owners have been complaining about newsrack clutter since early last year, when they began pressuring their association to launch a six-month pilot project to replace freestanding racks on three downtown street corners. “We have some corners with five or six racks and others that have as many as 15 or 16. “Our city has a problem with rack blight,” says Todd Holzaepfel, vice president of planning and operations for an association that represents businesses in downtown Fort Worth. The City Solutions meeting was just the latest episode in Fort Worth’s year-old progression toward communal racks. “But I think that would be an unwise decision.” “If I thought we could thumb our noses at it, that would be an option,” Camuto says. Although he was amused by the company’s dramatic pitch, Camuto isn’t taking the threat of modular newsracks lightly. Last month, a group of Fort Worth newspaper people met with representatives of City Solutions, a company in the modular newsrack business.ĭuring the meeting, company officials passed out a thick stack of literature proselytizing for communal newsracks, citing “an almost obscene increase in the amount of newsracks on every corner, of every city, throughout America.” City Solutions even had a name for the trend - “RAKBLIGHT” - which was defined as: “hazardous affliction caused by old, ugly, nasty, rusty, broken, battered, big, smelly, stinky chained-together, falling-over, different-color, bug-infested, blocking public-right-of-way.”įW Weekly Publisher Robert Camuto attended the meeting. 23 hearing before Judge Sandra Armstrong, alternative newsweeklies in Indianapolis and Fort Worth are hoping to prevent a similar occurrence from developing in their municipalities. The San Francisco ordinance - approved in June, 1998 - authorizes the city’s Department of Public Works to replace all of San Francisco’s 15,000 freestanding newspaper racks with up to 1,000 multi-unit communal racks, also known as modulars or pedmounts.Īs the parties in San Francisco await their Feb. The lawsuit and a motion for preliminary injunction were filed Jan. The fight over control of San Francisco’s newsracks got uglier recently when a group of six publishers, led by New Times Inc., filed suit in federal court to stop the city from enforcing its new newsrack ordinance. File Suit Papers in Fort Worth and Indianapolis Wait For the Next Shoe to Drop.
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