BISS (street newspaper)

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BISS - citizens in social trouble
logo
description Street newspaper
publishing company BISS eV
First edition 17th October 1993
Frequency of publication per month
Sold edition 38,000 copies
( BISS )
Editor-in-chief Margit Roth
editor BISS eV
Manager Karin Lohr
Web link www.biss-magazin.de
Entrance to the editorial office in Metzstrasse

BISS ( B CITIZENS i n s ozialen S chwierigkeiten) is a monthly Munich street newspaper that citizens in social difficulties helps to help themselves. It has been published since October 1993 .

The BISS project

BISS has a monthly circulation of 41,000 copies and employs 55 of its approximately 100 salespeople as permanent salespeople. BISS has a total of 59 permanent employees, supported by 15 freelancers such as photographers and journalists (February 2017). The newspaper relies on work as the key to integration and creates jobs subject to social security contributions for salespeople who have no chance on the labor market. The selling price is 2.20 euros, of which the homeless and needy sellers are allowed to keep 1.10 euros. The turnover amounts to 500,000 euros per year. Another 500,000 euros are raised through donations. BISS is supported by the Rudolph Moshammer Verein Licht für Homeless e. V.

The salespeople write their own articles about their everyday life in the “writing workshop”, which appear monthly in a separate section. They are assisted by three journalists in creating the articles.

BISS is only sold on the street, not at your doorstep. The sellers visibly carry their ID with them. The BISS newspaper is a member of the INSP international network of street newspapers .

Emergence

BISS was developed in the course of several seminars on the premises of the Academy of the Bavarian Press , the training and further education institute of the Bavarian newspaper and magazine publishers. The lecturer was Klaus Honigschnabel, today press spokesman for the Inner Mission Munich .

The model was the London street newspaper The Big Issue , which journalists produce and sell homeless people. Unlike in London, the homeless in Munich should also be involved in the creation of the magazine - albeit in cooperation with professional newspaper makers, as Jürgen Micksch reports, the deputy director of the Evangelical Academy Tutzing from 1984 to 1993. The team around Micksch won Christian Schneider von the Süddeutsche Zeitung , Klaus Honigschnabel from the Academy of the Bavarian Press, Nicole Üblacker for the graphics and the printer's owner Hans Venus, who was ready to print the first issue free of charge. MD Papier GmbH donated the paper.

After Micksch moved from the Tutzing Academy to the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau , Klaus Honigschnabel took over the coordination of the planning. The first edition of BISS was presented on October 17, 1993 - International Poverty Day. Micksch reports: “I have never forgotten a journalist's question whether he could ask one of the homeless people present what he has been doing so far. I told him that everyone is ready for such information. He chose one: “It happened to be Hans Gamber , who lives in a men's dormitory in Munich and was involved with Biss.” The interviewee then said that he used to be a journalist. That came as a shock to the media representatives. "

The first edition sold out quickly and had to be reprinted several times. BISS was the first street magazine in Germany. There are now over thirty more or less similar projects.

Hotel BISS

The sponsoring association of the homeless newspaper had plans to set up a four-star hotel in the 100-year-old former women's prison Am Neudeck in Munich after the prison was moved to a new building. The hotel should employ 25 socially disadvantaged people. The financial requirements for the project, which is so far unique in Germany, are estimated at 13 to 14 million euros and are to be financed through both loans and donations. The target group should be tourists who find it attractive to spend the night behind bars and at the same time want to support a social idea. The project failed because the prison was sold to another investor.
The Munich documentary filmmaker Wolfgang Ettlich accompanied the fight and the efforts for the Hotel BISS project from 2009 to 2011 with his team. The resulting long-term observation of 70 minutes in length was shown on May 3rd and 5th, 2012 at the International Documentary Film Festival in Munich and was broadcast for the first time on June 12th, 2012 on Bavarian television .

Awards

  • In 2007 BISS received the Regine Hildebrandt Prize from the Solidarity Foundation (Bielefeld)
  • In 2009 BISS was awarded the Julius Dirmann Foundation Prize for Aid for the Elderly (Munich)
  • In 2010, the SPD parliamentary group in the Bavarian parliament awarded BISS the Wilhelm Hoegner Prize . BISS received the award together with the magazines Donaustrudl from Regensburg, Riss from Augsburg and Straßenkreuzer from Nuremberg.
  • In 2011, Hildegard Denninger, who has been managing director since 1994, was awarded the St. Michaelsbund's social award

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d The biss-magazin.de project, accessed March 3, 2016
  2. ↑ www.street-papers.com
  3. ↑ Evangelische Akademie Tutzing: The emergence of BISS , current issues , April 25, 2013
  4. ↑ Evangelische Akademie Tutzing: The emergence of BISS , current issues , April 25, 2013
  5. ^ Hotel BISS: We lost. The Am Neudeck property goes to the highest bidder (PDF; 18 kB), hotel-biss.de, press release from May 25, 2011, accessed on November 21, 2011
  6. ^ Parliamentary group of the Bavarian State Parliament ( Memento from December 23, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  7. ↑ BISS - this woman is behind the street newspaper, SAT1 Bayern, article from November 11, 2011 ( Memento from September 12, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )