About Megaphon

Megaphon

Megaphon is a German-language street newspaper published in Graz, the capital of Styria, Austria. It first appeared in October 1995 as a project of Caritas of the Diocese of Graz-Seckau, and reference listings describe it as the earliest street newspaper in Austria. It is published monthly and sold on the street in Graz and other Styrian towns by people in social difficulty: around 270 vendors in precarious circumstances sell roughly 15,000 copies a month, and one half of the sale price remains with the vendor. As a street magazine it delivers socially critical content and promotes cultural diversity, while the act of selling it offers people in precarious living conditions a low-threshold opportunity to earn money. Megaphon is a member of the International Network of Street Papers. Beyond the magazine itself, the project became internationally known in June 2003, when its editorial team organised the first Homeless World Cup in Graz.

Founding by Caritas in 1995

Megaphon is a project of Caritas, the welfare organisation of the Diocese of Graz-Seckau, and its first issue appeared in October 1995. The history of Caritas Styria itself lists the launch of the street magazine Megaphon among the milestones of 1995, in a decade when the organisation was expanding its work with people at the margins of society — the homeless, people with addictions and the long-term unemployed. The initiative for the paper came from Maria Laura Bono, who was also its first editor-in-chief, serving until 1998. With its October 1995 launch Megaphon was, as the German-language reference literature puts it, the first street newspaper in Austria; Vienna's Augustin, which also launched in October 1995 out of an earlier project, shares that founding moment, and the two papers together mark the arrival of the international street paper idea in Austria. From the beginning, Megaphon's structure differed from a commercial magazine: it was embedded in a diocesan welfare organisation, so its editorial office worked alongside Caritas services for the same population that sold the paper.

The street sale model

The selling model is the heart of the project. Megaphon is sold directly on the street in Graz and in several other Styrian towns by people in social need — currently around 270 vendors, according to the Austria-Forum account — and around 15,000 copies are sold each month. Half of the sale price stays with the vendors, giving them a low-threshold way to earn money without the formal requirements of regular employment: no fixed hours contract, no employer's selection process, and an income that depends on their own presence at a pitch. The other half sustains the magazine and the project. Megaphon is a member of the International Network of Street Papers, whose member papers commit themselves to using all proceeds arising from street sales for the support of their vendors. That commitment defines the paper's economics: it is not a fundraising product whose profits leave the project, but a work opportunity in printed form, in which buying a copy from a vendor is simultaneously a purchase, a payment for work and an act of recognition between two citizens who would otherwise rarely speak.

Content: social criticism and cultural diversity

As a street magazine, Megaphon provides socially critical content and fosters cultural diversity. Alongside the editorial section, which treats questions of social policy, the magazine carries cultural information and a calendar of events. Its subjects are those of the street paper genre worldwide: poverty, housing and homelessness, migration and integration, welfare policy and the everyday life of Graz, approached from the standpoint of the people who experience social exclusion rather than administer it. A distinctive educational project was the MegaphonUni, which offered free access to current academic subjects and was aimed expressly at people who, because of their education, origin or social position, have no access to universities — an attempt to carry the university city of Graz's knowledge resources to the paper's own constituency. The magazine thus works in both directions at once: it reports the margins of Styrian society to its general readers in Graz, and it carries culture, information and education back to the vendors and readers who are usually only the objects of such reporting.

Editors and institutional home

The paper's editorial leadership documents its development from a start-up project into an institution. Maria Laura Bono initiated Megaphon and edited it until 1998. Harald Schmied succeeded her and became increasingly involved in developing the Homeless World Cup; in 2004 Judith Schwentner took over as editor-in-chief. Gerhild Wrann led the Megaphon and its café through 2009 and was succeeded in December of that year by Annelies Pichler, who held the editorship from 2010. More recent reference entries record that since 2019 Peter K. Wagner has been responsible for the editorial office and Sabine Gollmann for the project's direction, while the Austria-Forum infobox lists Julia Reiter and Claudio Niggenkemper as editors under the direction of Petra Kaspar-Buchegger; personnel in such projects change, and these names are recorded here as the reference sources give them. The publisher throughout has been Caritas of the Diocese of Graz-Seckau. The editorial and sales operation was based from 2007 in the Auschlössl, a building at the edge of the Augarten park in Graz that also housed a café run by the project — the project's own formulation was that the Auschlössl was a café and Megaphon a street newspaper, and that together they were more than an ordinary café and more than a conventional magazine. Editorial and distribution later moved into the Caritas social centre Marianum in the Mariengasse.

The Homeless World Cup begins in Graz

Megaphon's most famous offshoot began in June 2003, when its editorial team organised the first Homeless World Cup in Graz. Editor Harald Schmied devoted himself increasingly to developing the tournament, and the Graz event became the founding edition of what grew into a global annual competition for homeless and socially marginalised players, later staged in cities around the world. The connection between a street magazine and a football tournament is not accidental: both rest on the same idea, that people excluded from ordinary working and social life gain income, structure, public visibility and self-respect through an organised activity in which the public meets them as participants rather than as cases. For Megaphon, the World Cup projected the Graz project onto the international stage of the street paper movement, in which it already participated through the International Network of Street Papers, and it remains the single best-known event to have come out of an Austrian street newspaper.

Megaphon among Austria's street papers

Megaphon belongs to a small family of Austrian street publications that includes Augustin in Vienna, Apropos in Salzburg, Kupfermuckn in Linz, the 20er in Innsbruck and marie in Vorarlberg. Reference listings of the genre give Megaphon a monthly frequency and a circulation of about 15,000 copies, figures consistent with the Austria-Forum account of roughly 15,000 copies sold per month by some 270 vendors. Its profile within the family is shaped by its ownership: where Augustin is run by an independent association that refuses public funding on principle, Megaphon is a project of a large diocesan welfare organisation, with the professional infrastructure and the pastoral mission of Caritas behind it. That difference produces two distinct models of the same idea in one small country — the independent street paper and the church welfare street paper — and both have proved durable since the shared founding autumn of 1995. Graz's own city histories note Megaphon's monthly appearance with its emphases on social policy and integration as a settled feature of the city's media landscape.

Graz, Styria and the paper's constituency

The paper's territory is Graz and the other towns of Styria, Austria's south-eastern province. Graz is a university city and the seat of the Styria Media Group, publisher of the Kleine Zeitung, the dominant regional daily, so Megaphon operates in the shadow of a strong commercial press whose agenda it complements rather than competes with: no Styrian daily reports poverty and social exclusion from the vendors' side of the transaction, and no other Styrian publication is sold by the people it is about. The vendors themselves are the paper's most visible presence — at shopping streets, markets and station approaches across Graz — and their circumstances define the project's social work context within Caritas, whose Styrian services include emergency assistance, work with refugees and employment projects for the long-term unemployed. The magazine's print run of some 15,000 copies a month is small beside the Kleine Zeitung's regional circulation, but its distribution network of around 270 individual sellers gives it a human presence in Styrian public space out of proportion to its size.

Megaphon today

Today Megaphon continues to appear monthly in Graz as the street magazine of Caritas of the Diocese of Graz-Seckau, sold on the streets of Graz and other Styrian towns by vendors in precarious circumstances who keep half of the sale price. It carries socially critical reporting, cultural information and an events calendar from its base in the Caritas social centre Marianum, and it remains connected to the worldwide street paper movement through the International Network of Street Papers. Thirty years after Maria Laura Bono launched its first issue in October 1995, the paper that reference works call Austria's first street newspaper is still performing its founding double task: giving people in social difficulty a dignified, low-threshold income, and giving the Styrian public a monthly account of its own society written from the pavement up.