About BISS

BISS

BISS — Bürger in sozialen Schwierigkeiten — is Munich's monthly street paper, published since 17 October 1993 by the association BISS e.V. It helps citizens in social difficulties help themselves: the newspaper creates work as the key to integration, offering the vendors who have no chance on the labor market socially insured jobs. With a monthly circulation of some 38,000 to 41,000 copies and around 100 vendors — 55 of them permanently employed — BISS is one of Germany's largest street papers and a member of the International Network of Street Papers (INSP). Under editor-in-chief Margit Roth and managing director Karin Lohr, the paper combines professional journalism with the vendors' own voices: in the "Schreibwerkstatt" (writing workshop), the vendors write their own articles about their everyday lives, supported by three journalists.

Overview

The street paper is the social enterprise as medium: the vendors — homeless and needy people — buy the paper and sell it on the street, keeping half the cover price. BISS sells for 2.80 euros, of which the vendors keep 1.40 euros. The employment model deserves its economic explanation. The street paper's 55 permanently employed vendors are the German street-paper landscape's exception: where most papers offer the vendors the self-employed sale, BISS offers the socially insured job — the pension, the health insurance, the unemployment insurance. For people with no labor-market chance — the long-term homeless, the unemployable — this is the integration the paper's motto promises: work as the key. The 59 permanent employees include the editorial, the production, and the social-work staff; the 15 freelancers add the photography and the journalism. The economics — the 500,000 euros in sales plus the 500,000 in donations — show the model's hybrid nature: half business, half charity, fully social enterprise. The Moshammer association's support — the Munich fashion designer's posthumous commitment through part of his estate — gave the enterprise its financial backbone.

The paper is sold only on the street — never door to door — and the vendors carry their vendor ID visibly. The rules are strict: no selling while intoxicated, no alcohol consumption during the sale, no begging alongside. The editorial concept pairs the professional journalism with the affected people's perspective: the vendors' writing workshop produces the monthly section of first-person articles about life on the margins. The BISS Stiftung (foundation), founded in November 2008, extends the work into affordable housing for socially disadvantaged people.

History

BISS appeared on 17 October 1993 — two weeks before Hamburg's Hinz&Kunzt — in the founding wave of German street papers that followed Cologne's BankExpress/BankExtra (1992), itself inspired by New York's Street News (1989) and London's The Big Issue (1991). The co-founder and name inventor was Hermann Swoboda (1946–2006) — the businessman bankrupted in his youth who wrote for BISS, sold the paper himself, and kept supplying ideas. Swoboda's disillusionment deserves the honest telling. The co-founder who invented the BISS name — the bankrupt businessman turned street-paper idealist — had imagined the paper as the enlightenment instrument: a broad readership learning about socially disadvantaged citizens' rights and problems. What he saw instead, in his later years, was the transaction without the reading: the buyers purchasing the begging instrument, the paper unread. His withdrawal — first to the "Filser" column, then to silence — was the founder's protest against his own creation's success: at his 2006 death, BISS was Germany's second-largest street paper by circulation, the commercial triumph of the project whose educational mission he felt unfulfilled. The paper's subsequent history — the foundation, the housing, the writing workshop — can be read as the long answer to Swoboda's doubt: the vendors writing their own articles, the readers meeting them on the city tours, the social enterprise proving that the paper is read because the sellers are met.

At Swoboda's death in January 2006, BISS was Germany's street paper with the second-highest circulation. The Rudolph Moshammer association's support — including part of Moshammer's estate — secured the finances. The November 2008 foundation of the BISS Stiftung added the housing mission: procuring affordable living space for socially disadvantaged people. Through three decades, the association — Karin Lohr as managing director — has grown the social enterprise: the 59 permanent employees, the vendor employment, the writing workshop, and the foundation's housing work. The editorial office in Munich's Metzstraße remains the paper's home.

Coverage and Content

The monthly paper covers the city from the margins' perspective. The vendors' writing-workshop section carries the first-person articles: the everyday life in social difficulty, the homelessness, the bureaucracy, and the small victories — written by the affected people themselves with journalistic support. The professional journalism covers the social topics: the poverty, the housing emergency, the homelessness services, the labor market, and the city politics. The Munich focus — the vendors selling on Munich's streets — grounds the coverage in the city's social geography: the Ostfriedhof city tours, the Dynamo workshops, the vendor community.

The paper's journalism serves the dual readership: the buyers who want the good paper and the vendors who want the dignified work. The German street-paper landscape gives BISS its comparative position. The 1992–1993 founding wave — Cologne's BankExpress, Munich's BISS, Hamburg's Hinz&Kunzt — created the more-than-thirty local papers that by 2006 formed Germany's street-paper field, with a 2010 monthly total circulation of 250,000. BISS and Hinz&Kunzt — the Munich and Hamburg papers — became the two giants: the professionalized city magazines with the permanent editorial teams, the social-enterprise employment, and the foundation work. The INSP membership — the International Network of Street Papers — connects the Munich paper to the global movement from New York's Street News through London's Big Issue to the papers of five continents. The writing workshop — the vendors' own articles supported by three journalists — is the movement's participatory ideal in practice: the affected people not as the subjects but as the authors. The foundation's housing work — the affordable apartments for the socially disadvantaged — extends the paper's mission beyond the journalism: from the street sale to the stable home.

Organization and Ownership

BISS is published by the association BISS – Bürger in sozialen Schwierigkeiten e.V., Munich. The editor-in-chief is Margit Roth; the managing director (Geschäftsführerin) is Karin Lohr. The association employs 59 permanent staff — including the 55 permanently employed vendors — supported by 15 freelancers. The BISS Stiftung, founded in November 2008, carries the housing mission. The paper is a member of the International Network of Street Papers (INSP).

Commercially, the paper follows the street-paper model: the vendors buy each copy and sell it for 2.80 euros, keeping 1.40 — the 500,000-euro annual turnover — plus the donations of another 500,000 euros yearly. The supporters include the Rudolph Moshammer Verein Licht für Obdachlose e.V. The social enterprise's economics — the work as the key to integration — make the donors the co-financiers of the employment: the readers' purchase and the donors' gifts funding the socially insured jobs.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital home is biss-magazin.de, the portal carrying the paper's content, the vendor information, and the donation channels. The digital presence serves the street paper's specific needs: the readers finding the vendors, the donors finding the foundation, and the public finding the social mission. The city tours — the guides from the vendor community showing Munich from the street's perspective — extend the brand into the lived encounter.

The digital strategy follows the social-enterprise logic: the print monthly for the street sale — the vendors' workplace — the website for the information and the donations, and the tours for the personal encounter. As Munich's street paper — from the October 1993 founding through Swoboda's idealism to the foundation's housing work — BISS remains the citizens-in-social-difficulties' medium and employer: the paper the vendors sell, the workshop where they write, the jobs that insure them — monthly on Munich's streets, always at biss-magazin.de.