A few tattered signs are taped to the walls: “Reading and Writing, Mondays, 12-2.” “Defend Your Rights, free legal help for people in police custody.” “Haircuts Available.” About five middle-aged men wander about, slapping one another on the back and laughing at each other’s jokes. The StreetWise headquarters seems like the place to be.

Writers for the Chicago newspaper beg to differ. After almost a year of unresolved conflict, half of the editorial staff at StreetWise has quit.

“I loved the organization and its goals when I started working there,” says Kari Lydersen, StreetWise’s current associate editor. “But there’s no way anyone could be excited by it at this point.”

You probably meet StreetWise vendors every day, asking you for a dollar and showing off their badges. The vendors are proud to be employed, proud to work for StreetWise. StreetWise is a unique publication in the Chicago area. It is sold entirely by homeless or financially desperate vendors who see StreetWise as a saving grace. Many have gone through the prison system, lost jobs, fought drug addictions and stared down other challenges to a productive life.

The organization was founded 10 years ago as a grassroots non-profit with few resources and a zealous mission statement that stays alive today: “To empower men and women who are homeless or at risk of being so, as they work toward gainful employment and self-sufficiency.”

But despite this noble mission, some StreetWise employees are fed up with bureaucracy, low salaries and questionable priorities. The organization continues to lose staff. Allan Gomez, an editor, quit on Dec. 6, and editor Charity Crouse reported to her last day of work Jan. 17. The two look back on their old employer’s mission statement with frustration.

The editors didn’t always feel abrasive toward StreetWise’s administrative staff. According to Associate Editor Lydersen, Medill ’97, StreetWise was at its peak five years ago, when she joined the writing team. The Work Empowerment Center was just getting off of its feet, with computer classes, abuse treatment, job listings – even an on-site social worker.

“It was an all-around good social service center,” Lydersen says. Vendors would often write for StreetWise, and the events it covered pertained particularly to issues relating to homeless or poverty-stricken people.

Over the past three years, the editing team at StreetWise has seen a complete change in the organization’s goals. While still offering vendor jobs, free Internet and computer use and a limited number of computer and reading classes to its vendors, most of StreetWise’s services have been cut drastically. Last spring, the Work Empowerment Center director, Paula Mathieu, was fired for loudly voicing her complaints against StreetWise’s management. No new replacement has been found. The organization is in desperate need of volunteers and grant money to resurrect some of its previous services.

How did StreetWise lose its former luster? The editors are quick to blame Executive Director Anthony Oliver, who was unavailable for comment on this story.

“He wanted to change the focus, to make it look nicer, to increase circulation and to make it more respected and corporate-friendly,” Lydersen says.

While these sound like perfectly legitimate goals for a paper, the editing team had its suspicions that the real goals lay in making it more profitable for upper management. The mission of guiding the homeless toward self-sufficency left focus entirely.

The newspaper’s way of helping the homeless is multi-faceted. Potential vendors walk into the office at the corner of South Michigan Avenue and 13th Street and sign up with Quality Assurance Team Manager Gregory Pritchett. After filling out the proper paperwork, the vendors take a one-day class on selling the newspaper, taught twice a week by Pritchett. There, they learn methods of motivational speaking, sales techniques and the various rules of selling the paper.

After the session, vendors receive 10 free papers to sell. They may subsequently buy copies of StreetWise for 35 cents apiece and sell them for $1, netting 65 cents profit. Vendors head out to neighborhoods throughout Chicago, most of them to the Loop and its charitable businesspeople and tourists. They often peg grocery stores as fruitful sales spots.

“Obviously, we want the vendors to be expanding their money,” Pritchett says. “But we also have two more goals: to expand their minds and build self-esteem.” The writers and editors of StreetWise take particular issue with the effectiveness of the former goal.

Instead of putting resources into social services for its vendors, the non-profit bought a three-story building on South Michigan Avenue and began to hold StreetWise fund-raising events. The Board of Directors changed from prominent non-profit community leaders to representatives from private businesses and corporations such as United Airlines and Northwestern University. The only notable exceptions are U.S. Congressman Danny K. Davis and one vendor representative.

In addition to a new Board of Directors, StreetWise’s content has been re-vamped and re-worked. Present directives from the directors veer the content toward material that the Loop customers might find interesting: businesses, socially responsible investing, the Internet. The shift away from liberal articles on unions, activism and expos