TUESDAY, APRIL 10 — They’re at it again.

Ten years after news boxes were banned from Beacon Hill, freedom of speech is now under assault in the Back Bay.

On Wednesday, April 11, the Back Bay Architectural Commission will hold a hearing on a proposal by the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay to ban all news boxes. The area that would be covered extends from Arlington Street to Charlesgate East and from Boylston Street to Back Street, the alleyway between Beacon Street and Storrow Drive.

Wednesday’s hearing will take place at 5 p.m. in Room 900 at City Hall. The proceedings will be open to the public, and opponents — such as WBZ Radio (AM 1030) talk-show host David Brudnoy, a resident of the Back Bay — are urging neighbors to show up and speak out. “I’m not much of a neighborhood activist, but this whole thing pisses me off,” says Brudnoy, who wrote a letter to the commission objecting to the ban, an edited version of which appears below.

The ban would have a significant impact on paid-circulation newspapers such as the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the New York Times. And it would have a devastating effect on the Boston Phoenix, which a little more than a year ago switched to free circulation and is distributed almost entirely via news boxes in Greater Boston. Similarly affected would be the Phoenix’s sister publication Stuff@Night as well as the Boston Tab, the Improper Bostonian, and a host of other free newspapers and magazines.

John Devereaux, vice-chairman of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, says his organization first brought its proposed ban before the commission a year ago, and has been pushing the commission to act ever since. “The Neighborhood Association feels that the visual blight and eyesore detracts from the architectural character of the district,” he says comparing the proposed ban to signage regulation.

Asked about the impact on free-distribution newspapers such as the Phoenix, Devereaux replied that the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, in upholding the Beacon Hill ban in 1996, required only that there be “alternative sources” available for distribution, such as home delivery or placement in stores. “You have the freedom to go back and distribute it the way you did before,” he says.

Oddly enough, it’s not at all clear what the Back Bay Architectural Commission can do about the proposed ban. According to William Young, senior preservation planner for the commission, the law that created the board makes no provision for hearing or voting on such petitions. Asked whether such a ban would eventually have to go before the city council, the mayor’s office, or both, Young replied, “This whole process is really uncharted territory. The petition process is not laid out in the legislation, so I cannot lay out for you or anyone what might follow a commission determination to enact such a ban.”

The commission comprises nine full members and five alternates, nominated by various constituency groups (the Back Bay Neighborhood Association is among them, as well as the Back Bay Association, the Boston Society of Architects, and the Greater Boston Real Estate Board), and appointed by the mayor.

As the Phoenix observed in an editorial last year, after some 31 news boxes were swept out of Somerville’s Davis Square, the First Amendment is meaningless if news organizations are not able to distribute their message (see “Spreading the News,” Editorial, June 16, 2000). {Link http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/00/06/15/editorial.html}

It’s one thing to regulate — no news organization has the right to create a safety hazard or a public nuisance through its placement of news boxes. But the Back Bay neighborhood group, by seeking an outright ban, goes considerably beyond any conceivable need to regulate. The Back Bay Architectural Commission needs to hear that message.

The following is an edited version of David Brudnoy’s letter to William Young, senior preservation planner for the Back Bay Architectural Commission, which is reproduced here with Brudnoy’s permission:

Dear Mr. Young,

I appreciate your kindness in making my thoughts available to your fellow commissioners and to other interested parties concerning the news boxes in the Back Bay.

While the boxes are sometimes unsightly, and while graffiti " artists " occasionally mar them, and while sometimes these boxes are untended for a time, even after they have been defaced -- while, in short, they are not gorgeous works of art (though not as hideous as those cod that we put up with for months) and often need repair -- they provide a needed service both to the residents of the Back Bay, among them me, and to the purveyors of information and opinion.

Those who would have these boxes removed may to some extent be motivated by an aesthetic consideration, and for some by a type of snobbism all too common in our neighborhood. The effect of removing these boxes would be harmful to the people who live here and to the publications themselves. The paid publications, particularly the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, are subscribed to by many -- I'm one -- but picked up on the way to work by many others. The way those paid newspapers are purchased includes, vitally, subscriptions, vendors, and news boxes.

The free publications, among them the Boston Tab, the Boston Phoenix, the Improper Bostonian, and some others, are distributed in those boxes, paid for by advertisers who are under the correct assumption that people read those publications and therefore read the ads. The only way that residents can get those publications is by picking them up in the news boxes. Some publications, like the Bay Back Courant, an estimable weekly, are distributed by placing the newspaper in the lobbies of buildings. If suddenly the Phoenix, the Tab, the Improper Bostonian, and others all were to ask for space in the lobbies of buildings, the answer would be: No, no room, sorry, go away. Ultimately these publications would be available to nobody, since they cost the reader nothing, the advertisers would thereby withdraw their ads, and the companies that publish these newspapers would perhaps even go out of business.

The effect of banning these boxes, however irritating their lack of exquisiteness may be to folks who regard the Back Bay as a kind of Fantasyland of gorgeous 19th-century buildings that should never be " marred " by anything so unsightly as a reminder that we live in the 21st century, would be to deprive the newspapers of revenues and hence of the chance to survive. It would restrict our ability to read a variety of news and opinion items, it would stifle an aspect of freedom of the press -- if you can't be read because nobody can find you, then you can't transmit ideas, and there goes the freedom of the press to exist -- and it would serve no purpose whatsoever in regard to beautification. A commitment by the publishers to maintain the boxes in excellent order, to surveil those boxes on a frequent basis, and to attempt in short order to find a more appealing box design would be a better and more equitable solution.

From me, one writer who appears routinely in one of these publications and occasionally in several of the others, and a 25-year resident of the Back Bay, this is a plea to protect our access to news and opinion and to enhance the economic well-being of (among others) the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Boston Tab, the Boston Phoenix, the Improper Bostonian, the . . . and on and on.

Ideally we should have many more boxes, not fewer, on as many street corners as possible. Parking meters aren't pretty, but they're necessary. Advisory signs about limited parking and cleaning hours and such aren't pretty, but they're necessary. Parades and the disruptive marathon aren't pretty or pleasant for the neighbors but we endure them and get on with our lives. The news boxes aren't pretty, either, but they're necessary for readers to learn and publishers to thrive and writers to have jobs writing for publications that thrive.

The Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay’s crusade to rid the Back Bay of publications that can only be got free and through these news boxes and the major dailies that can be found for many only through these boxes -- because not all feel economically able to subscribe, and therefore they pick up the newspapers on an as-needed basis -- is one that should be opposed and is, here, opposed. I implore the Back Bay Architectural Commission to endorse the presence of these boxes, to approve the situating of even more boxes, in as many places as the publishers want to place them, to urge the publishers to maintain them better, and to try to educate the people who oppose the boxes to the freedom of expression aspect and the economic well-being of writers and publishers aspect as well.

I hope that many people will attend the open meeting this Wednesday at 5 p.m. in Room 900 in City Hall. I would attend myself but my work hours make that impossible. I shall alert neighbors to this meeting so that a wide range of opinions will be heard, and I hope that the publishers of all the publications that would be seriously compromised, even perhaps destroyed, by the NABB's obsession on this matter, will also be informed, so that they can come and make the case for the freedom of their publications to exist and to thrive.

Sincerely,

David Brudnoy

Commonwealth Avenue

Boston

Issue Date: April 10, 2001