The City of New Westminster is putting on the back burner its decision to remove boxes carrying free newspapers like the Georgia Straight from its downtown core. The ban was to take effect on January 1, 2008.

“What we’re doing is we’re deferring any action on that matter,” Jim Lowrie, the city’s director of engineering, told the Straight. “What we’d like to do is discuss some of the problems that we are having with the boxes with the view of seeking some cooperation and compliance with the use of the city streets.”

Lowrie said that the city will hold consultations with publishers in early 2008. On October 1 this year, council approved a staff report recommending the ban because of litter problems associated with discarded free newspapers.

Robert Hackett, a communication professor at Simon Fraser University, welcomed the move to reconsider the ban. “There are other ways of dealing with litter, like recycling,” Hackett told the Straight. “This enables the continued distribution of papers that add diversity in Vancouver’s press.”

Hackett told the Straight that preventing the circulation of free newspapers constitutes a form of censorship. “It’s a question in a sense of freedom of the press,” he said. “It’s not an outright act of censorship, but inhibiting the distribution of these papers constitutes a certain threat to their economic viability, which can have an unintended censoring effect.”