Newspaper boxes empty & littering Lee County streets

LEE COUNTY, Fla. – Newspaper and magazine boxes were once a big part of the local landscape, but now they are empty and littering city streets.

The once prominent fixtures of the community now haunt busy streets. They were once filled with publications including information and salacious headlines.

Now residents pass by them every day and don’t give them a second look. Faith Morgan, who helps run Victory Lane Café in North Fort Myers, called the boxes an eyesore.

“My generation we don’t use these,” Morgan said. “We have access to all of this stuff at the tip of our fingers on our phones and such.”

Although some of the papers remain, Morgan who is in her 20s, said she has never heard of them much less read them.

“I don’t know anyone who has, and I’ve been here my whole life,” she said.

That’s about as long as a group of the boxes have been sitting outside of Paul Miller’s Auto Wholesale Dealership in North Fort Myers.

“I think we both have to agree that they’re kind of a bygone thing,” Miller stated.

There are 12 boxes sitting outside the downtown Fort Myers Post Office and the majority again empty.

“Some of them do look pretty shabby from time to time,” said Lee County Commissioner Brian Hamman.

But it turns out there is little to no oversight when it comes to regulating the empty boxes.

“I don’t think it is something government needs to control,” Hamman said. “I think the market is going to take care of this if people stop reading them or buying ads in them. They’ll go away on their own.”

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