FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. –Bob’s News and Books is an old-school, mom-and-pop shop serving downtown Fort Lauderdale with the hottest newspaper headlines and glossy magazine covers for over 50 years. But with steep declines in print circulation, the once-traditional newsstand has since evolved into a half-convenience store to stay afloat.
The quaint store on Andrews Avenue is packed with merchandise from banned books wrapped in plastic to be preserved as antiques to oddball titles you won’t find at a typical Barnes & Noble. Across from Broward Health Medical Center, it’s a regular stop for nurses to grab snacks before their shifts, and day-one regulars to pick up lottery tickets, hoping for a life-changing win. Nowadays, fewer customers leave this neighborhood staple with a folded print issue under their arm, as many turn to their digital devices for the latest news.
“People get eBooks and read articles off the internet instead of buying magazines like this,” said Paul Ranni, a Bob’s News regular, licking his thumb to flip through the pages of a motorsport magazine as he sat outside the store. The Fort Lauderdale local calls the shop “unique,” pointing out that there aren’t many newsstands left in the area where you can just walk in and buy print copies off the shelf.
Ranni, 70, says he’s watched the print market shrink as the internet grew. He still prefers the traditional feel of paper and smelling the musty ink of the pages, but admits the shift from print to digital is “unavoidable.” He gave away many old magazine copies that sat untouched in storage bins: “I could have all that stuff on a flash drive and carry it in my pocket.”
“I think there’s always going to be magazines and books, but the market is going to be much, much smaller than it had been in the past. It might level off at a very small segment of the market, but still there,” said Ranni.
Many U.S. newspaper companies’ reader base and revenue have declined since the mid-2000s, according to a 2023 study from Pew Research. Seth Cohen, one of Bob’s News’s original owners, witnessed print sales dropping early in the 1990s. He noted that this began with the rise of the internet, where customers could access free or cheaper versions of publications online.
Cohen, 77, attributed this to the “dwindling” of their best-selling products, making it harder to sell and even buy from distributors who scaled back production of printed publications for the same reason.
In 1975, Cohen purchased Bob’s News from a previous owner with his wife’s family after moving from New Jersey. They also took over two existing newsstands in the area, including Clark’s Out of Town News. In 1999, Bob’s News and Clark’s Out of Town News were voted “Best Newsstand” in Broward County by the New Times Broward-Palm Beach, a local news source. Despite the good news, he says the market began to shift around that time.
When the print retail business hit the fan, the other two newsstands soon began to close down, one page at a time. The shelves at Bob’s News began to gather dust, and their bare wooden racks were exposed. During this time, Cohen and his family went into survival mode to save the last standing newsstand.
“It’s a double-edged sword because you lose your core products without something to replace it with. It was difficult, but you got to roll with the punches,” said Cohen. When the store’s print distributors were halved, and with the space left behind, he replaced what was once a news rack with a beer cooler or converted it into a snack shelf. Now, walking down the jam-packed aisles, one might find a rack of potato chips beside shelves of literature from every genre imaginable.
Walking through the store, a customer can find rows of comics, vintage magazines, and even discounted books. The latest addition is the “Banned Books” aisle, which Cohen says can be seen as part of an “anti-establishment” effort to raise awareness about book bans, especially those in the recent headlines involving the removal of books from libraries or schools.
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Cohen explained that Bob’s News kept its lights on while the other two shut down because of the store’s “edgy” vibe, as it’s a fusion of a smoke shop and an adult store. He said the layout was designed to draw in different crowds and help supplement income, and it started from a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and grew from there. The family also owns the building, which he said kept the closed sign off the door, since rent is a “killer” for many retail shops.
A neon blue “Foreign News” sign from the ceiling indicates the aisle, once a go-to spot for international travelers to pick up issues from their home country. Bob’s News has a sign out front that says “Last Stop Before The Airport,” as the store, located on South Andrews Avenue, is about three miles from the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Erin Steinberg, 44, is the current owner of Bob’s News. He says the longtime regulars are a focal point of the business, but also like a second family as they stop in to share life updates, and buy a cigar on their way out. Steinberg has worked at the store since 1996 and is the third generation in his family to run it. His mother previously managed the business, and his uncle, Cohen, later took over. Steinberg and his uncle were co-owners until Cohen retired.
Steinberg reminisces about picking up hot-off-the-press print copies every day for Bob’s News when he first started working at the newsstand. However, he says that’s no longer the case nowadays, as newspapers have no monetary benefit to the business, calling them a “loss leader.”
“People don’t need to buy the newspaper on Sundays anymore,” said Steinberg, standing behind the cash register with a colorful wall of lottery scratch-off tickets behind him, tallying inventory on his legal pad.
Only one lonely newspaper rack remains in the store. “We’ve got to have it,” Steinberg quipped. “We’re a newsstand.”
Steinberg points out that older clients often buy print media, but he said it all comes down to the person’s age and the generation they grew up in. Still, he says there are rare occurrences, like spotting a white alligator, when a younger customer will pick up a newspaper and their favorite beverage.
For a place built on paper, those rare moments are enough to keep the story going.
This story was produced by MediaLab@FAU, a project of Florida Atlantic University School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, as part of a content sharing partnership with the WLRN newsroom. The reporter can be reached here.
