Symbol Analysis
We first see newspapers in stanza 1, where they litter an empty lot. Later in stanza 3, a woman uses strips of them to curl her hair, which gets her fingers dirty with the ink. Stanza 4 has the newspapers being circulated and read throughout the city, distracting the people from their conscience.
Whether they are adding to the garbage in the streets, staining the people, or distracting them, newspapers are used as a symbol of decay, both of the souls and of the city itself. The newspapers have become dirty in part because of how disposable they are. We can't even escape their influence by going into our homes at night; the ink stains our fingers, just like the stories within the newspapers influence the way we think about an ever-changing, often-depressing, society. For a poem that equates distraction with decay, it's a pretty apt symbol.