A family affair: The Northeast Times was owned by the Lawson-Smylie family for 65 years. Above, former publisher Robert Smylie smiles for a photo in the late 1990s. TIMES FILE PHOTO
Academics and historians tell us that the Information Age began in the 1970s with the advent of the Internet and it exploded in the 1990s with the development of the World Wide Web. But in Northeast Philadelphia, it began decades earlier when a Temple University journalism student named Richard Thorpe Lawson used a class project to create a mock-up newspaper that he called the Rising Sun Times.
America was in the midst of the Great Depression in winter 1934, so it’s hard to imagine that even the most seasoned publisher or savvy entrepreneur would’ve been able to launch a viable, profitable and sustainable newspaper in a new, sporadically populated neighborhood, Mayfair, where grand plans for development had slowed due to economic conditions and an imminent world war.
But Lawson’s class project had legs. Early feedback prompted the young, hard-working Lawson to turn it into a commercial enterprise: a vehicle for delivering hyper-local news and information to readers, while offering advertisers an acutely targeted audience.
More than 80 years later, what would become the Northeast Times is still serving the Northeast, a region of Philadelphia that covers about 47 square miles and is home to more than 425,000 people. With weekly circulation of more than 110,000, the Times remains popular and relevant … despite the Internet.
“Everyone keeps telling me that newspapers are going out of business,” said Darwin Oordt, CEO of the Times’ parent company, Broad Street Media. “They said that when television became popular in the 1950s and they have never quit saying it even though it is obviously not true. As long as newspapers continue to provide people with information they want and need, they will continue to be around.”
The paper’s format has changed dramatically through the decades, although its central mission and appeal have endured. A 1985 column written by longtime owner and publisher Eleanor Smylie for the paper’s 50th anniversary edition referenced the modest beginnings.
“What started in 1934 as a four-page newspaper, known as the Rising Sun Times, with one employee, has grown over the past 50 years to be the largest group of weekly newspapers in Philadelphia,” wrote Smylie, who passed away in 1998.
Lawson was that one-man show. He invested his own savings and obtained bank loans to finance the paper, which he named the Mayfair Times. He handled the editorial side of the business, advertising sales, production and circulation, delivering the paper to doorsteps in its namesake community.
In time, Lawson bought a typesetting machine and printing press and hired some help. In 1944, he acquired the Athenaeum building in Holmesburg, a century-old former meeting hall, library and bank on Frankford Avenue between Rhawn Street and Welsh Road. It would serve as the Times’ headquarters for the next 47 years.
It would also be where Lawson met his future bride, Eleanor, whose first job with the paper was to author weekly summaries of popular serial comic strips, enabling readers to keep up with the storylines although the paper was not licensed to publish the strips in their entirety.
Eventually, the Times bought the rights to the syndicated strips and published them in color, which was rare for the era.
“Whether it was a college project or the first issue he put together for the general public, my father was an innovator,” said the Lawsons’ son, Robert Smylie, who served as the paper’s publisher for many years. “I was told he was the first one to try color comics. He was trying to put together the best product, the best newspaper he could. … He also tried a daily edition at one time. We found a nameplate for the ‘Northeast Daily Times.’ ”
That concept didn’t survive, but the paper thrived anyway. Residential and commercial development boomed in Mayfair in the post-World War II years, giving the Times a perfect platform for growth. Lawson launched new editions in other established neighborhoods such as Holmesburg, Tacony and Frankford with each edition named for the community it served.
“After the war, that’s when all of those houses were built. People came and businesses followed,” Robert Smylie said.
Lawson passed away on Jan. 2, 1961, leaving his widow, Eleanor, to manage the business. When Eleanor Lawson remarried, both she and young Robert adopted the name of her new husband, Joseph Smylie. The couple had another son, Timothy, who would eventually become the company’s advertising director.
The 1970s brought rebranding to what had become known as Times Newspapers. The company did away with neighborhood-specific mastheads and relaunched all editions as the Northeast Times with a system of numbered territories known as zones. The paper converted from a broadsheet to a tabloid format around the same time.
Eleanor Smylie directed another growth spurt in the 1980s when the Times’ footprint expanded into the Far Northeast, including Bustleton, Somerton and Parkwood. The company had close to 100 employees and, in 1987, bought the Bucks County Midweek, a group of suburban shopper-style publications.
The new ProMedia Publishing consolidated under one roof in 1991 when the Smylies relocated the company’s headquarters to Trevose, although they retained a physical presence in the Northeast in the Smylie Times Building at Roosevelt Boulevard and Rhawn Street. As Robert Smylie moved into the publisher’s role, his mother oversaw operations from her office in the Northeast.
The newspaper industry was facing many growing challenges from digital media by 1998 when Eleanor Smylie passed away, leaving the Times and its sister publications to her children. Early the following year, Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., the parent company of the Inquirer and Daily News, offered to buy ProMedia.
Years earlier, The Philadelphia Inquirer had created “Neighbors” sections in the Northeast and suburbs in an obvious effort to compete with established papers in those areas for advertising revenue. Neighbors didn’t last.
“The success of the (Times) can only be attributed to the people of the Northeast,” Oordt said. “They want community news that is separate from Center City and other areas. The Northeast Times gives them that. That’s why we’re the number one paper in the Northeast.”
PNI, which was a subsidiary of the national Knight-Ridder chain, bought the Times and its sister papers in February 1999, ending 65 years of Lawson-Smylie ownership. Bob Smylie stayed on as publisher for a time, but eventually retired to Florida. His fondest memories of his newspaper career involve the people that made the company a joyful place to work.
“It was a great business and I enjoyed it,” Smylie said. “We had a good group of people who enjoyed the work they were doing.”
The Times and its sister papers, which ultimately included weeklies throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, along with the Star newspapers in Philadelphia’s river wards, returned to local ownership in 2006 when a group of investors led by Brian Tierney bought PNI. But the financially struggling Inquirer and Daily News doomed that venture.
Oordt and a group of investors bought the Times and its associated weeklies four years later in December 2010. The partners named veteran newspaper executive Perry Corsetti as publisher. Much like the Times’ founder, the modern day leadership wants to embrace innovation while staying true to the company’s roots.
“The role is to keep the people informed on what is happening in their community. That might mean informing them of sales at local stores, the outcome of the high school football game or of a controversial topic that concerns them,” Oordt said.
“I hope that we continue to improve the newspaper. Although I think we are producing a quality product, we have to be open to changing and improving just as the Northeast changes and improves.” ••
The Athenaeum building in Holmesburg, a century-old former meeting hall, library and bank, served as the Northeast Times’ headquarters for 47 years. MARIA POUCHNIKOVA / TIMES PHOTO
An old photo of the former Times building is shown from a collection published by Rudy DeFinis. MARIA POUCHNIKOVA / TIMES PHOTO
