Dear Readers,

As 2024 comes to a close, Americans are emotionally strained from the threats to our democracy, catastrophic hurricanes fueled by global warming, and concerns that wider wars are on the horizon.

I look forward to the promise of a new year, in hope that we can find strength in unity as we work towards resolving difficult conflicts, launching new initiatives, and responsibly rebuilding communities that are vulnerable to climate change disasters.

Instead of using this letter to provide insight into stories, I am taking the opportunity to announce my retirement as Editor-In-Chief of Witherspoon Media Group, and to share a bit of my own personal journey. It is a Princeton-centric story driven by family, perseverance, and fate.

After 27 years of working at Town Topics newspaper and 15 years of publishing Princeton Magazine, it’s time for me to step away. There are many people I want to thank but I need to begin with the early days, when Jeb Stuart and Bob Hillier expressed their trust and confidence in me.

In 1998 I was burnt out from working in New York City five days a week and having two elementary school-aged children back in Princeton. I felt the stress of living a double life; split between having a design business in Soho, and wanting to have dinner with my kids and attend their sports games and concerts.

On a cold day in February our nanny picked up my children at Community Park School, and during the drive home, the car was rear-ended on Rosedale Road.

I’ll never forget the phone call I received from an emergency room nurse at Princeton Hospital, explaining that my children seemed to be okay, but they were wearing neck braces out of an abundance of caution. The nanny was a few months pregnant and thankfully wasn’t hurt.

During the longest commute of my life, I made up my mind that I wasn’t going back to working in Manhattan.

Several days later I mustered up the courage to retrieve backpacks and other items from the car, which had been towed to Larini’s on Alexander Street. I was stunned to see the car crushed like a tin can and the shattered glass covering the seats.

The accident was a life-changing moment for me, and I was determined to find a new job in Princeton that was centered around the community.

The answer came on a Wednesday in the classified section of the Town Topics. They needed an advertising sales representative and I jumped at the opportunity.

I had just become aware of Town Topics years earlier, while living in Michigan and considering relocating to Princeton. I reached out to Callaway Real Estate and they mailed me a few copies of the newspaper to become better acquainted with the town. Princeton reminded me of Ann Arbor, which I adored, and the close proximity to New York City was beneficial to my work.

I had been an avid fan of a community newspaper in Michigan called the Birmingham Eccentric, and Town Topics was far superior. Sadly, the Eccentric lost its charm when it was purchased by a large media group. I shared that story during my Town Topics interview with Jeb Stuart, and I believe it struck a chord.

Jeb was an old school newspaper man and used to say he had ink running through his veins. His father and uncle started the paper in 1946, and Jeb didn’t feel the need to modernize much.

When I first began working at Town Topics, there was no email and much of the staff used typewriters. The newspaper was assembled by cutting and pasting, which involved X-Acto knives, scissors, rulers, proportion wheels, and running strips of printed paper through a waxer. Every Tuesday we took turns driving the pasted-up pages to the printer located in Lakewood, which was over an hour away. When it was my turn to drive the paper,
I got home around 11 p.m.

The office occupied the first floor of 4 Mercer Street, which is an Empire-style brick building with a mansard slate roof. Many Princeton residents refer to the building as the “old Town Topics building” and are aware it was moved to its current location to make room for the Princeton Battle Monument.

Town Topics enjoyed a sweetheart lease with Princeton University, which owned the building, and consequently Jeb rarely asked for improvements or repairs. After we purchased the newspaper, chips of paint began dropping from the ceiling, and when I contacted the University, their records showed the office was last painted in the 1950s.

The building’s cavernous basement had remnants of horse stables and the apartments upstairs were vacant, other than the occasional family of squirrels. I ventured upstairs several times and the dusty rooms contained Victorian clawfoot bathtubs, old telephones, 1940s-era wallpaper, and Empire-styled crown moldings and fireplaces.

Despite the lack of proper heating and cooling, I was in awe of the building. The office was a beehive of activity and I became enamored with Town Topics for its history and role in the community.

The building was originally occupied by Priest’s Pharmacy, and a senior coworker said her father once worked delivering prescriptions on his bike.

When Jeb was a teenager, old Mrs. Priest lived upstairs with her nurse. Jeb liked to tell the story of how Mrs. Priest would occasionally fall out of bed and the nurse would ask for Jeb’s help in lifting her back into bed.

The story about Mrs. Priest was just one of many colorful eccentricities. The group of women who ruled the front of the office played a game of using the alias name of Betty, just in case a patron called Jeb with a complaint about one of them. The women also had strong opinions about keeping the price of classified ads low and voiced their disappointment with the closure of Lahiere’s Restaurant and Micawber Books.

They were appalled when Thomas Sweet stopped selling ice cream in Palmer Square and chuckled at Edith’s sexy lingerie ads. An office romance, which the ladies pretended not to notice, was memorable when it abruptly ended with a vivid display of drama.

On the anniversary of Cissy Stuart’s unsolved murder, a dark cloud hung over the office when the Trentonian newspaper called Jeb for a quote about his mother’s death.

Every Wednesday, well before dawn, the papers were delivered into our garage. Carriers sat in their cars in all sorts of weather — rolling and wrapping rubber bands around the papers they threw into driveways. It wasn’t uncommon for weary carriers to nap on the floor of Jeb’s office before heading off to their primary jobs. Everyone respected the carriers and Jeb appreciated their tenacity.

Some papers were delivered by mail and they were tossed through a window into the office, where Jeb used a vintage contraption to label them. The labels were printed the day before using a noisy dot matrix printer that had a tendency to jam.

Printed labels were fed through the heavy metal device which had a long arm that Jeb pumped while a helper passed him papers and refilled the glue using an old baby bottle.

A certain tempo was required to ensure a steady pace, and Jeb had it down to a science. After the papers were labeled, they were passed through the window again, and Jeb hauled them to the Princeton Post Office at Carnegie Center.

The process left him covered with newsprint and extremely satisfied that another issue “was a wrap.” After getting cleaned up, Jeb frequently enjoyed a Wednesday afternoon round of golf at Bedens Brook Club.

During the early days, residents would stop by the office asking to look through the leather-bound volumes of past issues in search of old articles, birth announcements, or obituaries. Oddly enough, the bound volumes were stored in a tall bookcase in the ladies’ room and a ladder was required to get them down. Jeb was more than happy to retrieve the requested volumes and bring them into the front office where the visitors sat and browsed through the old papers. (Today, Town Topics’ digital archives can be accessed at the Princeton Public Library.)

On a daily basis, we provided out-of-town visitors with a wealth of information about local history, and the most frequent inquiry was for the address of Albert Einstein’s house.

As time passed, the rhythm of my life echoed the newspaper’s production schedule. I became very comfortable with deadlines but dreaded nor’easters and power outages. During snowstorms, Jeb put staff up at the Nassau Inn to make sure that we got the paper out. During an extended power outage, we ran long extension cords through the windows of the composing room to our nice neighbors at the Nassau Club, because they had backup generators.

It didn’t take long before I was smitten with this quirky little jewel of a business and I asked my lawyer, Shawn Neufeld, to call Jeb and inquire if he would entertain selling. It was a bold move given I didn’t have the money.

Jeb had been dealing with serious health issues and his children did not want to take over the business. After much soul searching, he agreed to sell.

Next, I needed a loan and went to every bank in town. It quickly became apparent that banks were only willing to base a loan on my assets. The business only had one asset — its name.

Not willing to give up, I invited the staff to meet at the old Princeton Public Library and asked them to invest. A few agreed but I was still short, so I connected with a high-profile media executive who lived in the Western Section.

Sitting in his living room with his children quietly playing games on the floor, I complimented him on his elegant stone house. I remember him responding that a number of the bathrooms didn’t function because the repairs required chiseling through stone walls.

After sharing the financials with the executive, I was devastated when he attempted to solely purchase Town Topics and cut me out of the deal. I thought it was over and was contemplating my next move when, to everyone’s surprise, Jeb declined the executive’s offer.

That is when Bob Hillier came into the picture and saved the day!

Early on a Saturday morning we met at Sneddon’s Luncheonette on Bridge Street in Lambertville and he agreed to invest, while enjoying eggs and toast. (Years later, the media executive said it all worked out as it should have.)

When I dove head first into modernizing the business, I received painful resistance from some of the longtime staff. I wished them luck as they left, and over the years they understood the changes were necessary for the survival of the paper.

At a certain point, my marriage fell apart and my former husband tried to convince Bob that he was more qualified than me to be publisher of the newspaper. During that time, Bob had over 300 employees at his firm on Alexander Road and he sent over his consulting corporate psychologist to interview the Town Topics staff and evaluate the workplace. The psychologist reported back and Bob told my former husband that he needed to find his own job at a different company. I couldn’t have wished for a better business partner or a more supportive friend.

When my children became teenagers, they delivered newspapers and I believe it instilled in them a strong work ethic, which they still possess today as adults. They both value journalism and went on to become published authors.

Bob and I were excited to acquire Princeton Magazine, which came as a “cold call” from a high school classmate of Bob’s. It took Bob 10 seconds to say “Yes!” The magazine enables us to better celebrate Princeton’s vibrant culture. It was a good fit for me from the start, drawing from my career experiences in New York City, and from my time working with Michael Graves. The previous version of Princeton Magazine had been simply a social, “who’s having dinner with whom,” and you could even pay to have your picture on the cover.

The magazine’s in-depth articles, photography, and layouts provided Bob with the opportunity to share insights about the community where he was raised, having come from Canada at the age of 3.

Princeton Magazine will be publishing an article in 2025 on his new home on Lake Carnegie, which has been a labor of love over the past two years. The home will be a “net zero carbon” house, in that it will generate its own energy through solar and geothermal means. The house represents a new chapter for him and I’ve heard tidbits about his mother’s George Nakashima dining table and a vintage pool table gifted to him by a former Princeton University classmate. I can’t wait to see the images and read the article!

For the next chapter for Witherspoon Media Group, I am pleased to announce that Laurie Pellichero has been promoted to Editor-In-Chief, Melissa Bilyeu will take on additional responsibilities in her role as Director of Operations, Sarah Teo will be responsible for the magazine’s Well-Designed Life pages, and Jeff Tryon will continue his magic as Art Director. I will continue my own personal involvement in the magazine as an Editorial Advisor to its Editorial Board. 

I will be forever grateful to Bob and Barbara Hillier and would like to also extend heartfelt thanks to our talented and hard-working staff. I consider you all to be my extended family and I can’t begin to express the joy you have brought me, and the pride I have taken in publishing Town Topics and Princeton Magazine.

I wish you all a happy and healthy holiday.

Respectfully yours,

Lynn Adams Smith
Editor-In-Chief