Penn Jersey Advance Inc. history

Financial success eluded the first generation, the suspender business of the father having failed in 1905.

After graduating in 1908 from eighth grade in Bayonne, New Jersey, Newhouse briefly attended a business school in New York City.

By 1916 Newhouse, at the age of 21, was earning $30,000 a year for his myriad responsibilities with Lazarus & Brenner, as well as with the newspaper, where he now worked for a percentage of the profits.

The Staten Island Advance proved to be the foundation of the publishing empire Newhouse established in the 1920s.

By 1922 Newhouse was ready for another acquisition and with Lazarus bought 51 percent of the stock of The Staten Island Advance for $98,000.

As far back as the 1924 statement of Advance's purpose, Newhouse had a declared intention of publishing magazines.

Many newspaper stands were at first reluctant to carry the Advance, but Newhouse increased circulation by adopting a Brooklyn newspaper's home-delivery system, and by 1928 he had made enough to buy out his two partners in the company for $198,000.

Despite the challenge to the Advance by the Staten Islander and a politically motivated libel suit, Newhouse was able not only to prosper during good times but to survive the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.

Newhouse had invested his company's profits in the newspaper, not in stocks; thus, in 1932 the bank account of the Advance stood at close to $400,000.

The first of these acquisitions, in 1935, was a 51 percent share in the Newark Ledger of Newark, New Jersey.

Newhouse repeated this merger strategy when he bought the Newark Star-Eagle and merged it with the Newark Ledger to form the Newark Star-Ledger in 1939.

In 1942 Newhouse bought for $1.3 million the only remaining Syracuse newspaper, the morning Post-Standard, establishing a highly profitable monopoly during World War II, even with shortages of newsprint and other supplies.

In 1947 Newhouse acquired the Patriot Company, publisher of the Patriot and the Evening News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

With the purchase of the Portland Oregonian in 1950, he paid a record $5.6 million.

For example, one paper, the Newark Star-Ledger, supported right-wing senator Joseph McCarthy during his ascendancy, while other Newhouse papers attacked McCarthy. It also persuaded the Hanson family to sell the Birmingham News and the Huntsville Times in Alabama to Newhouse in 1955 for $18.7 million.

The 1959 purchase of Condé Nast Publications for $5 million was supposedly suggested by Mitzi Newhouse, S.I. Newhouse's wife.

In 1961 Newhouse established a newspaper monopoly in Portland with his purchases of the Oregon Journal for $8 million.

The publisher of Advance's Birmingham, Alabama, paper in 1962 was an unabashed racist, while Newhouse himself was staunchly liberal.

In 1963, Thomas Furia started Penn Jersey Paper Company.

When the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications was opened in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson gave the dedication speech.

Newhouse's largest deal of the decade turned out to be his acquisition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer for $54.2 million in 1967, breaking his own record for the highest price ever paid for a newspaper and again requiring a bank loan.

Continue reading 1969 1969 - 1969 PJP’s growth happened quickly.

In 1976 he purchased for $305 million Booth Newspapers, publisher of eight papers in Michigan, as well as Parade magazine, a syndicated Sunday newspaper magazine supplement.

By selling its five television stations to the Times Mirror Company for $82 million, the Newhouses were also able to finance their expansion into cable television systems, becoming the eighth-largest cable operator in the United States in 1981.

Perhaps the most notable acquisition was the New Yorker for $200 million in 1983.

Given that Newhouse operated, according to the November 27, 1989 issue of Barron's, "not only one of the most powerful, but one of the most secretive family businesses in America," the public curiosity was understandable.

Also, in 1990 the long-standing litigation with the IRS was settled in the Newhouses' favor.

1993 1993 - 1993 PJP takes another opportunity to expand into new markets with their own private label brand, HANDI-MAID. The retail product line included 50 different items.

In 1994 Newhouse Broadcasting Corp. combined its cable operations with Time Warner to create Time Warner Entertainment-Advance-Newhouse.

Also in 1995 Advance purchased American City Business Journals for $269 million.

1998 1998 - 1998 Being a regional company, PJP felt they needed to find a way to provide solutions to customers with a national footprint.

2004 2004 - 2004 Never satisfied, PJP continued to expand into new markets with their very first retail location, PJP Marketplace.

2008 2008 - 2008 In 2008, PJP took another step into a new market by joining SEFA (Supply and Equipment Foodservice Alliance), a national network of leading equipment and supply distributors and manufacturers.

2010 2010 - PJP Named Top Philadelphia Area Workplace Two Years In a Row PJP is named a top Philadelphia workplace for two years running in 2010.

2012 2012 - PJP Named Top Philadelphia Area Workplace Four Years In a Row PJP is named a top Philadelphia workplace for four years running in 2012.

2014 2014 - 2014 Wanting to strengthen their position as the regions leading supplier, PJP acquired Gelmarc Distributors, a broadline distributor of foodservice supplies, equipment, disposables, and janitorial supplies.

2016 2016 - 2016 PJP Marketplace took a huge step forward and opened a new Flag Ship store at the corner of Frankford and Academy Avenues in Northeast Philadelphia.

2017 2017 - 2017 As you can see, in our 50+ years of history, never once has PJP been satisfied.