Saturday Evening Post Moving Back to Philly
After more than 40 years in Indianapolis, the country’s oldest, quaintest magazine is returning home. What’s more, Editorial Director Steven Slon told me, the Saturday Evening Post will move back into its longtime digs at the Curtis Center building off Independence Mall, where it lived from 1897 until 1970, when a new owner moved it to Indy. The six-person staff is slated to arrive in May or June. Publishing HQ will remain in Indianapolis, where ownership is staying.
“What prompted [the move],” says Slon, who took over the magazine in January 2012, “is the sense that this is the historic home of the Saturday Evening Post and that it should return to its roots.” Moreover, Slon says, the move coincides with a push to reinvigorate the Post‘s staid brand. “Basically the magazine had been leaning heavily on its nostalgia background. My thing is, I’m making it a magazine about today, about now.”
But the move itself, which was first reported by the New York Post, speaks to the paradoxical nature of Slon’s mission. He’s moving the magazine and its archives back to its ancestral home (Ben Franklin’s Daily Pennsylvanian was the progenitor of the Post), while also aiming for a fresh start. He’s trying to emphasize the modern mission of the publication, but can’t help himself from touting the “historical perspective that only we can do based on our background.” At any rate, the Post, which publishes six times a year, and still boasts a circulation of 350,000, has been in decline ever since it left Philly. Can’t hurt to bring it back.
