South Jersey Local is proud to announce that we have launched our first print edition! To help bring our mission of telling South Jersey’s stories to life, we’ve partnered with a quartet of well-known local digital content creators.
While our focus is primarily on crafting a print newspaper, we acknowledge the power of online platforms when they’re done right, and we believe we’ve picked four of the best around to join our team. In the next couple days we’ll introduce you to each of them individually, with profile stories on each to let you get to know them better.
Up now, is Mark Matthews, creator of the news site 42 Freeway. We couldn’t be happier to have Mark as part of our team and look forward to seeing where this collaboration could go. Enjoy our profile on Mark and 42 Freeway, and be on the lookout for more of his content in our print editions each month!
It seems that Mark Matthews, creator of the wildly-popular local news site 42 Freeway, has always been something of a self-made man.
Prior to his current role of breaking news about businesses and developments all over South Jersey, Matthews mostly made his living through a career in computers.
“I had been a computer geek back in the days before people even knew what a computer was,” he said. “During the dot com boom in the 90s, I was literally able to teach myself more modern software development associated with the start of internet driven applications, enough that I turned it into a 30-year career in computer programming and management.”
Along with computers, Matthews said he also previously worked in sales, and similarly through self-driven education became a top producer for 200-employee Yorkship Business Supply, which like 42Freeway put him in front of countless local businesses.
He said the same thing was true of his more recent entrance into the news business.
“People ask me, ‘what’s your journalism background?’” he said with a laugh. “I don’t have one. I definitely didn’t have one for sales. I had to self-advance my knowledge for computer programming, and I definitely didn’t have one for journalism.”
But however he’s managed to do it, Matthews has created the go-to platform in South Jersey if you want to stay in the know on local business news.
Remembering the Past, Investigating the Future
Matthews said it was a planned class reunion that started everything. The event was coming up and in the days before Facebook he started a website to help spread the word to former classmates.
Matthews was born and raised in Bellmawr, Camden County, and graduated from Triton Regional High School.
Through the process of publicizing the reunion, Matthews said he started reconnecting with old friends.
One of those acquaintances mentioned that he had heard about a massive development project in their town. Matthews, who spent 45 years of his life in
Bellmawr, said he couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard any details about it himself.
“I thought, ‘wait a minute, I grew up in this town. I bought my house in this town. I pretty much know every cop in this town. How do you know this and I don’t know this?’” he recalled.
He said he did some digging into the story and came upon details about the project that weren’t widely-known. He said he wasn’t sure what to do with what he’d found, so he gave it to a reporter at the Courier Post who ran with it, interviewed him for the piece and turned it into a front-page article.
A Blog is Born
That was all it took. Matthews realized he had a nose for news and soon he was hooked.
Having the computer background, Matthews already knew how to build a website. He soon started what he then called the Bellmawr Blog and began filling it with stories about his hometown.
Matthews said he got interested in the idea of creating some kind of online news platform just from being curious about things going on in his neighborhood.
“I just saw things happening in my community in Bellmawr,” he said. “I would go to town meetings and write things up.”
While writing the Bellmawr Blog, Matthews said he could see a pattern when it came to which of his stories would get the most views.
“I had already noticed that the stories regarding commercial things were more popular – new restaurants, new buildings, new whatever,” he said.
New Hometown, New Focus
Matthews said he moved to Deptford Township, in Gloucester County, about 11 years ago. His interest in writing just about Bellmawr would naturally start to wane.
He was already armed with the knowledge that his business-related stories were among his most successful, and the location of his new home put him smack in the middle of a commerce-heavy area – right between the Deptford Mall and the Gloucester Premium Outlets.
He decided then what the focus of his new project would be, and he called it 42 Freeway.
A Slow Start
This summer will mark the 11-year anniversary for 42 Freeway, but Matthews said the site wasn’t always the journalistic juggernaut it is today.
For the first half of the site’s life, Matthews said, it was treated much more as a hobby. He had a full-time job and a daily commute to Bala Cynwyd. It didn’t leave much free time to dedicate to news gathering.
“When I was doing this five years ago, I would go months without putting up anything,” he said.
In comparison, Matthews can now easily publish 40 to 50 articles per month, if not more.
But in the early days, Matthews said his output was sporadic and he even considered packing it in completely on multiple occasions.
Pandemic Brings a Change
Then Covid hit.
“Not that there’s any silver lining to it, but I got to work from home,” he said of his new work situation due to the pandemic. “I got to work from home for 18 months, so I saved that two-hour daily commute going to Bala Cynwyd and I put that extra time into the website.”
The timing worked out well for the aspiring online journalist. Just prior to Covid’s arrival, Matthews said he had just started toying around with selling ads on his site. He realized just how many page views his stories were getting online and he thought he would see if he could make any money from it.
“Then it just kind of took off from there,” he said. “I’ve been doing this full-time now for two-and a half years, and it was only a year-and-a-half prior that I was actually making any money at this thing.
“I went from making no money to a year-and-a-half later saying ‘wow, there’s something here, I’m going to quit my job.’”
Changing Lanes
“The name 42 Freeway comes from the actual road, and here I am living in Deptford, right in the middle of it,” he said.
And when he first started, he pretty much covered just those towns right along that route, including Deptford, Washington Township and Gloucester Township.
But he said he also owned a site called Marlton Pike, where he planned to focus on the towns along that road in Camden and Burlington counties.
Initially, he ran the two sites as separate entities but has since combined all of his coverage onto 42 Freeway.
Now, even though it may be under a more regionally-narrow sounding banner, he’s continuing to write about all those other communities and even more, he said.
“I’m covering as much of South Jersey as I can,” he said, adding that some of his most popular stories lately are happening in Cumberland and Salem counties.
Where Will the Freeway Take Him Next?
Along with constantly expanding his reach geographically, Matthews said the future of his site is heading toward the production of more video-based reporting.
When it comes to his writing, Matthews said his total word count is the equivalent of writing a novel every two months. He said he’s working to reign himself in with shorter articles, if only to free himself up to be able to cover more subjects.
“This is not bragging, but it’s almost every day when I see something pop up and I think, ‘I knew about that last week, and I just couldn’t get to it,’” he said.
Matthews says it can be a tough balancing act when it comes to prioritizing what to focus on in any given week.
“What are the stories that are beneficial to everybody – beneficial to me, beneficial to the readers, beneficial to the business,” he said. “The restaurant stories are always exciting and positive. Everybody eats. Not everybody’s going to go to the Pilates gym, but everybody eats.”
But if you’ve enjoyed the type of coverage he’s provided South Jersey over the past decade, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think there won’t be much more of it on the horizon for 42 Freeway.
Be sure to follow Mark and 42 Freeway on Facebook to keep up with all of his latest news!
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