Right NEast/Wrong NEast: Help Desk could use help finding Holme Circle

Holmeburg, Holme Circle and Burholme are all derivatives of some sort of the Holme family of Philadelphia. They’re all also different neighborhoods in the Northeast, which has proven a difficult fact for Philadelphia’s larger media outlets to navigate around.

So when the Daily News picked up on the Holme Avenue Bridge closure story this week, it wasn’t too surprising when the neighborhood was called Holmesburg. Not a very helpful report from the Help Desk.

This one got us a little riled up, since it seemed the DN had taken a casual approach to covering what’s been a big issue for Holme Circle residents by not only getting the neighborhood wrong, but also getting to the story a bit late.

We spoke with Juliana Reyes, who reported on the bridge closure for the Help Desk column, and she explained to us how the DN identifies neighborhoods once someone reaches out to the Help Desk for a specific issues (as was the case with the bridge).

It’s no secret the city’s maps are a bit out of date, and Reyes says the one she and her City Desk editor use from the City Planning Commission is yellowing.

So, we’re doing a little help desk item of our own and connecting the Reyes with some City Planning Commission officers who work in the Northeast.

Turns out past offers we’ve jokingly made to publications to share our maps could have gone a long way.

Kudos to Holme Circle resident Matt Gabor for spotting the neighborhood error, and Kudos to Reyes and the Daily News for getting back to us and working through the confusion.

Outside media don’t care about the Northeast. We have all seen them misuse, misspell and mistake our neighborhoods and our streets, so we at NEast Philly wanted to do something about it. When they get it wrong, we set it right in a segment we like to call Right NEast/Wrong NEast.