Jack Griffin loves newspapers. But the Tribune Publishing CEO just wants to make clear, albeit belatedly, that his love of the print product is not quite as unfettered as he just intimated.
Griffin’s endorsement apparently morphed into rhetorical imprecision about the attractiveness of print papers to millennials, prompting a fuller explanation of his remarks by his spokesman.
It was a corporate version of a campaign flack backtracking on a declaration by a slightly overzealous, or just unintentionally confusing, candidate.
Griffin gave an interview to Crain’s Chicago Business in which he stated that he believes the outlook for print papers is solid for the next decade and that “20-somethings will keep picking up the newspaper-reading habit, he said in an interview this week. He also doesn’t discount the possibility that newspapers will continue to account for more than half his company’s revenue in 2025.”
During the interview at Tribune Publishing headquarters, Griffin exited a conference room to grab a copy of the Chicago Tribune and paged through it to demonstrate how the paper’s format allows readers to skim stories and collect information they didn’t know they were looking for, with a clear sense of its topical organization by section.
Holding the paper up, he said: “I could be wrong, but I don’t think that this entirely goes away. I think there’s enough about it—the experience that’s sufficiently different with both the advertising and the editorial. I mean, how do you do that online?” He answers his own question later: “That’s really hard to do online or on a phone.”
According to Crain’s, “He said he expects young people, like his 20-something sons, will continue to gravitate to newspapers, even print editions. As they move into adulthood and begin to care more about settling into a community, they’ll turn to a newspaper, as generations of Americans before them have, he predicts.”
“’I don’t think they’re going to completely unplug and just go to Google News when they want to find out the answer to a question, and then know nothing else other than what they see on Facebook,’” Griffin said.
Those comments caught the attention of re/code, whose headline declared without much complexity, “Tribune Publisher Says Kids Are Going to Start Reading Newspapers Any Day Now.”
The company has been immersed in ample complexities of late, including a rancorous dismissal of its publisher at the Los Angeles Times, a plunging stock price and analysts wondering about its own digital performance and strategies.
And, now, there was the need for a spokesman to amend the comments of his boss to the well-read hometown business publication (which also comes in print and digital formats).
“Jack was referring to newspapers broadly in all of their manifestations, from print to desktop to mobile, and the different experiences that each platform offers consumers,” he informed re/code. “We continue to design and roll out next-generation digital products that ensure broad exposure for the award-winning journalism our brands produce.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story had a typo in the headline. It has been corrected.
