In the News
Jack Griffin: The New Model for Media is The Here and Now
By Kammi Altig, Audit Bureau of Circulations, November 10, 2011
Jack Griffin to Address Annual Conference Attendees
By Sue Thomas, Audit Bureau of Circulations, September 16, 2011
Mover of the Week: Jack Griffin Brings Experience As Media Executive To AlixPartners
By Joseph Checkler, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review, September 16, 2011
You might say Jack Griffin has a little bit of experience dealing with the challenges facing media companies today. Now, as a senior adviser in AlixPartners LLC's growing media and marketing restructuring practice, the former Time Inc. chief executive says he's ready to help Alix's clients deal with the shifting of the media industry's "tectonic plates."
"I don't think the external forces have ever been so aligned the way they are now to put pressure on companies," said Griffin, who earlier this year started his own media advisory counseling firm, Empirical Strategic Advisors LLC, which he will continue to run.
Griffin has already started with Alix and said he often leads in with this basic question: "How much of the change that you're dealing with is structural or secular and how much of it is cyclical?"
The answer, Griffin says, is more often about the structure than the cycle, and that's how Alix is handling things. Alix has worked on several media restructurings, including those of Reader's Digest Association Inc., Tribune Co. and Freedom Communications Inc.
Griffin says the relationships he has formed in his 25 years in the industry, which he has spent as an executive at magazine publisher Meredith Corp., Advance Publication Inc.'s Parade Magazine division and the New York Times Co.'s magazine division and other roles, will help him figure out the specific problems a company is having faster.
"Relationships really are shortcuts to conversations that would otherwise take a lot longer than they would have," says Griffin.
Perhaps most importantly, Griffin has those relationships with not only the traditional old media guard but also those at companies that understand how and why things are changing.
Anyone who's ever read an analyst report or public media company's balance sheet knows that traditional print advertising revenue keeps falling and that consumers are in love with anything digital, but Griffin says the past year has presented an even more specific shift: the proliferation of social networking.
"The consumer is a journalist. The consumer is an editor," Griffin, 51, says. "The way that people interact with each other," he says, is different from even two years ago.
Understanding how people interact with media itself is also something Griffin understands as both a former executive and a consumer.
Earlier this week, Griffin himself was about to hop on a plane and decided to buy a copy of The Wall Street Journal, knowing his iPad would be useless until a flight attendant announced that it was safe to use approved electronic devices.
So he read the physical paper and turned back to the iPad once he landed. "It's an entirely different experience, a real-time experience," Griffin said. "That's a very positive and hopeful application."
Griffin Breaks Silence on Time Inc., What Lies Ahead
by Rance Crain, Advertising Age, September 5, 2011
A-List Publishing Company of the Year: Meredith Corp.
by Nat Ives, Advertising Age, October 19, 2009
by Rance Crain, Advertising Age, September 5, 2011
A-List Publishing Company of the Year: Meredith Corp.
by Nat Ives, Advertising Age, October 19, 2009
