Time Warner has removed Jack Griffin, the chief of its magazine publishing wing. It had been just six months that Griffin had been serving as the publishing head of the Time magazine. The insiders have named it polarizing style of management.
On Thursday, an internal memo was released, whereby the chief executive of Time Warner Inc, Jeff Bewkes, said that the publishing unit of Time Inc will be overseen by an interim committee until a good and proper substitute for Griffin is found.
Bekwes mentioned that although Griffin was a very accomplished executive but his approach and style of leadership wasn’t compatible with Time Warner and Time Inc.
In response to above, Griffin could not be reached for a comment.
This top executive lay-off has come when Time Inc is facing declining sales, dwindling readership and decreasing advertising revenue. The trend for these days is that more and more readers are resorting to online reading as devices such as Kindle and iPad have arrived in the market in the last couple of years.
Time Inc is one of the most prestigious publishing houses and is the active publisher of most famous magazine titles such as Time, Sports Illustrated and People.
According to people who are familiar with this incident and the reasons leading to it, Griffin had a polarizing personality and he wasn’t popular among his staff.
One of those people said on the condition of being kept anonymous, that Griffin’s existence in the organization meant a threat to the jobs of other top executives.
According to the internal memo, the interim management committee shall comprise three senior executives of Time Inc and will be accountable to Bewkes.