Reading, Riding, Arithmetic
Griffith’s a former options trader who’d had previous brushes with journalism, and his latest began on the el. “I was taking the Ravenswood and I had nothing to read. So I started digging through my wallet and found an old Jewel receipt, and started checking prices for want of anything else to do.” It was a pathetically desperate act, and it got him thinking. Last September, bankrolled by some marketing work and bartending he’d been doing, he launched Transit Times, a free monthly that’s not merely a few intellectual cuts above a supermarket receipt but umpteen.
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Griffith proposes an old-fashioned “one hand washing the other” relationship with the CTA. Full of positive news and advertising, Transit Times will blanket the CTA system. What a welcome sight it will be to the teeming masses parched for reading material–a journal crammed with humor, history, inside skinny, and appeals to esprit de corps. “It’s similar to Amtrak Express magazine in that you have a captive audience and put something in front of that audience that makes them want to use the service more and feel better about it,” Griffith told us. “Customers see what’s happening, and then they’re less likely to bitch if their bus is late.”
Actually, the CTA already calls some of the editorial shots. Ron Weslow, acting supervisor of marketing, suggested the story on the Stadium Express. Weslow spends a certain amount of time at a computer terminal each month digging up facts to plug into Transit Times stories. He’s the magazine’s friend.
We told Zbella that for whatever reason the CTA wasn’t as eager to advertise in Transit Times as his bank.
Joyce: Thank you.
Host: That’s criticism I just don’t understand. I would go to the wall for your book.
