Longtime LGBTQ+ ally and former Chicago Tribune reporter Jean Latz Griffin died Sept. 28 due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. She was 81.
Griffin was born March 6, 1943, in Joliet. She went to St. Francis Academy College Prep High School and graduated first in her class with numerous awards and scholarships. She received her BS in chemistry with minors in biology and journalism from the College of St. Francis in Joliet, where she was the editor of the school’s newspaper. She graduated cum laude in 1965, then went to University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she received her Master’s degree in journalism in 1967.
In graduate school, Griffin wrote for the student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, as well as the university’s magazine, and had a science writing assistantship. She also participated in a sit-in at the university’s law library to protest Dow Chemical. Her Master’s thesis Cultural-Religious Values, Attitudes towards Science and Selectivity in Reading Science Articles in Newspapers and Magazines strongly indicated that religious beliefs did affect whether people read science newspaper stories.
In 1964, Griffin met her future husband Dennis Griffin (married Sept. 16, 1967) when they were visiting a mutual friend in the hospital. They were together until his death in 2011.
First media roles
Griffin was the assistant news editor for the Catholic News-Register from 1961-1972. She also worked as a clinical investigation coordinator for Dexter-Travenol Laboratories in Morton Grove, until she was forced to quit due to the company policy that stated she had to leave her job in her sixth month of pregnancy. This pregnancy was the first of her three children, all sons— Joseph, Timothy and Peter.
Among Griffin’s many accolades were the American Dental Association Science Writers Award in the newspaper division for a series of articles on the development of teeth and dental health, Illinois State Medical Society Medical Journalism Award honorable mention for a feature story on local rehabilitation programs, and Copley Newspapers’s Ring of Truth Award for best feature story, all in 1969.
In the following years, Griffin held many media roles. She was a reporter and feature writer for Joliet Herald-News; public relations coordinator for Rehabilitation Services of Mid-America; and host for the WJRC-Joliet radio show, Cinnamon and Aristotle, with a focus on women’s liberation, early childhood education, mental health for the modern housewife and the differences between Black and white women’s experiences with discrimination.
In 1970, Griffin was recognized with the City of Joliet Community Relations Department Certificate of Appreciation “for rendering invaluable service to the cause of better human relations in the city of Joliet, Illinois”; a special award from the Will-Grundy County Medical Society “for outstanding public service through her Joliet Herald-News Medical features articles”; and the Will County Historical Society Frederick Bartleson Memorial Award “in specific recognition of her well balanced and timely articles depicting local and community problems.”
In 1973, when the family moved to Smithfield, North Carolina for her husband’s dental internship, she wrote for the Raleigh Times, covering, among other important stories, a murder and the ensuing manhunt, and the EPA’s activities in Durham, North Carolina, with one of her stories picked up by the wires for national distribution.
Chicago Tribune reporting recollections
When Griffin and her family moved back to Illinois, where her husband opened his dental practice,she began her 21-year career as a Chicago Tribune reporter (1976-1997). She covered education, public health and politics. She also covered the Hubble Space telescope launch and wrote about political ads. But her work in the ‘80s on the burgeoning “Gay Beat”—the LGBTQ+ community and the health, social and political aspects of HIV/AIDS in its earliest years—is the work for which she is perhaps best known.
A number of LGBTQ+ Chicagoans cite Griffin as the first mainstream newspaper reporter to cover queer/trans people and issues with objectivity, without slurs or defamatory language or hyperbole.
Equality Illinois Co-Founder Rick Garcia remembers her as “the midwife of fair reporting of the LGBTQ+ community.” Garcia met Griffin when he worked on the passage of the Chicago Human Relations Ordinance.
Garcia said, “She was a consummate professional. A ‘just-the-facts, ma’am’ reporter. As an activist, I always knew that if people got the unvarnished truth about the LGBTQ+ community, we would win. Jean was one of the very few reporters at that time that did non-sensational stories. Here are the facts: we have a group of people; they suffer discrimination, and this is what that group is doing to mitigate that situation.”
Griffin’s coverage of LGBTQ+ people and their issues, Garcia added, was one of the catalysts that caused the community to be taken seriously as a political force in Chicago, and “the impact she had on the LGBTQ+ community was absolutely amazing in that we were portrayed as citizens who were fighting for our basic civil rights. I have a very special place in my heart for her. The impact she had on the movement, what we were doing, was immense, and the other impact she had was that she educated the public. She was doing this as a serious, well-respected Tribune reporter and that influenced Chicago’s city council, the governor and the general public.”
Garcia believes Griffin’s reporting helped the Chicago Tribune’s editorial pages shift from a negative to positive stance on queer/trans rights. He also noted that other Chicago mainstream newspapers, radio and TV stations began to cover LGBTQ+ people and issues because of Griffin’s work.
Heartland Alliance Health Northside Vital Bridges Food Program Founder Lori Cannon said, “Jean was head and shoulders a press giant. She acknowledged and celebrated the volunteers, leaders and people who couldn’t go to political action demonstrations but could write checks. Jean would chronicle the improvement of certain legislation and progress and also the setbacks. She was the beacon, one of the voices that got other journalists on the path to write very important stories about the HIV/AIDS crisis and the LGBTQ+ community.
“Jean was always impressed with the spirit of the people who signed up during those dark and deadly and challenging days when AIDS first came to Chicago. And she jumped right on it, honoring all the programs that offered service. She said to me, ‘It sounds like, Lori, to you and your concept of offering meals on wheels, like seniors have always gotten, to the AIDS community, that food is medicine.’ And I said, ‘Yes, Jean, that’s exactly how I see it.’ And she understood. Food is medicine. She would encourage people to help support my important mission and sure enough, those checks started coming in.”
Cannon added that, “During the historic 1987 March on Washington for gay and lesbian rights in the nation’s capital, Jean wrote a piece on the importance of how everybody went to that march to take a stand. The decade of the 1980s, Jean wrote, was defined by the AIDS epidemic and how it changed everything. It changed government, life and families. It flung open that closet door and forced conversations and we were a community under siege. Not to mention the politics that came out of it. And Jean always praised this local effort by activists in her articles. When you think about it, the Chicago Tribune, historically Republican and conservative…that was a big deal.
“Jean was one of the first responders to the HIV/AIDS crisis because so few did respond. In terms of the HIV/AIDS community and LGBTQ+ community, her legacy is the fact that she chronicled the progress, the appointments, the missions of the new programs. Because she took time to honor them with a story. And it was always a personal story. It wasn’t corporate. And I think she was a hope to parents who had lost their children. Jean would write about heroes during a time of suffering and death. Jean was only too quick to mention what was going on, how the HIV/AIDS community advocates and supporters took care of their own and taught the city how to take care of their own. It wasn’t just restricted to gay people living with AIDS, that it was a human problem.”
Former Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich said, “She was writing about gay issues and AIDS before a lot of people had fully metabolized those things. I was always struck by the sense of social mission in her writing. She seemed to me dogged as a reporter; at the same time, she always seemed to be smiling. It was in interesting combination of qualities that stood out to me. What I remember is just her way of being. And her energy and ardent commitment to the social issues she cared about.”
Sidetrack Co-Owner Art Johnston said it “was remarkable for us to have Jean, who was a mainstream reporter take an interest in things in our community. Because in those days, we were just finding each other and learning to be a community. We began to think that the status quo, which was that we were second-class citizens—they used to arrest people for being gay. Which I was, by the way; both my partner of fifty years, Jose ‘Pepe’ Peña, and I were jailed just for being gay. And that’s the way it was. Jose works at a gay bar, and later on, I worked at, and I own a gay bar. And that was enough to get you arrested.
“That was really the way things were for our community, and not many folks took an interest in us besides folks who were a part of the community themselves, they were gay or lesbian, or had a sister or brother or something, so I never really knew why Jean took such an interest, but she did. And she always wrote brilliantly and was such a professional to deal with. I wouldn’t have known Jean if I had seen her on the street. I knew her as somebody who called now and then for a comment on something she was writing about, and I was always amazed that this mainstream reporter was interested in my LGBTQ+ community and did her reporting without taking sides.”
Some of Griffin’s many LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS-focused Chicago Tribune headlines were “Reports of Gay Harassment Soaring”(May 11, 1987), “AIDS Fight Gets Waged on Streets” (July 3, 1989), “Hard Being a Teen, Harder If You’re Gay” (March 11, 1992), “The Gay Baby Boom, Homosexual Couples Challenge Traditions as They Create New Families” (Sept. 3, 1992) and “3 Corporations Supporting Bill for Gay and Lesbian Rights” (April 17, 1995).
Griffin also did freelance work for the LGBTQ+ newspaper Outlines before it merged with this publication.
Her writing for the Tribune brought more awards recognition. She was a three-time winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for Public Service from The Headline Club and won best investigative series from The Suburban Press Club of Chicago. A series of articles she wrote with a team of other Tribune reporters, Chicago Public Schools: Worst in America (1988) garnered the Education Writers Association’s Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting, Chicago Tribune’s Edward Scott Beck Award for “original and dogged reporting, elegant and perceptive writing and great determination.” Another Tribune series Griffin worked on, Killing Our Children, (1993), a year-long examination of child homicide, focusing individual attention on 61 children and the circumstances of their deaths, won the Grand Prize in journalism from the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation (1994) and was a 1994 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Additionally, in 1993 Griffin was one of the first recipients of the Center on Halsted’s (formerly Horizons) Human First Award.
Other professional endeavors
After Griffin retired from the Chicago Tribune, she spent eight years as a senior strategist for the political consulting firm, the Strategy Group, with clients such as former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former Mayor Richard M. Daley, as well as many governors, members of Congress and state legislators. Griffin created direct mail campaigns for candidates in multiple states who went on to win their races.
Griffin was also the now former Chicago Ald. Joe Moore’s campaign manager when he ran for the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County race. Moore was already an alderperson at that time. She was also a Roosevelt University Chicago adjunct instructor in journalism from 2002-2011, teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses there.
In 2006, Griffin published two books, One Spirit: A Creation Story for the 21st Century and In the Same Breath, a collection of essays on creation and spirituality. She was also a Tai Chi instructor and member of the International Taoist Tai Chi Society NE Regional Management Committee from 2004-2015.
Griffin is survived by her sons Joseph Griffin, Timothy Griffin and Peter (Sommi Lee) Griffin, and her dogs Thunder and Doctor Wu. She was preceded in death by her husband Dennis, father Carl Joseph Latz and mother Helene Monica (Bradshaw) Latz.
Tributes and remembrances
Former colleagues and sources alike are effusive in their tributes to Griffin:
Cannon: “In Chicago, her legacy is huge. She had such an impact by way of her big heart, words and support. She kept her finger on the pulse of the LGBTQ+ community and other communities as well. I always admired that Jean was an expert at lean text. And everybody saw that. She didn’t waste words. She got her point across in the most edited form. And that is why I admired, not just the friendship and the support, but when she put pen to paper, there was no misunderstanding on what Jean was telling you. What you see is what you get. She was a wordsmith of the highest order. Because she was so sensitive and smart. And she listened. That’s a legacy. She touched so many lives. I appreciated Jean; she had a sense of the world in the most educated and sophisticated way. For me, she was a local legend. Her lean writing made everything understandable and accessible.”
Garcia: “I was with friends, and I made this joke kind of thing on my answering machine: ‘This is Rick. If you are not a reporter, I want you to fuck off because I don’t want to hear from you.’ I forgot to erase that message. One time, I got a message from Jean that said, ‘Rick, this is a reporter so I know you will take my call. Call me.’ I was so embarrassed. I went, oh my god Jean, I am so sorry. She was so funny about it. I had lots of contact with her over the years and here is the thing: because I have scruples about media types, we never became friends because we had a completely professional relationship. She was perfect and the best at her job. I dearly loved her. She will always be in my heart.”
Johnston: “I was always a fan of Jean’s work. I knew her as somebody who asked penetrating but kind questions, and someone who wanted to understand more about why so had happened. She’s on my short list of people who were not necessarily in my community who were major influences on my community and on our development as an important community in Chicago. You know, now, every time I read an article that refers to the important political group ‘the gay community,’ I smile, because I remember it was not that long ago that nobody would use phrases like that. And now here we are, the LGBTQ+ community with political power in the Democratic party when that was not always the case.
“Jean would always find the real political things to write about. How our community was progressing from being literally jailed to becoming a political force. Because we learned how to register voters. We learned the importance of nominating and electing people to office. She was a critical part of that period of LGBTQ+ history in Chicago. When she wrote about something she wanted to do what good reporters do, know all the sides of it, and different points of view. Always reliable, always doing great work. My community was better off for the interest that she had in all of us.”
Former Chicago Tribune colleague Barbara Brotman: “‘Slats,’ that’s what we took to calling Jean. She was an anchor of the newsroom, a classic reporter with an encyclopedic knowledge of her beat and a dogged determination to find things out. But what I remember most clearly was the way she was transformed—and radicalized—by the AIDS illness and death of the young Tribune reporter Mark Zambrano. Jean stepped up and became everything to Mark. She spent countless hours by his side at the hospital and became enraged at how AIDS was being handled in this country. Her bond with Mark became a central part of her life; his death broke her heart. But the experience changed how she saw the world and informed the rest of her life.”
Former Chicago Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski: “Newsrooms can be chaotic and cranky places but Jean was a reliably kind and calm presence at the Tribune. She was supportive of colleagues and a contributor to some of the paper’s most important reporting projects, including a year-long investigation of child homicides in Chicago. She had an infectious laugh, which cheered the newsroom and even on the hardest days reminded us that the work was also fun. The Tribune newsroom and its readers were fortunate to count Jean in their ranks.”
Schmich: “When I got to the Tribune, people were not all that friendly to me …but in the early days she just seemed to go out of her way to be nice to me. And people remember that. I have this vivid image of her smile and laugh and her questions and friendly presence. She had some good riposte to people complaining about the Tribune being too politically correct… some people were objecting to all this political correctness, and Jean said in a Chicago Reader story along the lines of ‘The Chicago Tribune has a long ways to go before it’s too politically correct.’”
Garcia added: “I bet Jean never thought she had an impact, and a lot of people wouldn’t say oh, she is the one who changed things. But I know, because I was there. And I saw how we used to be presented in media, and how she presented us with fairness and no bias whatsoever. “
Cannon added: “She was one of the giants, one of the greats in Chicago. My history, my admiration…this was the woman, the myth, the legend. She responded to my program, and my efforts, and my activism long before anyone else did.
“Jean Latz Griffin; those three words. Everybody remembers that byline. We would all call each other and talk about her work. Because she took time to pay attention. And it was always good press, always searing, thoughtful and thought-provoking. So, who could ask for anything more? What a great legacy she leaves. A fine woman.”
Memorial services will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 12 from 4-8 p.m. at Smith-Corcoran Chicago Funeral Home, 6150 N Cicero Ave, Chicago, IL.
In lieu of flowers, Griffin’s family requests that donations be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, Chicago House, Equality Illinois and/or Heartland Alliance in her memory.