After 29 seasons of spreading the Griffins’ gospel through pen and lens for Griffiti magazine, Mark Newman has called it a career.

Photo courtesy of Mark Newman

If a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s impossible to count how many masterpieces Mark Newman painted with his poetic prose during 29 seasons as the writer and photographer for Griffiti magazine.

Some impressive numbers are known, though, such as 121 issues produced, nearly 750 interviews conducted, and more than 1,000 games shot with his ever-present camera in his usual spots along Van Andel Arena’s glass.

This summer, Newman decided it was time to finally lay down his digital recorder, laptop and camera and join the retired ranks of Griffins legends he’s interviewed over the years. Like the great players whose stories he chronicled, Newman never just glided along, rested on his laurels, or took the easy way out. A multi-tool player, he put in the work, went to the hard places and, as they say, left it all on the ice.

All great epics have a beginning, and Newman’s Griffins saga began well before the first puck dropped. Bob Sack, then the Griffins’ senior VP of business operations, had been the executive director of the First of America Classic Senior PGA tournament when Newman served as a co-chair in 1994. Sack recruited Newman to assist with some marketing projects for the fledgling franchise before inviting him to develop a proposal for the team’s game-night publication.

“Bob said that they wanted to do more than a program, more like a magazine,” said Newman. “He basically said, ‘Come up with the idea, the name, the concept, the budget, story ideas, etc., and if we like your concept, it's yours.’ When I presented my whole proposal, he said, ‘You have it.’ It felt like a dream project.

“I remember the thrill of seeing people reading the first issue on opening night in 1996. At the time, I thought it would be amazing if my writing gig with Griffiti lasted five years. Then suddenly it was 10, 15, 20, 25…”

So what kept him going with the Griffins for so long?

“It's the personalities you meet, from coaches to players to staff, to the sport of hockey itself. The excitement that first year was incredible. And then, years later, the championships.

“I’ll always carry fond memories of the hundreds of interviews I’ve had with players and coaches over the years,” Newman said. “Equally, it has been a delight to work alongside the many talented and dedicated people in the Griffins’ office. Their professionalism has always stood out – and that starts at the top with owners Dan DeVos and David Van Andel. I truly appreciated how respectfully I was treated throughout the years, and I hope my work has lived up to the standards of the organization.”

No worries there. In fact, it’s difficult to fully frame Newman’s importance to the franchise’s success during his three decades as the heart and soul of Griffiti. Fans often fall in love with players due to what happens on the ice, but they’ve come to know and appreciate their personalities in no small part through these pages.

Griffins president Tim Gortsema was one of first to join the staff back in 1995 and fully understands what Newman has meant to the team. “Our franchise has been extremely blessed to have Mark as an extended member of our staff,” said Gortsema. “He’s super-vested and ‘in it to win it,’ a very talented writer who legitimately cares about the success of the franchise and the players. To have had that same guy and that same level of commitment for almost 30 years is unbelievable.”

As woven into the fabric of the Griffins as the banners that hang high above the ice in honor of the team’s Calder Cups, division titles, and retired jerseys, Newman is a renowned repository of institutional knowledge, a pun-master extraordinaire, and a gifted raconteur whose lengthy interviews and booming voice are legend in the Griffins’ locker room and front office. He also earned a reputation for interview preparation, which resulted in him often asking questions that his subjects had never been asked before.

“Over the years it was interesting challenge for me. ‘Okay, I’ve got another hockey player.’ How's his story unique? And so I did research, looking up what I could, digging, finding out that someone’s mother died when he was 8 years old, or maybe a player was an avid book reader. I always strived to show my subjects were much more than hockey players.

“This goes back to my Grand Rapids Press days, where I started my writing career. If I went into an interview and I started asking the non-traditional questions and showed that I knew something about their career, they’re like, ‘Oh, this guy's done his homework.’ Now they're going to talk to me a little bit more. Sometimes they'd tell me they had another interview scheduled but they were enjoying talking to me, so they kept talking to me. I took it as a badge of honor; I was told I’d have 20 minutes, but we’d end up talking for an hour.”

Far more than a mere hockey scribe, Newman is a longtime entertainment writer whose list of interview subjects reads like a Who’s Who of the last 50 years: Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, U2, Alice Cooper, Robin Williams, Mister Rogers, B.B. King, Ted Turner, Ray Bradbury, Huey Lewis, Loretta Lynn, Ozzy Osbourne, Joan Jett, Big Bird, Magic Johnson, Bo Schembechler and Steve Yzerman. To name a few.

“You realize they're just doing what they love most. Sometimes it's what they're making money at, but everybody has a story. Maybe they fell into this, maybe they were a good singer, a good skater, or a good whatever, and now they're making the most of their talent. You see guys that have come through here like Darren Helm, who was willing to work harder than anybody. He’s running the arena stairs at night after a game and you say, ‘OK, that guy's probably going to make it.’

“I never would have imagined all the people I got to meet over the years,” said Newman. “And you know, talking to Steve Yzerman or Scotty Bowman, that was a big thrill anytime I got to meet a Hall of Famer.”

Working around hockey for so long has given Newman a deep appreciation for its players.

“I think I've worked with almost every sport. Baseball players, football players, basketball players… but hockey players without a doubt are the best. They’re the nicest, most cordial, most professional of all the athletes I've ever dealt with, college or pro.”

Capturing them as a photographer is a much greater challenge than interviewing them.

“The challenge of shooting a hockey game, with the action, the speed of the game and shooting through glass, is not easy. If you can shoot hockey, you can shoot anything. You might think you’ve got the perfect shot, then boom, a linesman or another player is in the way.” 

The Griffins’ first Calder Cup win in Syracuse in 2013 provided both one of the greatest memories and most nerve-wracking moments of Newman’s tenure. “I knew you have only one crack at getting that team photo, and I was stressing the whole game. [Detroit Red Wings photographer] Dave Reginek had told me, ‘Mark, when you're on the ice, you're in charge. Take charge.’ I remember going on the ice after the final horn and it's chaos, people are cheering, players are looking in the stands at their wives. And I yelled, ‘I need everybody to look this way and look happy.’ I captured the shot. When we got on the plane after that game, I had the worst migraine, just from the stress.”

Fifteen years ago, a collaboration with Mark Heckman, a dear friend and artist who ultimately lost his battle with cancer, launched a new career for Newman, one as a science writer and invasive species expert. He has since authored four Sooper Yooper children's books about an environmental superhero and has visited more than 800 schools throughout the Great Lakes region in the U.S. and Canada.

“It's about a superhero who's guarding the Great Lakes from invasive species. Billy Cooper is based in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, so he’s a Sooper Yooper. And that's the only rhyme in the first book, because I'm not Dr. Seuss,” he said with a laugh.

In a fun intersection of Newman’s varied worlds, Griffins broadcaster Bob Kaser ended up portraying Billy’s grandpa in the series’ third book, Sooper Yooper: H2O (Hero 2 Others). “Bob was kind enough to play the part, and I photoshopped him into scenes. The scene of him with the binoculars was shot in the Griffins’ kitchen, and then I put him into the wheelhouse of the freighter. That was fun.”

Another of Newman’s passions – to put it mildly – is music.

His personal Setlist.fm page is a bottomless rabbit hole for music lovers to vicariously explore. We’re talking 1,288 different artists seen, and 1,842 concerts attended in the U.S. and 14 foreign countries. Perhaps the only blemish on his unparallelled music record – and this is a man who owns 15,000 vinyl albums and another 6,000 CDs – is not having seen a concert in all of the 30 countries he’s visited. But just give him time, which he now has more of to pursue his passions.

“I considered aiming for at least 30 years with Griffiti. But then I thought, if I say I worked with the Griffins for 30 years, people would say, ‘Oh, he's rounding off.’ If I say I did 29 seasons, they go, ‘Well, it was 29 seasons.’ 

“I remain busy with Lacks Enterprises, where I'm a communication specialist, and I have three book projects I want to do: a book about music, one about the art of collaboration, and then one about sound engineer Bill Chrysler,” Newman said. “If I continued writing 15,000 words for every issue of Griffiti, I knew I was never going to get to them. And with the travel that my wife Kathy and I want to do – we’re going to Spain in October, we're booked for Turkey next April – there are just too many conflicts. 

“The Griffins have been a meaningful part of my life for three decades, so stepping away was not easy. I had to make a decision about how much longer I could do it like I've been doing it, and I felt the time had come to give somebody else an opportunity. Those books won't write themselves overnight, and I'm not getting any younger.”

Being a traveler, Newman always found it interesting to meet players from all over the world. “I enjoyed getting to know guys like Gus Nyquist from Sweden, Tomas Tatar from Slovakia, or Russian players like [Petr] Schastlivy and [Konstantin] Gorovikov, and later [Evgeny] Svechnikov, who’s from a whole different part of Russia, near Japan. I was able to ask Nik Kronwall for travel tips. You know, ‘What do I need to see in Stockholm?’”

He also has a soft spot for the players who overcame the odds to eventually make their marks in the NHL.

“I’ve loved seeing the development of players like Matt Ellis, who people said would never play in the NHL. He was one of the hardest workers the Griffins ever had, and he worked his way up and ended up playing more than 300 games in the NHL,” Newman said. “I remember meeting Luke Glendening in 2012, sitting with his parents at their kitchen table in East Grand Rapids. I told him, ‘If everything I read is true – you're this hard worker, people have always counted you out, you were a walk-on at Michigan – you can be the next Matt Ellis.’” 

How does he hope to be remembered by the players and coaches whom he interviewed? 

“He’s a good guy. He told a good story. And he treated everybody fairly,” said Newman. “I always said that trust and respect are the two most important things. Earn someone’s trust and you will get their respect.

“There was a time when I hadn't seen Tatar in a couple of years after he had left the Red Wings organization, and I remember catching up with him outside the locker room at Joe Louis Arena. When he spotted me, he gave me a big hug. It meant a lot to me. You never take players remembering you for granted.

“A lot of people would have loved to do what I got to do. I feel very honored and blessed that the Griffins gave me the opportunity in the first place. It was very special, and I never took it for granted. I was lucky. But you also make your own luck. When you're given an opportunity, you've got to make sure you're ready.”

Newman estimates that he’s only watched about five Griffins games as a fan since 1996, and he’s looking forward to checking off another one soon. “I'm not going to say when I'm coming, I'm just going to come. I'm going to buy my own ticket and sit in the stands and just watch a game like any other hockey fan.”

He’s ready. And after giving fans a front-row seat to the Griffins for 29 years, he’s earned it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mark Newman penned the vast majority of words printed in Griffiti since its debut, and the skates he leaves behind are far too large for one person to fill. So, we’re proud to introduce a stable of talented writers, all with deep ties to the sport or our organization, who have seized the mantle and will pursue Newman’s legacy of excellence: Lorilee Craker, Phil de Haan, Kyle Kujawa, and Jonathan Mills. Learn more about them in the brief bios at the end of each feature story in this issue.