How do you get ahead in an industry that can’t see its own future?

Posted Sunday, April 19, 2009 - 10:25pm

"Take the Huffington Post, for example," says one analyst, who specializes in media at a private-equity firm. "They don't pay their writers, and who knows what the value of the company is. That company might not exist five years from now. It's the big success story, and it's not successful."

Many journalists interviewed for this piece—on both sides of the old/new-media divide—say that they are eagerly waiting for a 20-year-old to crack a Facebook-esque code of some sort, a college kid who will come up with a business model that will redeem the media world and everyone in it.

That makes the new-media order a strange place indeed: The recent college grad isn't supposed to fetch coffee or fill the copy machine; he or she is supposed to be the messiah of the company, albeit at a very low salary.

"There's been an inversion of experiences," says MacNicol, citing a memo that the New York Times management recently circulated to its whole newsroom—from the most junior to the most senior employees—soliciting ideas from everyone about how to increase revenues. "When the Times is doing that, you know that we have lost the traditional definitions of success."

As the traditional media model buckles, the accompanying iconography is changing as well. Budding editors used to strive to be the next Anna Wintour, Graydon Carter, or Jann Wenner; or perhaps their aspirations centered on becoming the next Amanpour or Jennings. If you were really old-school, your hero of choice might have been Bob Woodward or even Edward Murrow.

"In today's news business, Arianna Huffington and Matt Drudge both have prestige jobs," says Dan Abrams, a legal correspondent for NBC and CEO of recently founded media-strategy-firm Abrams Research. "They have created entities without anyone tapping them to do it; they just did it. The future kingmakers will be more entrepreneurial."

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Lesley M. M. Blume is an author and journalist based in New York City.

(Photograph of a man climbing a ladder by John Foxx/Stockbyte/Getty Creative Images)

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Submitted by Indentured_Servant on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 11:53am.

The Media's Lost Generation

The traditional media model has not buckled! It has been corrupted like our Constitution! It's not going to take some college kid with a new model to "fix" the news media! Just get back to the original purpose of the media model..........honest, fair & unbiased presentation of facts!

When I was about 10 years old I read a copy of the National Enquirer my mom had lying around. (pun intended) Even at that young age I knew that most of what was written there could not be trusted. Back then, mainstream news media still had some semblance of honesty and integrity. That same mainstream news media today looks more like the National Enquirer did when I was 10 years old. It's disgusting and there are not enough minutes left in my life to waste one of them on the mainstream news media.

You need editors and producers that can suppress the idealism, extremism, activism and ego of their so called journalists. Only then will you attract enough viewers, subscribers and *advertisers* to allow someone to once again aspire to be the style editor for the NY Times! Give me the honest, unbiased facts and allow *me* to think rather than telling me *what* to think!

Your "business model" for success already exists in your own archives!

Submitted by Indentured_Servant on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 11:51am.

The Media's Lost Generation

Your "business model" for success already exists in your own archives!

Submitted by Fleurdamour on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 5:50pm.

Re: the headhunter who said,

Re: the headhunter who said, ‘The old media model is broken,' I'd tell the exec to get a new headhunter. Yeah, times are epically bad, but a good placement person should have been able to advise him what new digital skills to acquire at his level in order to make progress. It's true that nothing is guaranteed now, at any level, no matter how senior, but that doesn't mean there is no progress to be made. And if the exec wants to even keep the job he has, he'll need to keep learning. That's the reality for all of us.

Submitted by jimcat on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 9:02am.

The Wrong Priorities

"When I went to school, it was about, ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted,' " says Michael Caruso, a former editor at the Village Voice, Vanity Fair, Details, and many other magazines. "You wanted to keep the government honest. Today the goals are different. It's mostly about self-expression."

I think that the above, as much as the economy and the Internet, goes a long way to explain why people are losing interest in the old media. When you started reading the news to be informed, it's discouraging and frustrating to see the media dominated by people who went into reporting primarily to stroke their own egos.

Anyone aspiring to journalism should remember this: yes, it's about keeping the government honest, and it's also about keeping the public informed. It is NOT about seeing your name in print.

Submitted by mark456 on Thu, 05/28/2009 - 12:59am.