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

Last month, a media executive met with a headhunter to plan his next career move. With years of experience at a major media organization, the executive figured that he had some good ammo to jump to the next level, even in the current economic climate.

The meeting did not go well.

"The headhunter essentially told me not to even bother trying," says the executive. "He told me, ‘The old media model is broken.' The message was that there really isn't a next step to take."

Like many industries, the mainstream media—newspaper and magazine companies in particular—have been ravaged by the recession and the infringing Internet over the last six months. Professional viability in this brave new world has become akin to winning a high-stakes game of musical chairs. The media business has always been a deeply competitive bastion of ambition; yet today's journalists—including both those sidelined by layoffs and those still clinging desperately their workplace desks—have been left to wonder whether the very idea of ambition makes sense anymore.

"How do you progress in an industry that has no clear path to anywhere?" asked Glynnis MacNicol, a media analyst and editor of FishbowlNY. "Right now, the definition of success in the media is not to be unemployed."

Just a year ago, media careers still had clear, relatively linear trajectories. If you worked in publications, you started as an editorial assistant and worked your way up the ranks of editorships until you reached a grand prize. In television news, you started as a desk assistant and progressed from there; in 10 years, you could be a senior producer, correspondent, or even in senior management.

Those days may be over—or at least on hold indefinitely.

"I think people are aware that the great pot of gold at the end of the rainbow might not be there anymore," says one television producer at a prestigious network news show. "You used to be told, ‘You will one day be the leaders of this organization.' Now, who knows if any of us are going to have jobs in five years?"

For many, goals are no longer defined in specific terms, such as "I'd like to be the Style section editor at the New York Times"; rather, journalists now describe their aspirations in broader strokes: "I'd just like to be a published writer," "I'd like to be paid to be a writer in some way," or "I want to be a journalist in whatever form that takes down the line."

Even more recently forged new-media career ladders appear shaky. For the last decade or so, many young journalists cut their teeth at online sites and then leapfrogged into prestigious positions at magazines and networks. One success story: Jake Tapper, who hailed from Salon and became ABC News' senior White House correspondent. Another example: columnist Jessica Coen, who skipped out on Gawker to a gig at New York magazine.

Yet what happens to this trajectory when the ABCs and New Yorks of the world simply aren't hiring fresh talent, no matter where it comes from?

And it's not as if the Internet itself is offering up obvious substitutes. Many business analysts are less convinced that such venues are viable in the long term.

"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."

Just as the goals—and the goal posts—are shifting or deteriorating, the reasons for entering the industry seem to be changing as well.

"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."

The business prevalence of social media and easily obtained, sophisticated Web site software has created entry points for anyone who wants to have a personal press, eroding the concept of a dues-paying professional culture. Instead of climbing a ladder to the top, for today's newbies, the bottom rung is the new top rung. Sometimes it's the only rung. Why embark on the five-to-20-year plan with a shaky established media concern when you can broadcast yourself—sans office politics, expectations management, or even clothes if you don't feel like wearing them—all from the comfort of your own bedroom?

But, of course, there is a catch: "No one's making any money from it," reminds Caruso.

Yet not everyone is worried about dwelling in penury—or is shrinking from making big plans. When asked to envision where she'd be in 20 years, Nylon magazine's digital director, Faran Krentcil, responded, "I'll be an editor in chief."

Of a magazine?

"When I say I'll be an editor in chief, it won't be that you're an editor in chief of a magazine or a Web site," she explains, almost exasperated by the question. "It'll be, you're the editor in chief of this title. And under the title lives this point of view, this sound, this excitement.  The definition of magazine will change. Now it's 100 pages of pretty paper. In the future, your magazine will be that paper, but also digital content that has the same voice, the video component. It will be more."

One thing is for certain: If Krentcil's new title is hiring, it'll have plenty of seasoned candidates from which to choose.

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