The media business model is broken, said Sheryl Tucker '78, former executive editor at Time Inc. and Cornell Alumni Trustee, at a panel discussion at the Cornell Club July 28 in New York City. "We thought branded content was important," said Tucker. "It turns out not to be."

The event, "A New Media Landscape," sponsored by the Cornell Entrepreneur Network (CEN) and the College of Arts and Sciences' Office of Career Services, brought together five Cornellians working in media with students and alumni to discuss "what it means to write and disseminate information in this new media landscape where magazine, television, radio and the Internet intersect."

"Fifteen years ago, when the Internet first began, there were only a few media portals like AOL and Yahoo," said Scott Schiller '81, senior vice president for advertising sales at Comcast Interactive Media. But as technology evolved and the number of media outlets increased, consumers found they could get information from a variety of sources on diverse platforms.

"To be successful, advertising needs to reach a specific audience," Schiller said. The old business model worked well with a finite number of highly-branded media outlets like Time, Inc., New York Times and others but "over the last five years, the audiences have become splintered," leading to the collapse of the traditional advertising model. As a result, media companies have less revenue for producing content, he said.

"We'd all like to get paid," said Marilyn Laverty '76, former vice president at Columbia Records and founder and president of the public relations firm Shore Fire Media. "It turns out [that] to get paid, we may have to give some away for free," Laverty noted that free radio continues to be one of the biggest drivers of album sales.

Still, "digital ad sales are a fraction of our bottom line," said Ken Saji '92, senior editorial director at MTV Networks and moderator for the event. "We still owe most of our success to the golden calf of on-air advertising," he said. Saji added that he has seen an increasing downward pressure on wages and acknowledged the need for media companies to do more for less.

So how can media outlets create revenue without advertisers? "The Internet has created an opportunity to create your own niche," said Susan Danziger '86, creator and CEO of DailyLit, a website that gives away much of its content for free. Danziger added that secondary sources of revenue like speaking engagements, merchandizing and lecturing can support an emerging media business model. "I encourage you to buy your domain name, create a blog and build your own brand," said Danziger. More exposure will lead to more success, she said.

"We think we're in competition with other media," Tucker concluded. "We're actually in competition with people's lives." The question for media consumers is not which magazine to read, but instead whether to attend their children's soccer game, she said.

The Cornell Entrepreneurial Network is the university's multi-city business networking program. CEN offers students and alumni the opportunity to learn from world-class speakers and meet Cornellians with similar business motivations at more than 100 events each year.