Media Guru Breakfast: Janet Robinson

media guru bob bakish president and chief executive officer viacom internat

Media Guru, Media Disruptor and Founder Events are on Vacation

September 15, 2023

Quantum Media organizes Media Guru and Media Disruptor series in conjunction with the Harvard Business School Club of New York as well as Founder talks and other conferences and events put on by others. To stay up to date, sign up for our mailing list which is exclusively used for just these events.

NEW DATE! Hype or Real? Practical use of AI and what to know to start integrating AI into your work.

May 16, 2023

Discussions about how AI will shape the future are everywhere – from major publications to social media feeds. It is one of the hottest topics in the VC world, too, as the advances in AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) have been identified as one of the major breakthroughs of the century. In fact, many believe we have already reached singularity.

Yet, is it hype? Or if you are not using AI in your work, are you lagging behind?

Join us on May 16 for a lively session with two AI founders and experts
At the Columbia Startup Lab, 69 Charlton on the first floor.
At 5:00 pm doors open for networking and the discussion starts at 5:45 pm until about 6:45 pm.
Admission is free.
RSVP to https://forms.gle/5yt3PYbF8ZCv8K4f8

In this session, Margaret Downs, executive coach and Quantum Media senior consultant, interviews Marina Petrova and Bruce Amick, the co-founders of Intentful. Marina and Bruce are early adopters of the use of AI and NLP in commercial projects and have a lot of insight into the practical application of the technology.

Some of the topics we will cover include:

What are AI and NLP, in simple terms?
What are the use cases beyond content creation?
Why does AI make things up, and how can you manage that?
Will the way we search change?
DEI in AI – why is some of the output far from the DEI standards of 2023?
How can you get started with integrating AI in your organization?

Come to the session prepared to be inspired, and leave with ideas about how AI can transform your business.

The panelists are two executives from NYC-based Intentful. Throughout their careers, Marina Petrova (CEO) and Bruce Amick (COO) have championed technical innovation to drive business growth by connecting technologies with insight and creativity.

Since 2021, Intentful has launched thousands of projects for The Shubert Organization representing 30 Broadway shows, The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, Rakuten Viber, HotelPlanner, and Hilton, to name a few. In addition to the commercial work, last summer Marina and Bruce trained AI models to impersonate William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, and Oscar Wilde for a debate at Oxford Union in the UK.

Marina Petrova is an omnichannel communications professional with 20+ years of experience in digital, creative, and media, working with brands and customers in more than 50 countries. She had senior management roles with Publicis, WPP, and New York Online. Marina’s experience includes hundreds of projects launched for Colgate, Hill’s, General Mills, Air France / KLM, GM, National Geographic, HP, and many others. Marina is a frequent speaker on digital transformation, the practical use of AI, data, search, and DEI in AI.

Bruce Amick has 30+ years of experience bringing innovation and operational leadership to a handful of iconic companies in entertainment, tourism, and finance; guiding new businesses or corporate divisions from conception to flourishing operation for Cameron Mackintosh, Inc., Broadway.com, The Shubert Organization, and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA).

About Intentful

Intentful trains AI to know your brand, thus delivering high-quality, relevant content at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional methods. It is human and artificial intelligence, combined: the approach is built on a unique combination of human expertise, the use of data insights, artificial intelligence, and a deep understanding of engagement metrics that drive performance. In the last 18 months, Intentful has been invited to give presentations on the practical use of AI at University of Oxford, Singularity University, World Federation of Advertisers, MMA's The Future of Marketing Summit, eTourism Summit, IPW, and World Travel Market.

Margaret Downs will moderate the session. Margaret is an executive coach and senior consultant with Quantum Media. A member of the Harvard Business School Class of 1985, Margaret has advised many prominent companies and their leaders, inside and outside of the media sector. Her consulting speciality is organizational strategy, design and transformation. She also coaches senior and mid-level leaders wishing to reach their full leadership potential.

Admission is free. Just RSVP to https://forms.gle/5yt3PYbF8ZCv8K4f8 Have your questions ready! #AI #strategy #managementconsulting

What is Web3? Why All Industries Should Care and What They Can Do About it (Zoom)

Co-founder of AcornOak Agency and Fractional CMO

February 21, 2023

Web3 is here; and although nascent, it will deeply affect everyone professionally and personally. What to do? The digital evangelist and marketing technologist, Virginie Glaenzer will explain Web3 practices and their complexities in a Zoom event via Harvard Business School Club of NY and Quantum, using business cases across the economy. It will take place at 6:00 pm ET on Tuesday February 21, 2023.

If you know something about Web3, but not entirely sure what it involves besides cryptocurrency, Virginie Glaenzer’s talk will explain. She sees Web3 as threatening the fundamental structure of financial institutions, and sees the knowledge as vital for business leaders. You will learn about Web3 and the emerging “abundant” emerging economy that is affecting legacy companies and entrepreneurial enterprises. Glaenzer stated, “Everyone is a shareholder in something, with Robinhood slices of shares to Angellist slices of start-ups; the micro everything removes the barriers to entry.”

Glaenzer will detail the four underlying business principles of Web3: Decentralization; Trustless Interactions; Transparency and Digital Ownership. And she will tell us the So What – why leaders in the economy should care.

Virginie Glaezner is co-founder of AcornOak Agency headquartered in New York City and a Fractional CMO. She is responsible for designing digital marketing and sales funnel strategies to drive sustainability and for helping leaders and their teams to navigate complexity with confidence and clarity of thought. She is the co-author of the book The Leadership Singularity and the host of the Pass the Mic podcast, a podcast that “aims to bring compassion and conscious leadership to business and in our personal lives.”

For more information and to sign up on the Harvard Business School site, go here.

Media Guru In-person Event: Meet CoinDesk CEO Kevin Worth

CEO Coindesk

February 9, 2023

Is CoinDesk to crypto what Levi jeans was to the California goldrush? Kevin Worth, CEO for 5 years at CoinDesk will talk about finding and building revenue streams at a media organization reporting on an emerging crypto economy.

Kevin came to CoinDesk -- the media, event, indices and data company for the emerging crypto economy – in 2017 to run the then 4-year-old business. Now, CoinDesk provides millions of consumers interested in cryptocurrency assets and blockchain technology with news, insights, benchmark indices, podcasts, live stream TV shows and research reports.

This 60-minute fireside chat (via Harvard Business School Club and Quantum Media) will be held at CoinDesk’s New York offices on Thursday February 9, 2023 at 6 pm. Kevin will talk both about the management issues that the CEO of a new media company needs to be good at and the particular issues with CoinDesk.

To get more information and to sign up for the event, go to the HBSCNY site here.

In-Person Workshop with banker Reed Phillips: Make Your Company Stronger by Understanding Its Value

Authors of QuickValue: Discover Your Value and Empower Your Business in Three Easy Steps

December 7, 2022

The most important role for leaders of any business is to build value in the enterprise. Yet most owners and managers of middle market companies lack the single most important piece of information they need to fulfill that role: A clear understanding of what the business is worth right now. This hands-on 2 hour workshop on Wednesday December 7 (6 pm ET start) will give a way to establish that value.

Presented as a program via the Harvard Business School Club of NY, banker Reed Phillips and his co-author Charlie Slack will demonstrate how managers can overcome traditional valuation roadblocks and quickly and easily determine what their company is worth, based on its unique value drivers, some readily available information on multiples, and the proprietary QuickValue method, recently featured in Harvard Business Review.

Each participant will receive a copy of QuickValue, as well as a companion workbook guiding them step-by-step through the valuation process. For more information and to register, go to the Harvard Business School Club of New York site here.

#strategy #valuation #managementconsulting

Media Guru: Hearst President & CEO Steven Swartz Discusses Growth and Diversification In The Company’s 135th Year (virtual)

President & CEO Hearst

November 17, 2022

Join members of Quantum Media via the Harvard Business School Club for a captivating discussion with Hearst’s President & CEO, Steven Swartz to discuss opportunities, challenges, disruption in media and critical leadership lessons as a privately-held organization. Thursday, November 17, 6 pm ET, ZOOM.

Hearst is a leading global, diversified information, services and media company with operations in 40 countries. In a recent Axios article, it highlights that 10 years ago Hearst’s, data and software portfolio represented less than 10% of profits and in 2022 it will be “north of 40%.”

Swartz will discuss how the diversification of Hearst has led to its continued success in the face of challenges in the media landscape. He will touch upon the shifts in the media space and how things will continue to shift in the future. Swartz will also talk about the unique challenges and opportunities of leading one of the largest privately held media companies as well as his experience as a journalist and now leader of one of the nation’s largest global, diversified information, services and media companies.

Media Guru events are well-known for their “no speeches, no Power Point” promise: Just terrific one-on-one conversation with a fascinating personality making news in the media business, followed by Q+A. Friend of Quantum Media, Rebecca Binder, President of RFBinder is the event's moderator.

To sign up for the event, go to the HBSCNY site here.

VIRTUAL: Media Guru Chris Best, Co-founder and CEO at Substack

May 26, 2022

Chris Best is co-founder and CEO of Substack, a subscription publishing platform for independent writers. He is May's Media Guru. Founded in 2017, Substack lets writers own their work and their relationship with their audience.

Media Guru events are well-known for their “no speeches, no Power Point” promise: Just compelling one-on-one conversation with a fascinating personality making news in the media business, followed by Q+A from the audience. The events are organized by the Harvard Business School and Quantum Media. Friend of Quantum Media, Rebecca Binder, will be moderating this event on Tuesday, May 26 6:00 pm ET. Come back in mid-April to sign up.

#media #journalism

CEOs and Thought Leaders Weigh In on Free Speech in the Workplace, May 17, 6 pm ET [VIRTUAL]

CEOs and Thought Leaders Weigh In on Free Speech in the Workplace

May 17, 2022

A multi-part series exploring the “Complexity of Free Speech” with a range of experts and opinion leaders from our community is being presented by The Harvard Business School Club of New York (HBSCNY) and produced by Quantum Media Principal, Ava Seave and her friend and colleague, John O'Donnell.

CEOs, Founders, Board members and consultants are faced with the contradictory needs of our employees and stakeholders to “speak up” about any number of issues, and yet they want to consider work to be a “safe place” where, for example, they are free from social and political judgments and free from what they consider harassing speech.

Please join us for this lively session where the panelists will discuss among other topics:

How the First Amendment is translated to employee and management speech is protected in the workplace?
The youngest generations in particular are eager to bring their whole selves to work and to be “authentic;” but how does that square with mutual respect for everyone?
How do you optimize management in such an environment?
What about social media and personal vs. professional use of that?

This group of attorneys, CEOs and thinkers will discuss how to execute in this complex legal and social environment, bringing specific examples forward from their careers.

Amy Binder, Founder and CEO at RFBinder
Martha Crawford, Independent Director, Former C-suite executive Private Equity Advisor, Presently working with Macquarie Infrastructure Fund
Charles H. Kaplan, Partner at Hodgson Russ LLP, Labor & Employment Practice, Represent Management
Jim Moore, CEO, Atlanta Power & Utilities
The moderator is Sree Sreenivasan, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University

To sign up for the event, please visit the HBSCNY website.

Media Guru: Justin Smith, Former CEO Bloomberg, Founds News Startup: Why?

March 15, 2022

Justin Smith has been a leader at gigantic, medium and small media companies – Bloomberg (9 years), Atlantic Media, (6 years) and The Week (5 years). Mike Bloomberg, a serious innovator himself, has called Smith one of the “smartest and most innovative people in media.” Now, Smith wants to radically step away from the perception and processes of current news organizations to begin anew.

In this 60 minute fireside chat, via Zoom, we will ask Smith about his management style and processes and how they changed over the years, with different companies and different owners. How are Smith’s experiences in huge corporations relevant to this startup? And why a startup?

Media Guru events are well-known for their “no speeches, no Power Point” promise: Just compelling one-on-one conversation with a fascinating personality making news in the media business, followed by Q+A from the audience. Quantum Media Principal, Ava Seave, will be moderating this event on Tuesday, March 15, 6:30 pm. To sign up for this event, check out the Harvard Business School announcement page.

NEW! VIRTUAL series on Free Speech: “Misinformation and Hate Speech: Who Gets to Decide?” Tues Feb 8

Misinformation and Hate Speech: Who Gets to Decide?

February 8, 2022

Is the First Amendment under attack in America today? Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms regularly ban comments they label as “Misinformation” and “Hate Speech.” Our panelists will address the question of “Who decides?” and the impact of “cancel culture” on themselves and their colleagues. Learn how to protect free speech while we still have it.

Starting with this panel, the HBS Club of New York will hold an ongoing series of discussions on the ideas of free speech and the First Amendment, and how these concepts are to be understood in the current social and political context. The events will take place virtually in the evenings. The “Misinformation and Hate Speech” discussion takes place from 6:30 to 8:00 pm on February 8. A question and answer period for the audience follows the panel discussion.

The panel moderator is Nadine Strossen, of NY Law school and past national President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008). The panelists are Thomas Spence, President and Publisher at Regnery Publishing, Dr. Julia Mason, MS MD FAAP (US) is a board-certified pediatrician and Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Dr. Lisa Littman, MD, MPH is a physician researcher who is trained in Preventive Medicine and Public Health and in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Quantum Principal Ava Seave is helping produce the series.

To sign up and for more information, go here.

#strategy #consulting #freespeech

Media Guru: Roger Lynch, CEO Conde Nast [VIRTUAL]

October 26, 2021

Join us for a captivating discussion with Condé Nast’s first global CEO, Roger Lynch to discuss how the company has responded to the rapidly changing media landscape, including disruptive business models, new distribution channels and COVID-19.

Condé Nast is a global media company that produces some of the world’s leading print, digital, video and social brands. These include Vogue, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest (AD), Condé Nast Traveler and Wired, among others. Headquartered in New York and London, Condé Nast operates in 32 markets including China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico and Latin America, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S., with additional license partners throughout the world.

Lynch will discuss how Condé Nast has transformed its business model and distribution channels to succeed in an industry that is being disrupted. Known for his success in other companies such as SlingTV and Pandora, Lynch will talk about how he has leveraged his learnings from past experiences and applied them at Condé Nast.

Media Guru events are well-known for their “no speeches, no Power Point” promise: Just compelling one-on-one conversation with a fascinating personality making news in the media business, followed by Q+A. Friend of Quantum Media's Rebecca Binder, Senior Managing Director, Strategic Initiatives at RF|Binder and an HBS alum, will be moderating the event on Tuesday October 26.

NOTE TIME: 5 PM ET. To sign up go here.

#strategy #consulting #media

VIRTUAL Media Guru Speaker: Graydon Carter, Editor Extraordinaire and Founder of Air Mail

Editor and Founder of Air Mail

May 18, 2021

Air Mail, Carter’s weekly digital magazine, launched in July 2019 is “the weekend edition of a nonexistent international daily.” It has both a strong paywall and robust advertising : So how does Graydon Carter do it?

Graydon Carter, the award-winning 25-year editor of Vanity Fair and founder of the iconic Spy Magazine has been a leader in popular cultural editing and reporting for a long time. Of late he founded and co-edits Air Mail -- which is completely digital and according to the company, brings you “news and culture at a civilized pace” covering “with sophistication, authority and wit” a wide range of subjects from politics to business, to arts, to food to society and crime.

Carter’s Air Mail business model is similar to many digital publications with multiple revenue streams, including direct-to-consumer retail. Editorially it is a mix of original reporting and republished curated stories. The special sauce, according to one media critic, comes from Carter’s fantastic publishing instincts, its “magnetic pull” and compelling design.

We will discuss with Carter how he leads this relatively small and creative media enterprise differently than he led as Editor of Vanity Fair. Who is the audience that Air Mail is targeting and how are they finding them? What are the ways the company is growing? How has it expanded advertising, subscriptions and merchandise sales? When staffing, how is it different for a small company versus a large organization like Conde Nast? What has been Carter’s priorities during the first 2 years and how they are changing?

Media Guru events are well-known for their “no speeches, no Power Point” promise: Just compelling one-on-one conversation with a fascinating personality making news in the media business, followed by Q+A. Quantum Principal Ava Seave will be moderating the event on Tuesday May 18 at 6:00 pm. More information and to sign up on the Harvard Business School Club site.

VIRTUAL Media Guru: Jessica Lessin, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Information

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Information

April 29, 2021

How does The Information, known for original, in-depth reporting about all things tech, disrupt the business-as-usual coverage of the industry? Lessin will tell us about running a compelling news organization that has deeply reported articles about the technology industry that you won't find elsewhere. And she will share how being a woman founder and boss within male-dominated environments of startups and tech is often a good thing.The Information was considered a “disrupter” media property when founded in December 2013. Now with seven years of data-analysis, breaking stories and deep, nuanced reporting on technology companies the company is considered “mainstream” itself. Proof of how influential the organization has become in covering tech was that an attack article by a New York Times media reporter was published in February 2020.

The Information’s business model is primarily subscription driven, priced at $399 per individual per year. Lessin has stated publicly that the company has more than 20,000 subscribers and that they have been profitable since 2016. The news property accepts no advertising, although its events business, has commercial sponsorships. The company has also started an accelerator for news startups.

Quantum Principal Ava Seave will be moderating this event on Thursday April 29 at 6:00 pm. For more information and to sign up for this event, go directly to the HBSCNY site.

VIRTUAL Media Guru: President & CEO of New York Public Radio Goli Sheikholeslami

President & CEO of New York Public Radio

March 17, 2021

How does Goli Sheikholeslami, CEO of New York Public Radio, go about executing NY Public Radio’s ambitious mission: “To make the mind more curious, the heart more open and the spirit more joyful through excellent audio programming that is deeply rooted in New York?”

Sheikholeslami has been President and CEO of NY Public Radio since August 2019. The organization has almost 375 employees, multiple distribution channels and multiple revenue streams – programming licensing, major donors, membership, bequests, foundation giving and sponsorship. It has great media influence. And New York Public Radio is a complex organization to run, bringing in about $82 million in FY2020.

We will discuss with Sheikholeslami how she leads this large and creative media enterprise that in 2020 is dealing with the social and health concerns of all New Yorkers. What does she do as a manager at a time when local news is shrinking, disinformation is on the rise, podcasts are proliferating, cultural institutions are shuttered and most staff are working remotely due to the pandemic? What have been her priorities during her first 18 months on the job? How do the CEO’s tactics and style differ in dealing with its journalists as opposed to the nonprofit’s major donors as opposed to its employees? And what is her strategy in distribution and licensing as well as for fundraising going forward?

Quantum Media Principal Ava Seave is moderating the event on Wednesday March 17 at 6:00 pm. Sign up to attend the event directly on the Harvard Business School site here.

VIRTUAL Media Guru: Rick Berke Co-founder and Executive Editor, STATnews

Executive Editor, Co-Founder

February 17, 2021

The founder behind a news organization which was in the right place to cover the 2020 pandemic, Rick Berke will discuss how STAT sticks to its mission “delivering fast, deep, and tough-minded journalism about health, medicine, life sciences and the fast-moving business of making medicines.” Berke is the Media Guru on February 17.

For more information and to sign up, go directly to the HBSCNY.org site page.

VIRTUAL Media Guru: David Kenny, Nielsen’s CEO and Chief Diversity Officer

CEO

January 19, 2021

Nielsen has been evolving ever since David Kenny became CEO in 2018. We will explore with Nielsen’s CEO the specifics in how they are transforming the business—and to the degree that they are succeeding.

The company has written about focusing on higher margin products and services, as well as increasing their operational efficiency, driving for permanent cost structure reduction. Kenny explained in a press release that together, these efforts will mean increased cash generation and will provide added flexibility to invest in key growth initiatives. Today we will explore with Nielsen’s CEO the specifics in how they are transforming the business—and to the degree that they are succeeding and what they will be looking forward to.

And of course, Kenny is also the Chief Diversity Officer; he said he took this additional title because as CEO he is in the most powerful position to make changes and having inclusion and equality at every level.

Quantum Principal Ava Seave will be moderating this event.

For more information and to sign up, go here.

VIRTUAL Media Guru: NFL’s Christopher Halpin, EVP/Chief Strategy & Growth Officer

EVP, Chief Strategy officer

November 11, 2020

How is the NFL navigating a changing landscape? Find out from Chris Halpin who, with his team, drives League-wide strategy, long-range planning and Data & Analytics. Chris also oversees key growth areas for the NFL, including managing the League’s rapidly expanding International business and leading its activities in legalized sports betting.

As Strategy & Growth chief, Chris Halpin works across the NFL in developing and driving its long-term growth strategy. He describes its three long-term core objectives as “the Game, Fans, and Engagement.” Chris and his team work to make each of these areas strong and growing, focusing on investing in each of them, in the ever-more-complicated consumer and media landscape.

We will talk with him about the process of planning at the NFL, including key inputs such as broader industry dynamics, a range of stakeholders, and how the League measures progress and success. We will also talk about the broader consumer and technology trends that can spur growth into the next decade. Key growth themes for the NFL include digital/interactive offerings and International growth, both of which we will explore in the session.

Quantum Principal Ava Seave will be moderating this event.

For more information or to sign up, go here.

VIRTUAL: Pulitzer Prize Winners Sheryl WuDunn, HBS ’86, and Nick Kristof: Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

October 27, 2020

Before the pandemic, the dynamic duo of Sheryl WuDunn and Nick Kristof published Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope featuring deeply personal stories of ordinary Americans to address the crises in working-class America while focusing on solutions mend half a century of failures. And with bitter irony, in the last several months, another disaster has likely upended the fragile existence of ordinary Americans. And the results are unimaginable.

WuDunn and Kristof will join the HBS Club of NY for a wide ranging discussion of the issues of the day and share the takeaways from their book.

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WyDunn are husband and wife and have coauthored several books including A Path Appears and Half the Sky. Together they were awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for their coverage of China. They also received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2009. Now Kristof is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. He won his second Pulitzer in 2006 for his columns on Darfur. WuDunn now works in banking.

“Tightrope is a heroic, harrowing, and at times tender, look at the high wire act that is survival for too many people today. Kristof and WuDunn know there are no easy solutions here, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take action, whether by pushing for better policies, or changing our own attitudes. This book will shake you—it did me—and that is the point,” Bono wrote for the book blurb.

The talk will be via Zoom, at 6:00 pm on Tuesday October 27. The discussion will be moderated by Quantum Media Advisor, Gretchen Grant.

For more information and to register go here.

Virtual Event: Media Guru Amanda Hesser, Food 52 Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

June 12, 2020

Food52 is the well-established and dynamic media and merchandise business that has a big reputation in the food and home space. According to the company, it generates about $30 million in revenue annually. And in 2020, its monthly reach exceeds 24 million people. As they explain, “We wanted to create a buzzing place for others who do what we do all day long: talk about food! Since we started Food52 (we cook 52 weeks a year, get it?), tens of millions of cooks and eaters have found their way to the site.”

Food52 Co-founder & CEO, Amanda Hesser is this month’s Media Guru. She went “from baker and chef to top food writer to entrepreneur. Now she’s sharing her culinary expertise with the world,” said a profile of Hesser in Inc. The company is known for its innovation in product development, for example, using feedback from over 26,000 home cooks to make cookware and tools they’d really use.

The founders, who started in 2009, are both still with the company, but sold Food52 to The Chernin Group for $83 million at the end of 2019. The company says that this buyout values Food52 at more than $100 million. The two co-founders had raised around $20 million in funding, including a debt round.

Hesser will talk about the methods and strategy of her success as well as challenges as they were growing and going forward.

The event is moderated by Gretchen Grant, CEO of DailyFX, but just recently a Senior Consultant with Quantum Media. To sign up and find out more, here is the link to the HBSCNY.org sign up page.

Virtual Event: HBS Professor William A. Sahlman on “Entrepreneurial Solutions to World Problems”

May 13, 2020

Since 1980, Bill Sahlman has been part of the Harvard Business School faculty, focusing on the investment and financing decisions made in entrepreneurial ventures at all stages in their development. He has read thousands of business plans, taught more than 8,000 students and written 200 business school cases and notes and written two textbooks.

So, it is with this unmatched, world-class expertise that Professor Sahlman will talk about “Entrepreneurial Solutions to World Problems.”

After all, says Professor Sahlman, the world has a seemingly infinite supply of problems, and fortunately, entrepreneurs view problems as opportunities. He will describe how global entrepreneurs are working on addressing major challenges in healthcare, education, and climate change. Quantum Media’s Ava Seave will moderate this event.

For more information or to sign up for this event, go to the HBSCNY site here.

Newly Appointed Quartz CEO, Zach Seward, is Media Disruptor

February 24, 2020

The newly appointed Quartz CEO, Zach Seward (who replaced founders who were co-CEOs until the end of 2019.) is the February Media speaker. In addition to the shift in top management, the company went through a buy-out and now is in the midst of a pivot from advertising-based to subscription-based. Even in the midst of change, Seward has agreed to answer questions about the company’s operations and the industry as a whole, including:

Quartz’s relationship with social media platforms – what are the challenges and the rewards of this complex distribution editorially and financially
The tech innovations (e.g., in CMS or metrics or engagement analysis) that Quartz has adopted recently,
The managerial challenge of moving out two co-founders
How has the new(ish) ownership affects their business day to day and in the long run?

Friend of Quantum, Rebecca Binder of RF Binder, will moderate the event. It will be held at Cohn Resnick, 1301 6th Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets.

For more information and to sign up for this event, please go here.

Media Guru Tom Rutledge, Chair and CEO of Charter Communications

January 16, 2020

Tom Rutledge, celebrated cable executive for his financial and management acumen, will answer questions about his role and the operations of Charter Communications, where he has been head since 2011. As was the case with its other cable peers, video subscription losses (versus Internet customers) have become a reality as the accompaniment to streaming services direct to the consumer (such as Apple, Netflix and Hulu.)

Rutledge will discuss the strategy of the company and how the strategy can be translated into operational decisions. Some of the specific areas for discussion will be the entertainment technological innovations in video, the “over-the-top” revenue shifts and extreme competitive environment of communications and the future challenges in the communications industries.

Charter [CHTR, NASDAQ] is the second largest cable operator (after Comcast, which is about 2.3x the size of Charter in total revenue) in the United States and one of the largest broadband communications services company providing video, Internet and voice services. The company closed a transaction, absorbing Bright House, TimeWarnerCable and Charter in 2016. In a recent CNBC interview, Rutledge gives details about the integration of the companies in this transaction, the company’s point of view about how to creative value for the shareholders and his predictions about future entertainment products. Revenue at the end of 2018 was $43.6 billion, with EBITDA at 37%, and operating profits at 12%; about 80% of the revenue comes from residential service. At the end of 2018, the company estimated their customer base to be about 28.1 million residential and small and medium business customers with about 250 million devices are wirelessly connected through the Charter Network.

Quantum Principal, Ava Seave, will moderate the event.

JC Decaux Co-CEO Jean-Francois Decaux

Co-CEO

November 20, 2019

JC Decaux, founded in 1964 by the Co-CEO’s father, is a €3.619 billion international company focused exclusively on outdoor advertising, in three areas of business: street furniture, transport advertising and billboard advertising. They operate in more than 4,000 cities within 80 countries.

Jean-François Decaux will discuss the strategy of the company and the operations that are manifest from this strategy, characterized previously by the speaker as “Phygital” which is Physical + Digital. Some of the specific areas for discussion are JC Decaux’s technological innovations, what works as scale within a local and national strategy, organic vs. acquisition growth and the bundling vs. unbundling of products. A recent HBS case was written about the company and the speaker.

Media Guru events are well-known for their “no speeches, no Power Point” promise: Just terrific one-on-one conversation with a fascinating personality making news in the media business, followed by Q+A where the audience gets to ask as many questions as the moderator. We have found out that this talk will be ON the record.

The speaker, the eldest son of company founder, Jean-Claude Decaux, joined the Group in 1982, moving to Germany to create and develop the German subsidiary, followed by a re-location to London in 1990 to develop JCDecaux in the UK and subsequently in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, primarily through organic growth. In more recent years, Mr. Decaux has expanded the Group’s interests globally, establishing operations in the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia and Central Asia.

Following the acquisition of Havas Communication’s out-of-home media division in 1999, Mr. Decaux led the move to take JCDecaux public on Euronext in 2001, paving the way for it to become the largest Out-of-Home media group in the world with 2018 revenues of € 3,619 million.

As Chairman of the Executive Board (the position of Chairman rotates between brothers Jean-Charles Decaux and Jean-François Decaux on a yearly basis) and Co-CEO of JCDecaux SA, Mr. Decaux also takes an active role in the creation of new street furniture designs in collaboration with some of the world’s leading architects and designers and also in the creation of services like the self-service bicycle program, which has become a huge success in 70 cities with over 500 million bike rentals.

Mr. Decaux serves on the Board of various companies affiliated to the JCDecaux Group and joined the Harvard Business School European Advisory Board in 2009.

Quantum Principal, Ava Seave, will moderate the event.

2019 Folio Show in NYC, 10/29: Special Discount for Friends of Quantum

September 22, 2019

The 2019 Folio Show is being held October 29-31 at the Hilton Midtown in New York City. The organization has been kind enough to offer “Friends of Quantum” a special discount. For friends of Quantum, use this direct link. Or use code QUANTUMVIP on the public registration form to receive $300 off any Folio: Show Conference Pass.

In case you are not familiar with it, The Folio Show covers the most important topics we in media are obsessed with. Danielle Sikes, the Associate Publishers writes that, “The show brings together hundreds of publishers looking for breakthrough thinking and practical solutions in content creation, audience growth, smart marketing, revenue generation and digital innovation.”

Some of the speakers will be: Meredith Corp’s Doug Olson, Rolling Stone’s Gus Wenner, Axios’ Sara Fischer and The Daily Beast’s Mia Libby.

Many of the Quantum consultants will be attending, and we look forward to seeing you there.

Media Entrepreneur and Editor Lesley Jane Seymour

CEO Covey Club

January 19, 2019

HBS Women’s Association of Greater New York invites you to join them on Monday, February 11, 2019 to hear Lesley Jane Seymour (Covey Club CEO, former Editor-In-Chief of More and Marie Claire magazines) share her insights on career/life reinvention.

In an intimate fireside chat with Quantum Senior Consultant and executive coach Margaret Downs, Lesley will share her own story of transformation after Meredith Corp. closed More, the leading lifestyle magazine for women over 40. She will also engage the audience in an interactive discussion about the rewards and challenges of reinventing oneself, personally and professionally.

Among other topics, Downs and Seymour will discuss:

Why you need a reinvention idea in your back pocket
How to turn lemons into lemonade: Lessons learned in pivoting from career disruption to create a fulfilling new career/life chapter.
Why community and life-long learning matter

The event is proudly Power Point free and will be in a “fireside chat” format, spending equal time discussing questions from the audience and the moderator.

You must register by Friday, February 8.

Cost:
HBSWANY Members: $20 (May register 1 guest at member rate)
Non-Members/Guests: $30

Agenda
6:30 - 7:00pm – Networking
7:00 - 8:00pm—Fireside Chat

Media Guru David Nussbaum, Chair & CEO, America’s Test Kitchen Is Growing Integrated Food Media Platform

Chair & CEO America's Test Kitchen

January 15, 2019

David Nussbaum is the very experienced and highly-regarded media executive who is now running America’s Test Kitchen— ATK — a quickly growing independent media company, earning the respect of the publishing industry, the culinary world, and, most importantly, millions of home cooks.

In a rapidly changing media landscape, ATK continues to grow and thrive as a subscription-revenue-only print business, paired with long-running and very popular PBS series, a book business that has sold more than 12 million copies and recently launched 15 new titles and robust paid-access websites. Find out how he does it and what he plans for the future.

Quantum Media Guru events are well-known for their “no speeches, no Powerpoint” promise. Just terrific one-on-one conversation with a fascinating personality making news in the media business, followed by Q+A.

David Nussbaum joined America’s Test Kitchen in October 2015. Previously he served as the chief executive officer and chairman of F+W Media (2008 to October 2015). Before that, he was an operating partner at the private equity company ABRY Partners. Going back further, David was the chief executive officer and chairman of Penton Media.

Nussbaum has served on boards for both Summit Business Networks, now part of American Lawyer Media, and Thomas Nelson Publishing, now a division of Harper Collins. He currently serves on the board of Compound Ventures, a New York City-based early stage technology venture fund, and on the advisory board of Boston University’s School of Communications. Nussbaum is also on the board of IMAG, MPA’s Independent Magazine Media Group.

Erica Gruen, Principal of Quantum Media, is moderating this event.

Media Guru Meredith Kopet Levien, EVP & COO, The New York Times

November 8, 2018

Meredith Kopit Levien, who was named executive vice president and chief operating officer of The New York Times Company in mid-2017, oversees the teams responsible for digital product, design, audience and brand, consumer revenue, advertising, live events and new product development.

Kopit Levien will talk about rebuilding the business model for news at The New York Times and cover such topics as the state of the media business and what has been the effect of partisanship on advertising and how media companies and the Times are implementing diversity among their employees and their coverage.

Media Guru events are in a fireside chat format, where the audience gets to ask as many questions as the moderator. The session is proudly Power Point free and is off-the record. The moderator will be Ari I. Weinberg, Associate Director, Board Leadership Center, KPMG, LLP.

Media Guru, John Lippman CEO Book-of-the Month Club

October 24, 2018

The first Media Guru event of 2018-2019 features John Lippman, the Entrepreneur who re-made Book of the Month Club for Millenials. Lippman, who is CEO of the company, knew that Book Of The Month could reinvent itself as a subscription box business for Millennial women. Lippman is an operator and entrepreneur who lead the company through this pivot to great success. More information about the program and how to sign is here.

If you would like to receive emails announcing Quantum events, please sign up here.

Beth Comstock Speaks About Her Book: Imagine It Forward: Making Change Work for You

October 23, 2018

Beth Comstock, Media Guru in 2014, and now GE’s Vice Chair of business innovation, “tackles the core issue that keeps business people up at night around the world – how to make sense of continual change and disruption, by developing a new mindset and system that anticipates the future, spots trends early, and nurtures new ideas and methods for growth.” She is publishing a book in September 2018 entitled, Imagine it Forward, Make Change Work For You and will be speaking at the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York on October 23.

If you would like to receive emails announcing Quantum events, please sign up here.

Media Guru: Beau Ferrari Executive Vice President Of NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises

Executive Vice President Of NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises

May 31, 2018

Beau Ferrari is Executive Vice President of NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises. Ferrari oversees the operations, financial performance and corporate strategy and development for the company’s traditional and digital media portfolio; these include broadcast and cable networks, TV stations, digital, sports, news and international distribution groups. He also partners across NBCUniversal’s platforms to identify new opportunities in the marketplace.

Media Guru events are in a fireside chat format, where the audience gets to ask as many questions as the moderator. The session is proudly Power Point free and is off-the record.

Ferrari, who has been in the TV and video business with the two most important Spanish language companies in the field for almost a decade, will talk about the challenges of media video, broadcast and cable in general, as well as his specific responsibilities in both the strategy and the nuts and bolts of running a large and growing division of NBCU.

Among other areas of business, Telemundo produces a Spanish-language television network featuring original productions, theatrical motion pictures, news and sports events, they reach U.S. Hispanic viewers in 210 markets through 17 owned stations, broadcast and MVPD affiliates; and they also operate Telemundo Digital Media, which distributes Telemundo’s original content across digital and emerging platforms including mobile devices and telemundo.com

Ferrari previously served as Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Development for Univision Communications Inc.

Media Guru: John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, EVP Holtzbrinck

CEO, Macmillan

February 27, 2018

John Sargent is the Executive Vice President of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and CEO of Macmillan. A vocal advocate for the importance of book publishing in the United States and around the world, he is responsible for the Macmillan higher education business as well as managing the global trade-book business.

His career contributions were recognized with the 2017 PEN Publisher Honoree Award, given “for his fierce advocacy for the right to publish and for serving as a defender of publishers’ and authors’ intellectual property rights.” After receiving the award, John spoke directly about the importance of defending free speech. His remarks closed with a call for continuing to do what publishers do best, especially when doing so is difficult: “I hope we will apply the principles of the First Amendment and have the courage to resist the great power of polarized opinion.”

John has not shied away from taking hard business positions. In 2012, he maintained Macmillan’s innocence in the face of Department of Justice claims of collusion in the implementation of the agency model for e-book pricing, refusing to settle even after several other publishers had agreed to terms offered by the DOJ. Agency pricing itself, proposed in 2010, was part of an effort to create what John called “a level playing field” for sales of digital books in the United States.

Before his current roles, John ran the US operations of Holtzbrinck, including all the US trade companies, the Macmillan Higher Education group, St. Martins Scholarly and Reference, Hanley & Belfus medical publishers and Scientific American. He started at Holtzbrinck as CEO of St. Martin’s Press. John has also served as CEO of Dorling Kindersley Inc. and the President of the Children’s Book Division of Simon & Schuster.

Media Guru: John Moody EVP & Executive Editor, Fox News

EVP & Executive Editor

December 12, 2017

John Moody, December’s Media Guru is a veteran journalist with more than 40 years of experience in print and broadcast journalism and in news management. Since 2012 he has been responsible for the editorial content of the Fox News Network and its digital properties. In addition to management and editorial duties, Moody writes an opinion column called Bellwether numerous times per month about international policy and politics.

Fox News’ cable channel has been the “most-watched cable news network” for 63 consecutive quarters, since Q, 2002, according to national ratings. The company reported that “Rupert Murdoch’s news network averaged 1.4 million total viewers and 2.2 million viewers during prime time…. FNC also won both categories [total and prime time] among the key news demo of adults ages 25-54.”

Moody has been with Fox since 1996. Before his current position, he was Chief Executive Officer of the division NewsCore, where he created and oversaw multi-media news service that aggregated editorial content from all News Corporation businesses. Before that, he was Executive Vice President of Fox News where he was responsible for editorial content for the Fox News Channel as it grew from start-up to highest-rated news network in the United States.

Moody’s roots are in text and in international coverage. Before Fox, he was with Time Magazine for 13 years as either a Bureau Chief or Chief Correspondent reporting from and managing bureaus in Bonn, Vienna, Warsaw, Mexico, Latin America, Rome and New York.

Among other topics, Moody will talk about his background in international reporting and his current news column which often covers international policy and politics, the transition of the news industry into one that wants to become part of the political process rather than covering it, strategy of running a multi-platform news organization in an era where news is becoming more commoditized, how social media has affected legacy news organizations and the interplay of ratings, traffic, reader engagement and news judgement.

Media Guru events are part of the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York’s programming. They are off the record and have no Power Point presentations. The program is a question and answer session where the moderator asks 30 minutes of questions, then yields to the audience for 30 minutes of questions. Since the session is off the record, we expect you may hear information at this session and nowhere else.

Ava Seave, Quantum Principal, is moderating the event.

Media Guru: Bonnie Kintzer, CEO Trusted Media Brands

CEO

October 10, 2017

Bonnie Kintzer is the CEO of Trusted Media Brands. She is the October 10 Media Guru. You do know Trusted Media Brands even if you don’t think you do…It is one of the most surprising turnarounds in the legacy media space—originally known as The Reader’s Digest Association.

Media Guru events are off the record and have no Power Point presentations. The program is a question and answer session where the moderator asks 30 minutes of questions, and the audience the other 30 minutes. Since the session is off the record, we expect you will hear information at the session and nowhere else.

Among other topics, Kintzer will explain about how this storied legacy media company which was very troubled for a number of years is coming back from the brink to begin to thrive again through a plan that rarely works – building a digital business alongside the physical print business, with the same brand identities. Kintzer will also answer questions about how they are going to grow TMB’s bottom line; she has publicly stated that this will grow by about 50 percent in the new fiscal year. And since Kintzer is known as a disciplined and metrics driven manager, she will give insight about how that works.

In an extensive recently published interview, Kintzer said:

“As a company, we have finished our three-year turnaround plan, which is incredibly exciting. We have stabilized our core business; we have grown our digital ad revenue; we have brought in an incredible amount of digital talent into the company; and we are 100 percent debt free.”
“We are really looking at where we believe the revenue is, and we believe there’s tremendous revenue opportunity in our core brands. And so we’re hiring a tremendous amount of digital talent, video talent and technical talent.”
Yet, Kintzer sees print as being in TMB’s future, “Print is strong for us. We have a great respect for print and we have a great respect for the print reader. Of course, we expect greater growth to come from digital advertising, but one does not preclude the other.”

Media Disruptor: Marty Moe, President Vox Media

President, Vox Media

April 5, 2017

Marty Moe is President of Vox Media, one of digital media’s fastest growing companies. He has been responsible for the strategic direction, as well as all editorial and advertising operations, across the company. He now leads Vox Entertainment, the company’s original television production and programming group, Vox Media Live, the company’s live conferences business, as well as global new business strategy. Marty is also Co-Founder of The Verge and Polygon.

As the April Media Guru, Moe will address questions about growth for Vox (and its competitors) on the multiple platforms that are now available, the company’s many acquisitions over the years and how they work together, and what new products, such as Vox Entertainment, he is most excited about.

Vox Media reports that it has 170 million unique visitors to its 8 brands’ websites, and over 800 million content views on and off its platform. Crunchbase says that the company has raised about $308 million from 10 investors since it was founded in 2003. The last investor, NBC, came in with $200 million as a Series F and was reportedly valued at more than $1 billion in 2015. Vox began jointly selling online and TV advertising with NBCUniversal earlier this year.

In a recent interview, reported by Digiday, Moe discussed Vox’s work with video and that “ ‘The broader picture for us is we view TV as another platform,’ Moe said. ‘We view ourselves as a brand company, not a website company, and a company that’s developing our expertise on bringing our brands to all the right platforms in ways that work for those platforms.’ ” Part of the drive, according to Digiday, is that nobody is getting rich off banner ads. “But a big part, according to Moe, is simply the advancement of tech platforms that allow for over-the-top distribution.”

Previously, Moe was Senior Vice President of AOL’s content publishing division, where he ran the company’s original news, finance, sports, and technology content offerings, as well as Weblogs, Inc., then the largest professional blog network in the US.

Before joining AOL in 2001, Moe served as Deputy Chief of Staff for U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, and earlier practiced corporate law for five years at Skadden Arps in Washington, DC. He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after graduating Magna Cum Laude from NYU School of Law, where he was Executive Editor of the NYU Law Review.

Media Guru events have no Power Point presentations. The program is a question and answer session where the moderator asks 30 minutes of questions, and the audience the other 30 minutes. Since the session is off the record, we expect you will hear information at the session and nowhere else.

Media Guru: Roger Keating, Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer Hearst Television

Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer Hearst Television

February 24, 2017

Roger Keating leads the strategy effort at Hearst TV, which involves articulating the forward plan built in conjunction with the other members of the senior leadership team.

Among other duties, Keating evaluates strategic acquisition and investment opportunities and provides executive oversight to Hearst TV’s digital news publishing business.

According to the company, Hearst Television “Hearst Television’s 30 local television stations and two local radio stations serve 26 television markets across 39 states, reaching approximately 21 million U.S. television households. The company broadcasts more than 60 video channels, featuring local and national news, weather, information, sports and entertainment programming, and local community service-oriented programs.”

As the May Media Guru, Keating will address questions about how broadcasters and news producers can improve their processes, take advantage of what the newest technology has to offer in order to make more revenue.

In a recent interview, Keating talked about the challenges of the news industry in attracting and keeping younger consumers through the right social – or other—platforms. “We need to figure out how to feed the video news appetite of the millennial generation. Our current formats and production values aren’t resonating with as many millennials as the generations that came before them, and as such we have to either change the style of the content we create, or augment the ‘made for our traditional audience’ material with ‘mobile/social first’ programs.”

Keating’s strategic and biz dev responsibilities have lately covered many areas, working:

• With the leading digital/social platforms in building improved monetization for news publishers

• With other broadcasters, working on how a new transmission standard might unlock new revenue streams

• With the digital ad tech community considering how to bring large datasets and machine-assisted efficiencies into the linear TV buying process.

Media Guru: HBS Professor Bharat Anand, Author of The Content Trap

Professor, Harvard Business School

January 9, 2017

Bharat N. Anand, the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and a Professor in the Strategy Unit is an expert in digital strategy and corporate strategy. The Professor is January’s Media Guru, talking about his new book, The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change, which was recently published.

“Digitization exposes weak links. Then it breaks them,” writes the Wall Street Journal in a neat summary explanation of the book. “So much so that it makes you wonder what people were thinking in the first place. According to Bharat Anand… the weakest link is between producing content and everything else. Such connections ‘are at the heart of what shapes any digitally touched business today.’ He looks as the content assumptions behind various industries and shows the ways in which, over time, they can become an obstacle to success.”

Prof Anand says in the book’s preface that although the book centers on the industries that use information goods such as books, TV, music, film and advertising, “I hope the lessons gleaned apply far beyond those domains…. After all, everyone today – a businessperson, an educator, a politician, a student, an artist, an entrepreneur – can reach and interact with others directly. In other words, everyone is a media company today.”

Professor Anand created Harvard Business School’s first executive program on media strategies, has served as faculty head for the required strategy course in the MBA program, and currently serves as faculty chair of various executive programs at the school. He currently serves as faculty chair of HBX, the school’s digital learning initiative that he helped create.

Professor Anand received his B.A. in economics from Harvard College magna cum laude, and his PhD in economics from Princeton University. He is a recipient of HBS’ Greenhill Award for outstanding contributions to the school. He has advised leading organizations and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is a renowned teacher, and a two-time winner of the “best teacher award” at Harvard Business School. He is the author of over fifty articles and case studies.

Media Guru events have no Power Point presentations. The program is a question and answer session where the moderator asks 30 minutes of questions, and the audience the other 30 minutes. We expect you will hear information at the session and nowhere else.

Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva

Media Guru James Gaines, Veteran Editor and Director of Content for The Atlantic

Director of Content, Atlantic Re:think

December 5, 2016

Jim Gaines, Director of Content at The Atlantic, is December’s Media Guru speaker. He has had a distinguished career as a journalist, editor, and author. As a long time managing editor, he has expert insight into the interaction of content and business issues – and the extreme difficulty that media properties facing. Not so long ago, Gaines told the audience at the Columbia Journalism School’s Delacorte lecture that they were “brave souls being in the world of magazines these days,” and he will explain why that stil lmay be the case – and yet, he still works in the industry.

The Atlantic is part of the privately held Atlantic Media, whose brands also include Atlantic, Government Executive, National Journal, Quartz, and Defense One through digital, print, event, social, and mobile platforms. According to the company, it “engages aninfluential audience of over 30 million worldwide each month.”

Gaines spent most of his career at Time Inc., where he was the Managing Editor of the wildly popular and award winning media properties People, Life and Time magazines;
he ultimately becoming Corporate Editor of Time Inc.

Gaines is the author of several works of history, including For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette and Their Revolutions, Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment, and Wit’s End: Days and Nights of the Algonquin Round Table.

Media Guru breakfasts have no Power Point presentations. The program is a question and answer session where the moderator asks 30 minutes of questions, and the audience the other 30 minutes. And it is off-the-record, so we expect you will hear information at the session and nowhere else!

Quantum Principal Brian O’Leary will moderate this event.

Media Guru: Steve Adler, President and Editor-in-Chief, Reuters

President and Editor-in-Chief, Reuters

November 2, 2016

Stephen J. Adler, the President and Editor-in-Chief of Reuters, is November’s Media Guru speaker. A veteran news person and editor, Adler will discuss the challenges of traditional media brands going forward, including increased pricing pressure for content and competitive strategy. He will talk about managing such a large and geographically diverse work force and the pressures of reporting the news for his teams around the world.

At Reuters Adler is responsible for the team that produces the news – text, photographs, video, insight and commentary – that is integral to the world’s markets and media. According to the company’s annual report, Reuters’ content reaches over one-billion users per day. In 2015 they produced over 2.5 million unique news stories, over 1.5 million news alerts, nearly 700,000 pictures/images and 100,000 video stories.

Reuters is part of the ThomsonReuters media giant which had more than $2 billion in 2015. – with the Reuters revenue at $296 million— just 2% of the total

Media Guru breakfasts have no Power Point presentations. The program is a question and answer session where the moderator asks 30 minutes of questions, and the audience the other 30 minutes. And it is off-the- record, so we expect you will hear information at the session and nowhere else.

Media Disruptor: Julie Hansen, Business Insider President and COO

President and COO

September 28, 2016

The Media Guru/Media Disruptor series is starting again in September, in conjunction with the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York. We proudly note that there are no Power Points allowed! It’s a question and answer session where the moderator asks 30 minutes of questions, and the audience the other 30 minutes. And it is off-the-record, so we expect you will hear information at the session and no where else!

This season’s fire-side-chat program, featuring the most accomplished and provocative executives in media, starts with Julie Hansen of Business Insider.

Julie Hansen joined Business Insider in 2008 as its COO and publisher and was named president in 2011. As employee #5 at Business Insider, she has led the organization through more than seven years of tremendous growth from its pre-revenue stage to a thriving commercial success with 100% audience growth and 90% revenue growth y-o-y in 2015.

In September 2015, BI was acquired by the leading German news publisher Axel Springer at a valuation of $442 million. Hansen remains at the helm (with the founder Henry Blodgett) post the acquisition. She oversees the revenue teams and manages all aspects of the company’s operations outside of editorial, including finance, technology, marketing, legal, HR, and the events (conference) division.

Media Guru: Paul Steiger, ProPublica Founding EiC and Board Chair

April 12, 2016

Paul Steiger has had a unique career; he rose to the top of a traditional journalism company, and then started over to create and run one of the most successful non-traditional journalism properties.

Steiger, Executive Chairman of the innovative news organization ProPublica, is the April Media Guru. He will speak off-the-record in a fireside chat format discussing how, over the course of his career, he has guided complex news organizations to run efficiently and innovatively – all while producing high quality, Pulitzer-worthy stories.

ProPublica is the non-profit, non-partisan newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. The organization was an important early user of digital technology to enhance journalists’ ability to do deep investigative work and to distribute it widely. And Steiger led it all—as the triple threat of editor-in-chief, CEO and president from 2008 through 2012.

As Executive Chairman beginning January 1, 2013, he remains actively involved on strategic issues, development, representing ProPublica in public venues, and consulting with management on business and editorial issues on a part-time basis. He also speaks and consults on journalistic issues in the United States and overseas.

Before founding ProPublica, Steiger served as the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal from 1991 to 2007. During his tenure, members of the Journal’s newsroom staff were awarded 16 Pulitzer Prizes. In addition, ProPublica reporters received Pulitzer Prizes in May 2010 and 2011.

Steiger explained in an interview, “the fundamental difference between the way I approach investigative reporting at ProPublica versus the way I approached it at the Wall Street Journal is that we ask one more question…. ‘Does this project have the potential to produce change?’” ProPublica strives to be non-partisan in order to create extremely reliable information that citizens can “rely on for decisions that are important.”

Steiger is a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides free legal assistance to journalists. He is a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that funds efforts to enhance journalism and the functioning of American communities. He is a board member and treasurer of the Paris-based Global Editors Network. From 1999 to 2007, he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, serving as its chairman in his final year. For six years, from June 2005 to June 2011, Steiger served as chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit that advocates for press freedom around the globe.

Steiger worked for 15 years as a reporter, the Washington economics correspondent, and the business editor for the Los Angeles Times, and for 26 years as a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale University in 1964. In 2013 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Columbia University.

Awards include the Columbia Journalism Award, the University of Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center, the Gerald Loeb Award for lifetime achievement from the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, the William Allen White National Citation from the University of Kansas’s White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, the University of Arizona’s John Peter and Anna Catherine Zenger Award, the Dean’s Medal for Distinguished Leadership from Brandeis University, the Fourth Estate Award from the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the National Press Foundation’s George Beveridge Editor of the Year Award, the Decade of Excellence Award from the World Leadership Forum in London, and the American Society of News Editors Leadership Award.

February 02: Media Guru: Werner Brell, Managing Director at Red Bull Media House

February 2, 2016

Werner Brell’s expertise in developing strategies, products and content for top brands is extensive. As the February Media Guru, he will speak off-the-record in a fireside chat format discussing how over the course of his career, he has guided international teams to create exponential growth for television and digital media brands, channels and partnerships.

Today, as Managing Director for Red Bull Media House in North America, Brell is the leader of a media company focused on creating and delivering world-class programming across all media platforms that reaches a coveted young audience. According to an admiring article on the website Contently that covers the business of native advertising, “Red Bull is one of a handful of companies effectively monetizing branded content. Apart from distribution—[in 2014] Red Bull TV became Apple TV’s first branded content channel—Red Bull uses event and film sponsorships and online video advertising to generate revenue.”

Brell joined the effort in North America after his tenure as a leading member of the Senior Management Team for Red Bull Media House’s global headquarters in Austria, where he established a centralized digital media organization serving more than 150 Red Bull markets. In the process, he laid out Red Bull’s first global digital media strategy, leading digital content distribution, creating groundbreaking media portals and a 24/7 digital broadcast channel, and establishing the company as a top executor for social media marketing – all resulting in double-digit growth in both viewership and revenue.

Under Brell’s oversight, Red Bull Media House North America has seen landmark achievements across all platforms, from the company’s first National Sports Emmy, awarded in the category of Outstanding New Approaches in Sports Event Coverage, to the commercial release of films that bridge the gap between core and mainstream audiences. Eleven film releases between 2011 and 2013 alone include snowboarding movie The Art of Flight, which enjoyed unprecedented industry success, and feature documentary McConkey, an official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival with subsequent theatrical release. Other standout accomplishments encompass the robust growth of Red Bull Media House TV programming, such as the Red Bull Signature Series on NBC, one of the most-watched action sports series on broadcast television now in its third season, and – in the largest TV licensing deal in Red Bull Media House history – a partnership with FOX Sports that unites all four Red Bull global sporting series on one broadcast home. In addition, the company’s YouTube channel boasts 3.3 million subscribers, the second-most subscribed sports channel on YouTube, and The Red Bulletin magazine has become one of the fastest-growing global men’s magazines, with a 300-percent subscriber increase in the past year alone.

Prior to joining Red Bull Media House, Brell worked at Viacom International Inc., where he was a Senior Management Team member, held board positions and served in two different Vice President roles. Brell also served as Senior Vice President of International Distribution and General Manager for Germany at Paris-based Dailymotion. Admitted to the New York State bar in 1997, his background additionally includes work as an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Brell earned a graduate degree and doctorate in Law from the University of Vienna School of Law, as well as a Master of Laws in General Legal Studies from the New York University School of Law.

Media Guru: Buzzfeed’s President Greg Coleman

November 5, 2015

Greg Coleman is President and a member of the Board of Directors of BuzzFeed the 8- year old company that now produces 700 stories daily that are created to encourage sharing on social media. They have succeeded wildly—now attracting more than 200 million monthly uniques, with 75% coming from social sources and 60% via mobile devices. Buzzfeed does not take display advertising, but only content advertising which—as Coleman explains in a recent video – tells “stories about the brand.” As President, Coleman is responsible for scaling this content advertising globally via social media. He is also responsible for expanding mobile, video and ad products. On the subject of what traditional media companies should learn from Buzzfeed, Coleman says that “getting people to think differently” is the most important thing.

Media Guru: James Ledbetter, Editor of Inc. and Inc.com

October 14, 2015

Jim Ledbetter—the articulate veteran leader of business and political media properties—is the Editor of Inc.Magazine and Inc.com since early 2014. Ledbetter’s talk is part of the off Quantum Media’s off-the-record, “fireside chat” Media Guru breakfast series programmed with the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York for 2015/2016. He’ll explain how a 35-year old brand is relevant and keeps growing even with millennial consumers through digital, print and events; and how the company continues to increase its influence in its (rather large) niche of entrepreneurial and innovative private companies. According to a recent extensive podcasted interview on Digiday, Ledbetter says that companies like Inc. need to find new models for publishing since admittedly, the “old ways are breaking down.” For example, Ledbetter says, “Facebook is scary in some ways. And it is possibly planning some kind of power grab. But if Facebook was capable of breaking your site and breaking your brand, it was probably going to break anyway.” After all, says Ledbetter, most media companies, including Inc. rely heavily on Facebook for traffic. And now, everyone must “function in an environment which ‘post-site.’

Media Guru: COO & CFO at Mashable Mike Kriak

September 29, 2015

Mike Kriak is the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at Mashable, a global media company founded in 2005. The media property has 42 million monthly unique visitors to its site and 24 million social followers. Mashable’s mission is to redefine storytelling through “documenting and shaping the digital revolution in a new voice, new formats and cutting-edge technologies to a uniquely dedicated audience.” In a recent interview, Kriak explains that “At the core of Mashable’s identity are three things: being responsive to an ever changing market, being an early adopter and being an organization that recognizes that change is constant and you have to be able to see the signal through the noise.” As part of the company’s Operating Committee, Kriak provides financial direction on external capital funding, employee equity, long-term business planning and operational direction on budgeting, forecasting and resource allocation. He joined Mashable in April 2013 and led the process for the company’s first capital raise which consisted of $14 million in Series A in January 2014 and $17 million more for Series B in January 2015.

Media Disruptor: Todd Krizelman, MediaRadar CEO and Co-founder

June 6, 2015

Krizelman, who co-founded MediaRadar, the SaaS big data and analytics firm that revolutionized the ad selling process, will talk on the evening of May 6 about the enormous challenges for the media who sell ad inventory and for the advertisers who buy it. The company, with 400 employees and more than $20 million in annual revenue is disruptive to traditional research firms since historically, most research is passive; MediaRadar does collect and create its own research, but packages it extensively, so it’s specifically made for ad sales professionals. The most basic annual subscription per seat costs clients $27,000. Before MediaRadar, from 2003 through 2006, Krizelman worked for Bertelsmann in publishing, working in Barcelona and New York. He also served as cofounder and CEO of theglobe.com, from 1994 to 2001. He led the company from inception to taking it public on NASDAQ. Theglobe.com hosted an Internet community of 20 million monthly users and published a collection of six video game magazine and websites. Quantum’s Brian O’Leary is the moderator for this event.

Media Guru: David Levin, President & CEO, McGraw-Hill Education

March 3, 2015

David Levin – the new CEO for a new corporate structure for McGraw-Hill Education – is the February Media Guru. He has been with MHE since April 2014; and MHE has been privately held only since November 2012. Levin will talk about the transformation of education from physical materials to digital ones, and how his company will successfully participate in that industry. In a recent interview on CNBC, Levin talked about the drive towards digital products in education, and that for the first time MHE “sells more in digital revenues than the old traditional print books.” He said that the transition is much quicker in higher education than in K-12. The company reported at the end of the third quarter, “continued strong growth across many of its key digital platforms year-to-date through September 30th.” Before coming to MHE, Levin served as the chief executive of UBM, a multinational media company headquartered in London. Over his nearly nine years leading UBM, Mr. Levin reoriented the company’s business mix toward emerging markets while growing its U.S. revenues. He also shifted UBM’s business models away from print and toward live events and online communities and renewed the company’s culture, fostering an open, collaborative, and social environment. Under his leadership, UBM realigned its portfolio through more than 100 acquisitions.

Media Guru: Neal Shapiro CEO, WNET

CEO, WNET

January 15, 2015

Neal Shapiro, President and CEO of WNET leads one of the highest profile culture programmers in the U.S.. As the January Media Guru, he will discuss the company’s place in its community, in the country and among its media competitors. Being both a media property and a non-profit used to be much rarer, than it has been recently. So when Shapiro took his job seven years ago, he was ahead of the curve; now his record and management style have become a guide to the newer community media companies that are springing up. Shapiro has made WNET more effective and more efficient since he took over. During his tenure, Shapiro managed to set new fundraising records, increase local and national productions, expand distribution and stabilize the station’s financial standing. Shapiro continues to look for new opportunities to expand public media’s value by increasing programming and enhancing community services. In an interview at Channel 13’s 50th anniversary, Shapiro explained that the way “we see in us becoming engaged in the City is really about engaging with the community. It’s not just the great programs we do, it’s getting people involved, and using media to bring people together.” Before joining WNET, Shapiro was President of NBC News from 2001 to 2007. In 25 years as a broadcast journalist and executive, he has won 3 Columbia DuPont Awards, 31 Edward R. Murrow Awards and 32 Emmys. He has served on the APT Board and is now on the boards of Gannett and his alma mater, Tufts University. Quantum Associate, Brian O’Leary, moderated the breakfast.

Media Guru: Beth Comstock, GE’s Chief Marketing Officer

Chief Marketing Officer, GE

December 10, 2014

Beth Comstock is GE’s Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer. Comstock describes GE’s mission as solving big problems in scale and that marketing helps this effort by creating the narrative. Comstock is passionate about change and innovation. She leads GE’s growth efforts via marketing, sales, licensing and communications and oversees GE Ventures. Comstock’s current priorities include partnering with and investing in start-ups, developing new markets in analytics, energy and affordable health through GE’s industrial internet, “ecomagination” and “healthymagination” initiatives, and making connections that spur a culture of inventiveness and grow brand value. Her talk, not typical for Media Guru, was “on the record.” Gretchen Grant, an advisor for Quantum Media was there and wrote the following story:

In a company as diverse as GE, what is the CMO’s role? Beth Comstock explained that the heart of her role is developing new market opportunities for GE. GE Ventures, which reports to her, evaluates new ventures, analyzes emerging markets, and develops sales and marketing programs for start-up initiatives. One venture that Comstock spearheaded was an ultrasound-in-your-pocket device in Indonesia. To get this venture off the ground, she embedded marketers in the field along with technologists who together looked at how local medical services were delivered, and how GE could improve on that system. The ultrasound device resulted from that ethnographic study. Her group serves as GE’s chief futurist, and Comstock hires 150 MBAs a year to fuel GE’s ability to “innovate from the market back” in response to emerging trends. The biggest trend that she sees happening now relates to big data. “What happens when 50 billion machines come online?” Technology has become more widespread and accessible. “I want the right ones.” Kaggle, a data science platform, and Quirky, an open innovation and fast prototype platform, are examples of companies that GE is partnering with in its search for the right technologies of the future. Social media is important for GE as a laboratory for staying relevant. Content marketing helps GE “shout louder than we spend.” Comstock characterized GE’s involvement with BuzzFeed as a way for GE to learn how to become “more creative…” Marketing has long proven a focus at GE. Jeffrey Immelt, GE’s {CEO}, started out in marketing. GE employs 3500 marketers, along with 40,000 salespeople and 350,000 people in total. How does Comstock organize GE’s marketing efforts over this broad scope? Three tiers provide a framework: Tier 1 programs are for master brand-building; Tier 2 programs target consumer and industrial segments; and Tier 3 programs are specific offers.

Beth Comstock started out with a degree in biology. Her background in science has proven relevant for leading marketing at a company where “[GE] has to know how to change” and keep evolving as a “brand in motion.”

Media Guru: Tad Smith, CEO, Madison Square Garden

CEO, Madison Square Garden

November 18, 2014

From Radio City Music Hall to the Rangers, MSG is an important company for New Yorkers’ cultural and entertainment lives. Since March 2014, Media Guru Tad Smith has been in charge of a diverse portfolio of venues, teams and media. How does he do it? And what are the toughest challenges and the most promising aspirations for the company? Smith serves as president and chief executive officer of The Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) overseeing all aspects of the company, including the overall strategy and day-to-day operations of MSG Sports, MSG Media and MSG Entertainment, as well as its administrative areas, including Finance, Legal, Human Resources, Communications and Business Operations. He also serves as alternate governor to the National Hockey League on behalf of the New York Rangers. MSG’s assets are iconic in entertainment and sports:

Venues—New York’s Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and Beacon Theatre; the Forum in Inglewood, California; the Chicago Theatre; and the Wang Theatre in Boston
Professional sports teams—New York Knicks, Rangers and Liberty
MSG Entertainment and its entertainment properties—including the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, featuring the legendary Rockettes
Regional sports and entertainment networks—MSG and MSG+

Media Guru: Sree Sreenivasan

Chief Digital Officer, Metropolitan Museum of Art

September 17, 2014

Sree Sreenivasan, Chief Digital Officer, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the kick-off media guru on September 17 for the 2014/2015 season. Sreenivasan (@sree) is actually the museum’s very first person with that title. “At the Met,” he says, “I lead a world-class team on topics I love: digital, social, mobile, video, apps and much more.” Sreenivasan joined the Met after spending 20 years at Columbia University as a member of the faculty of the Columbia Journalism School and a year as the university’s first Chief Digital Officer. In 2009, he was named one of AdAge’s 25 media people to follow on Twitter and in 2010 was named one of Poynter’s 35 most influential people in social media. Find him on Twitter and on Instagram as well as on the web.

Media Disruptor: Betsy Morgan

President, The Blaze

April 10, 2014

Veteran news executive, Betsy L. Morgan, will discuss innovative strategy, growth potential and challenges as the President and Chief Strategy Officer of TheBlaze, the multimedia news and information 24/7 network launched by Glenn Beck. The network is available online, through a subscriber based IP-delivered network, and on traditional cable/satellite. This event will be on the record. TheBlaze although the exclusive provider of Glenn Beck’s daily television broadcast, also offers a full slate of other news and opinion shows, late night comedy and more family friendly programming. TheBlaze’s mission statement says that as a company they “strive to do as Jefferson said: Question with boldness, hold to the truth, and speak without fear.” And also that “We are not interested in left and right. We seek answers to right and wrong.” Morgan joined TheBlaze in 2011 after serving as the CEO of The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post was successfully sold to Aol in 2011. While at The Huffington Post, Morgan led the award-winning site to rapid audience and revenue growth. She joined HuffPost after ten years at CBS where she was Senior Vice President for CBS Interactive and the General Manager of CBSNews.com. Under Morgan’s leadership, CBSNews.com’s excellence was recognized with several prestigious industry awards.

She began her career at CBS as the head of the CBS Television Network’s Strategic Management Group alongside the chairman and CEO of CBS. In a recent interview Morgan explained why she decided to leave CBS . “I saw that journalism was changing. New brands were emerging, and they were highly relevant to the audiences they reached because they were unapologetic about taking a clear stand on things. The HuffPo was one of the first news organizations to put a stake in the ground by saying, ‘This is what we believe. We can have a dialogue about it, but we’re not going to debate the merits of global warming.’ The audience craved that kind of voice, and they responded to it—but the mainstream media wasn’t delivering it.”

Morgan graduated with a BA in Political Science and Economics from Colby College, where she currently serves on the Board of Trustees. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School and has spoken frequently on campus. Currently Morgan is on the board of CT Partners, a publicly-traded executive search firm and she is the chairman of the Poynter Institute’s National Advisory Board. She is an advisor to several New York City technology start-ups including LearnVest and Zemanta. She has been listed on Business Insider’s annual “Silicon Alley 100” six times, as well as named as one of 27 Business Insider’s “Game Changers” of 2011. In 2012, she was named one of “20 Women to Watch” by Columbia’s Journalism Review.

Media Disruptors: Michael Kubin and Warren Schlichting

Invidi and Dish Network Executives tell how Ad Tech Innovation is Changing TV

February 6, 2014

Michael Kubin and Warren Schlichting will explain the benefits and challenges of programmatic buying—previously available only to Web and mobile—that is transforming TV. The holy grail of reaching consumers by video is that an advertiser can dial up a specific demographic, put in an order, get the creative to the target, and measure the response; regardless of how the consumer accesses content (via telcos, cable or satellite). This completely “addressable” audience may be close to reality for Internet media, but it is still a dream for the “crazy quilt” that is pay TV. For the media disruptor series, we’re exploring how new advertising technologies are making addressable advertising a reality for television. Invidi, an ad tech innovator, will explain how its technology works for the Dish Network, answering such questions as: Can this be an internationally used technology? What does this mean for protecting privacy? To find out what the industry is like now—and how they hope it will work in the future—we’ve invited speakers Mike Kubin, HBS ’73, from Invidi and Warren Schlichting from Dish to explain what this innovation will mean. Erica Gruen of Quantum Media will moderate.

Speaker Biographies:

Warren Schlichting, SVP of Media Sales and Analytics, DISH Network Schlichting joined DISH Network two years ago from Comcast to head Dish’s Media Sales & Analytics division. In this role, he has responsibility for all short-form and long-form advertising sales and oversees DISH’s extensive viewer measurement analytics effort based on data collected daily from over five million set-top boxes. Since coming to DISH, Schlichting has launched household addressable advertising across a national footprint, initiated geo-targeted advertising by DMA and has led his company’s “exposure-conversion” effort matching ads seen to products purchased by household. Michael Kubin, Executive Vice President, Invidi (HBS ’73).

Michael Kubin is Invidi’s evangelizer and the company’s spokesperson. He has been Executive Vice President since 2006; he joined Invidi in 2003 as a board member. A 30-year veteran of the media industry, Kubin has managed a significant string of successful entrepreneurial ventures. At his first media buying company, Corinthian Media Buying, he was integral in the creation and growth of its subsidiary, Corinthian Direct. After Corinthian, Kubin became president of Club Med Inc., the travel company’s US subsidiary. He later co-founded Media Incorporated, which was sold to The Interpublic Group in 1996. Kubin then went on to co-found Evaliant Media Resources, a Web-based advertising tracking firm, which was sold to CMR (Taylor Nelson Sofres) in 2002.

Media Guru: Michael Dukmejian

Publisher, Bloomberg Markets and Bloomberg Pursuits

January 15, 2014

Some of the savviest media companies, including American Express, Forbes and Bloomberg L.P. have launched and are growing successful brands aimed at the wealthiest demographic. Find out how Publisher Michael Dukmejian runs luxury-lifestyle magazines for Bloomberg: Bloomberg Markets magazine, the award winning publication serving the global financial elite, and Bloomberg Pursuits the luxury magazine launched in 2012. Both titles are distributed each month by mail to about 375,000 Bloomberg terminal subscribers worldwide. A veteran of Time Inc. and now Bloomberg LP, Dukmejian has successfully launched and grown multi-media brands for a global audience. He will discuss how Bloomberg has grown two titles that serve luxury advertisers and elite readers, even in tough economic climates. Dukmejian joined Bloomberg LP in July 2009. Before joining Bloomberg Markets magazine, he was executive vice president of SourceMedia Inc., where he oversaw the Professional Services division. He was responsible for nine businesses, including Financial Planning, On Wall Street, Employee Benefits News, and Accounting Today. Dukmejian spent most of his career at Time Inc. His many publishing positions spanned sales, marketing, production, finance, and business development across many of Time Inc’s iconic brands. Before serving as group publisher of the Fortune and Money group and CNNMoney.com, Dukmejian was publisher of Money and Mutual Funds magazines. His senior management roles included positions at Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Time magazines. Dukmejian is a director of Tri-Artisan Partners LLC and holds an MBA in finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a BA in political science from Stony Brook University. He is on the board of directors and chairman of the audit committee for the Armenian Church Endowment Fund and serves on the School of Journalism’s advisory board at Stony Brook University. Quantum Associate, Brian O’Leary, moderated this event.

Media Guru: Steve Hasker

Nielsen's President, Global Product Leadership

December 5, 2013

Steve Hasker is President, Global Product Leadership of Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN). He was appointed to this role in early 2013 and is responsible for Nielsen’s product portfolio across “Watch” and “Buy.” Nielsen is one of the world’s leading global information and measurement companies, with revenues in 2012 of $5.6 billion and with a 24% EBITDA margin. As Nielsen writes about in great length in their most recent 10K, they are all about providing their clients with a “comprehensive understanding of consumers and consumer behavior” by being the vendor of choice to provide “critical media and marketing information, analytics and industry expertise about what consumers buy and what consumers watch on a global and local basis.” Among the areas that Hasker and Nielsen are clearly deeply involved with is “big data.” In a video interview for a McKinsey CMO forum, Hasker talks about how big data can help companies distinguish themselves from competitors. With a deep understanding of the data comes “a very significant advantage in terms of product development decisions they make, the marketing decisions they make and the customer service decisions they make.” Those that don’t make the investment in getting the best people and resources behind big data, he says, “are at a disadvantage as they are not going to understand their consumer base as well or react as fast” as those that make that investment. To see the entire interview, please go here. Prior to his current role, Hasker served as President, Global Media Products and Advertiser Solutions, where he led Nielsen’s TV and digital audience measurement, advertising effectiveness and social media solutions. Steve Hasker joined Nielsen in 2009 from McKinsey & Company, where he was a partner in McKinsey’s Global Media, Entertainment and Information practice. In this role, Steve was responsible for serving clients on issues of strategy, growth and innovation in television, syndicated information, filmed entertainment, sports, and digital advertising.

Media Guru: Bonita Stewart

Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, Americas, Google

November 20, 2013

Bonita C. Stewart brings more than 20+ years of marketing, technology and industry expertise to Google, where she oversees the company’s Strategic Partnerships business for North and South America. She works with partners across all verticals to monetize their assets and grow their businesses with Google products, including ad serving technology, private exchanges, video, mobile and social. Stewart will discuss what it takes to develop digital advertising solutions for a range of media properties and how publishers can take advantage of this growth opportunity Prior to her Partnerships role, Stewart led Google’s US strategy and sales for the Automotive, Finance and Travel categories with responsibility for delivering integrated advertising solutions. Before Google, she served as Director, Chrysler Group Interactive Communications for DaimlerChrysler AG and Director, Chrysler Brand Advertising. In 2005 Advertising Age named the Chrysler Group Interactive Marketer of the Year. Stewart also enjoyed a 10-year career with IBM and co-founded Nia Enterprises, a web-based company, in 2000. Quantum Associate, Brian O’Leary, moderated this event.

Media Guru: Rob Grimshaw

Managing Director, FT.com

October 8, 2013

The Financial Times (FT) is one of the world’s leading business news and information companies, recognized internationally for its authority and accuracy. Rob Grimshaw has been at the company since 1998. In his role as Managing Director, FT.com, Rob Grimshaw is the Financial Times Board member responsible for the commercial development of the FT’s business-to-consumer digital business and product portfolio. Having successfully scaled the FT’s digital subscription business following his appointment as MD in 2008, his role expanded in 2012 to include responsibility for the FT’s print subscription business. This has now been integrated with the digital subscription business to create a single cross-channel business-to-consumer subscription business. Grimshaw will talk about the FT’s innovations in digital subscriptions and mobile apps as well as how the company must go forward by balancing digital and print in subscriptions and advertising

Media Guru: Mike Perlis

President & CEO, Forbes Media

June 12, 2013

Join us when Mike Perlis talks about his long and varied career in digital and print media, his stint as a VC, and his ideas about the future of content and Forbes as the June Media Guru. Perlis is a media industry CEO with over 25 years’ experience managing a wide range of content and multimedia brands. He joined Forbes after a decade at SoftBank Capital (where he served as a General Partner), and became its first CEO not named Forbes since it was founded in 1917. In a recent interview with AdAge, Perlis said: “ Forbes.com started 15 years ago and one of the things that we did that really allowed us as a legacy business to become a digital player was that at the time we separated Forbes.com and the magazine completely. We set up a completely independent, highly entrepreneurial, and performance driven .com team in a separate building. This allowed us not to make all the bargains and all the deals and all the half way steps you have to take to take a traditional media company into the digital age…. Just as it was right to separate the assets it was right to put them back together a couple of years ago and now they feed off one another.” Before joining SoftBank, Perlis served as President and CEO of Ziff-Davis Publishing until its sale in 2000. Earlier in his career, Perlis served as Publisher of GQ, President of the Playboy Publishing Group, Publisher of Runner’s World and Men’s Health, and Chairman and CEO of IDG Peterborough. He began his career in media as the co-founder of New England Publications in Camden, Maine. Quantum Principal, Erica Gruen, will moderate this event.

Media Guru: Ann Sarnoff

COO, BBC Worldwide Americas

May 20, 2013

Ann Sarnoff is responsible for daily operations and setting strategy at the BBC’s wide array of NA businesses. Find out the challenges and rewards in negotiating deals with digital distributors such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple and cable operators in the rapidly changing TV eco-system. . For more information and to sign up, go here. Quantum Media Principal, Ava Seave, is moderating this event.

Media Guru David Liu

Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer, XO Group Inc.

April 16, 2013

Before it was XO Group, the company was known as The Knot – now just one brand of the business. David Liu will speak about his 15-year journey from founder of The Knot to successful CEO of XO Group—that is now a publicly-traded company. XO is a global media and technology company devoted to weddings, pregnancy and everything in between. Under Liu’s leadership, XO Group Inc. has expanded its reach to serve its audience across multiple life stages from brides to newlyweds to first-time parents, adding to the The Knot, The Nest, The Bump, Wedding Channel and GiftRegistry360.c0m. The Knot has become the nation’s #1 wedding resource and most trafficked online wedding destination with more than 100 million monthly page views and over 1.8 million registered members. Hear Liu speaks about the target audiences and how XO reaches them in this interview by NYFP. Quantum Media Principal, Erica Gruen, will moderate this program. Read a recent Wall Street Journal interview with David Liu and his wife about how they started the company.

Media Disruptor Jon Axelrod

Managing Director, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator

March 13, 2013

ER Accelerator is a leader in the new incubator and accelerator categories of venture capital. The company finds and helps fund start ups – and introduces the new companies to the New York VC and angel investment community. As part of their being accepted into the program, each accepted company receives a $25,000 investment and three months of Free collaborative office space in midtown, among other material help. Axelrod will discuss the media companies that ERA has funded in its first classes– and why he believes accelerators help innovation. Some of those companies:

Glossi (create a magazine “of you”)
Numberfire (next generation sports analytics)
Strayboots (orienteering in cities for fun and tourism)
Pictorious (something between Instagram and Draw Something with a photo-sharing platform that fosters competition.)
BespokePost (the Book-of-the-month on steroids for cool men)

At its founding, ERA lined up some 140 mentors to participate, including heavyweights in the New York startup and investment community such as Fred Wilson, Brian Cohen, David Pakman and others. Participating startups also get help from on-site developers and administrative support through the program. Jonathan Axelrod as a Managing Director leverages his own background as a technology and media entrepreneur for those start ups in his field. He was Co-Founder and Co-CEO of MusicGremlin a venture-backed startup that was sold in 2008 to SanDisk Corporation. MusicGremlin was a pioneer in the delivery of digital media content direct to wireless devices. Its WiFi MP3 player was named one of Time Magazine’s “All Time Top 100 Gadgets.” The company filed numerous patents and was recognized with several innovation awards. Prior to launching MusicGremlin, Axelrod was Co-Founder and President of Music123, a first-mover musical instrument e-commerce company that became one of the largest musical instrument retailers in the United States. Founded in 1999, Music123 grew from startup to profitable market leader in less than four years; it is now a brand of Guitar Center. Axelrod holds an A.B. in Social Studies magna cum laude from Harvard University. Quantum Media Principal, Stefanie Lemcke, moderated the event.

Media Guru: Albert Cheng

EVP & Chief Product Officer, Digital Media, Disney/ABC TV Group

February 26, 2013

As Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Digital Media, for the Disney/ABC Television Group, Albert Cheng is responsible for the general management and strategic oversight of digital media, as well as development of ancillary digital revenue streams for Disney/ABC Television Group’s diverse portfolio of broadcast and cable networks, including ABC Entertainment, ABC News, ABC Daytime, ABC Family, Disney Channel and SOAPnet. To that end, Cheng leads a team that oversees product development, marketing and operations for the Group’s digital media content platforms, including video-on-demand, broadband, web-based and mobile platforms, as well as interactive television technologies. Cheng said about Disney/ABC in an interview by appstory.tv, “We are not only just a content company, we are also a technology company in that we have to understand the technology behind it, in order to deliver on that consumer demand.” Cheng has served in his current role since October 2005. His business and staff are responsible for creating new ventures in content platforms and consumer products and partnerships in the digital media and online space, as well as providing additional negotiation planning and support for ABC broadcast affiliate relations in this emerging new area. Cheng has been with The Walt Disney Company since 2000. Prior to joining Disney Cheng was director, Distribution Strategy, for Fox Cable Networks Group. Quantum Media Principal, Stefanie Lemcke, moderated the event.

Media Guru Charlie Redmayne

CEO, Pottermore

February 4, 2013

Charlie Redmayne is serious about his dedication to his job. In his official biography he identifies his Hogwarts residential college as “Gryffindor” and only then mentions that he is Chief Executive Officer of Pottermore – the interactive, community and sales hub for all things Harry Potter. Redmayne’s mission is to ensure the digital future of Harry Potter by creating products and experiences for “every platform that makes sense for the company.” In June, 2012, Redmayne reported at paidcontent.org’s annual conference that in the first two weeks of launching the site, Pottermore had 23 million visits, 8 million uniques and 5 million accounts set up. They delivered over a billion page views in that same time period. Find out how Redmayne deals with technology, scale and owning their customers and how the company will innovate this most loved brand through interactivity and community.Quantum Associate Brian O’Leary will moderate the program.

Media Disruptor Ben Lerer

Co-founder & CEO, Thrillist Media Group

January 14, 2013

Ben Lerer is the co-founder and CEO of Thrillist Media Group, a digital media company converging leading men’s lifestyle brand Thrillist.com, members-only shopping club JackThreads.com and local experiences platform Thrillist Rewards. The three brands collectively reach over 4 million daily subscriptions, targeting a young, urban male demographic locally and nationally, online and offline, through content and commerce. Top line revenues for the company are reportedly $80 million. Since its launch in 2005, Lerer has overseen the growth of Thrillist’s marketing, sales and business development efforts, as well as its expansion into e-commerce with the 2010 acquisition of JackThreads and launch of Thrillist Rewards. Lerer is also the co-founder of Lerer Ventures, one of New York’s most active Angel funds, investing in over 140 media and technology companies since its creation in 2009. Quantum Media Associate, Soo Koon Lee organized the event.

Media Guru: Jonas Bonnier

President & CEO, Bonnier, AB

November 8, 2012

Hear from Jonas Bonnier about his company’s approach to new digital initiatives and how they work to keep a 200-year old media company fresh and cutting-edge. From its beginning more than 200 years ago, when Gerhard Bonnier put out his first book and opened a small book store in 1804 in Copenhagen, Bonnier has promoted high-quality media products while collaborating closely with authors, journalists and publishers. Bonnier AB is wholly owned by the Bonnier family. Since 2008, Bonnier has been the President and CEO of Bonnier AB, a $4.5-billion Swedish multi-channel media conglomerate with experience and knowledge in a full range of media and working in 17 countries. The company combines a true fascination for media products with a keen business mindset, promoting high-quality media products while collaborating closely with authors, journalists and publishers. In January, 2007, Bonnier surprised many by winning the prolonged sweepstakes for 18 formerly Time Inc. magazines, including the acquisition of Time Inc.’s Parenting Group and Time4 Media. Through this transaction, Bonnier and its U.S. magazine partner, World Publications, became one of the largest consumer publishing groups in America, with (at the time) 40 titles and annual revenue of more than $350 million. It was Bonnier’s third US acquisition in that 12-month period. Jonas Bonnier has worked in different positions in the company for over 20 years, and at the same time has pursued a writing career as a journalist and screenwriter, but first and foremost as a novelist. He has a Bachelor of Literature and Drama from the Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala (1986) and started out his career as a high school teacher. Quantum Media Principal, Erica Gruen, will moderate the event.

Media Guru Liz Schimel

EVP & Chief Digital Officer, Meredith National Media Group

October 9, 2012

Liz Schimel is EVP and Chief Digital Officer, Meredith National Media Group, a position she has held since June 2011. In this position, she is responsible for deepening and expanding Meredith’s consumer focus via all pathways to the consumer across both print and digital platforms. This includes developing tablet, mobile, and web-based digital strategies, as well as migrating consumer transactions online. Her position encompasses strategic oversight and execution of many of Meredith’s most important initiatives including the development of its e-tablet and mobile efforts, further building CRM and e-commerce capabilities, expanding and evolving consumer data, and the migrating of all consumer marketing activity online. Quantum Principal Ava Seave will moderate the program. For more information about this event and to sign up, go here.

Media Guru Alan Murray

Executive Editor, Online and Deputy Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal

September 5, 2012

As Executive Editor, Online, for The Wall Street Journal, Alan Murray has editorial responsibility for the Journal’s web sites, including WSJ.com and MarketWatch and the Journal’s books, conferences and television operations. He will discuss the challenges and opportunities the WSJ faces in pushing out content across diverse digital platoforms with Quantum Principal, Stefanie Lemcke. Murray is the author of three best-selling books, including, most recently “Revolt in the Boardroom, The New Rules of Power in Corporate America,” published by HarperCollins in 2007 Prior to his current position, Mr. Murray was assistant managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, and author of the paper’s “Business” column, which runs every Wednesday. Previously, he served as CNBC’s Washington, D.C., bureau chief and was co-host of “Capital Report with Alan Murray and Gloria Borger.” While working at CNBC, he also wrote the Journal’s weekly “Political Capital” column. Prior to that, he spent a decade as the Washington bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. For more information about this event and to sign up, go here.

Media Disruptors Lockhart Steele and Alexis Juneja

Founders of Curbed.com

April 16, 2012

Lock Steele and Alexis Juneja founded the cool and compelling New York City-based Curbed Network in 2004. The blog-turned media company publishes content that they hope “tells the stories of the cities it covers from the pavement on up.” Curbed Network’s flag ship site—ny.curbed.com – has been described by the New York Times as a “prime purveyor of New York real estate porn: closing prices, zoning scuttlebutt, developers’ delays, digital pictures taken at open houses.” Along with its three other sites – Eater.com (restaurants and night life,) Racked.com (local shopping) and gridskipper.com (for travelers)—the network claims more than 2 million unique visitors, and enviable demographics – more than 85% college grads, 77% under 44 years of age and very high incomes. At the end of 2011, the company launched national versions of Curbed and Eater. The Curbed Network has gotten lots of publicity and positive reviews for its content. They say they are profitable, even though they compete in fields that are filled with many more established media companies (city magazines, newspapers and local TV ) in these content areas, not to mention the explosion of daily deal businesses and start up commentators. Find out from the founders how they have succeeded so far, how they have integrated the use of social media and email to increase their exposure, about the difficulties of scaling local sites, and how they intend to stay successful. Lockhart Steele is President of Curbed.com LLC. Prior to founding Curbed in 2004, Steele served as the editorial director of New York-based Gawker Media. Alexis Juneja is the Vice President of Strategic Development of Curbed.com LLC. Juneja has been involved in every stage of company development; she now focuses on strategic partnerships and e-commerce initiatives. Before joining Curbed full-time, she worked in investment and nonprofit management.

Media Guru Albert Wenger

Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures

February 27, 2012

Union Square Ventures, based in New York City, manages $450 million across three funds. Albert Wenger will discuss the firm’s (collegial) decision processes, how he works with entrepreneurs and how he sees the future in this space. Union Square Ventures is a stand out firm that invests almost exclusively in Internet services that create large networks. Founded in 2003, it currently holds some 39 companies in their portfolio include: Boxee, Etsy, Disqus, Foursquare, Hashable, Kickstarter and Zynga. Wenger says in a presentation in August 2011 that the unofficial motto of the firm is “You ain’t seen nothing yet. ” He views the internet not as an information technology, per se, but as a transformative economic force. And he believes the many of the companies USV have backed will help to push that force along. Wenger, who has been a managing partner with USV since 2008, combines over 10 years of entrepreneurial experience with an in-depth technology background.

Media Guru Bob Sauerberg

President, Conde Nast

January 25, 2012

Condé Nast, owner of some of the world’s most glamorous media brands has won more National Magazine Awards over the past ten years than all of its competitors combined. Sauerberg will discuss how his company will go beyond traditional notions of a magazine, as its brands push onto multiple devices and digital platforms.

Media Guru Vivian Schiller

Chief Digital Officer, NBC News

December 7, 2011

Schiller’s career is proof that digital transformation makes all media into competitors: She has lead digital evolution at a newspaper (NYTimes.com), in radio (NPR) and now for TV (NBC News and MSNBC. ) Find out what she has learned and what she plans to do in her newest position. As Chief Digital Officer at NBC News, which she joined in July 2011, Vivian Schiller leads the digital strategy for both NBC News and MSNBC to ensure future growth and innovation. Her responsibilities include strategic oversight of the network’s digital extensions on the web and in mobile, interaction with the Joint Venture that oversees the msnbc.com digital network, as well as providing direction to the network’s new emerging properties.

Media Guru David Carey

President, Hearst Magazines

November 1, 2011

Hearst was one of the world’s largest publishers and distributors of monthly magazines even before its purchase of most of Lagardére Group’s international titles. Find out what Carey believes the future will hold and why Hearst is so willing to double down in this medium.

Media Guru John Borthwick

CEO, Betaworks

September 7, 2011

John Borthwick is the charismatic CEO and Co-Founder of the company betaworks —a venture capital “incubator” that makes seed-stage investments in what they call “the ecosystem of the realtime web.” Among their dozens of investments in the areas of social publishing, data and monetization, commerce and entertainment are well-known digital stars: Chartbeat, Tumblr, TweetDeck and Summize (both acquired by Twitter), bit.ly, Mob.ly, outside.in (acquired by AOL), DailyBooth, Kickstarter and HotPotato (acquired by facebook.) See a recent interview on Marketwatch where Borthwick discusses the future of social media and how it is changing internet navigation.

Media Guru Evening: Steve Rosenbaum

"Curation Nation" Author

May 1, 2011

Steve Rosenbaum’s vision for digital media starts with the premise that everyone is drowning in data. He says that, “Making content is easy. Finding what matters is hard.” His solution isn’t just a mechanical algorithm. “Curation Nation” explains why being a human aggregator is the key for all sorts of businesses. With the shift from businesses being the authority even on their own products or properties to being the referee lots of people are paying attention to what Rosenbaum is saying. In fact, curation is being touted as the antidote to “Google hegemony.” (Hear the interview on the NPR program On the Media.) Scores of digerati have already reviewed the book favorably, including Arianna Huffington, Daniel H. Pink, Guy Kawasaki, Clay Shirky, Michael Wolff, Jon Miller and on and on. And business professors are beginning to adapt the book.

Media Guru Eric Hippeau

Former CEO, Huffington Post

April 4, 2011

Hippeau will discuss the business operations and challenges faced by HuffPost, including how the site is coping with changes in consumer use of mobile, the role of video on the site, and the broad array of segments or communities who read and contribute to HuffPost. Hippeau—up until early February when HuffPo was sold to AOL—was the Chief Executive Officer of The Huffington Post—a site that has become one of the leading social news and opinion sites in the five years since it was founded. And its executives are working on having the site to go beyond its position as “The Internet’s Newspaper” to become a significant and broad media brand going beyond its web site to becoming a significant partner for social commerce with companies such as Groupon or Thrillest and helping its advertisers make the most of social marketing. (See Hippeau’s recent interview. ) Hippeau is now an advisor to Lehrer Ventures. Hippeau joined HuffPost in June 2009. Prior to joining HuffPost, he was managing partner at Softbank Capital and the Chairman and CEO at Ziff-Davis where he spent a good part of his career. For more information about this breakfast and to sign up, click here.

Media Guru Evening Event: Tina Sharkey

Chair and Global President, BabyCenter

March 28, 2011

Tina Sharkey is the Chairman and Global President of BabyCenter, a division of Johnson & Johnson (“JnJ”) and the world’s leading website for parenting information. Her stated mission: to make BabyCenter the world’s parenting partner. Achieving this goal will require Sharkey to determine how to operate in an increasingly global footprint, in which consumer Internet and media habits vary widely from region to region, and to manage a website with a Web 1.0 heritage that is rapidly becoming a brand noted for its community and utilities. Sharkey runs a premier media brand, which ironically is owned by one of the world’s leading package goods company. JnJ, the $62B global leader in consumer products, medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Despite its JnJ relationship, Sharkey shut down BabyCenter’s ecommerce business and turned the site into a fully advertising-supported media property. In her leadership role, Tina also advocates for women’s maternal issues on a global basis. She has lobbied Congress for support on mobile health initiatives that will empower women to activate engagement in their own health. Prior to joining BabyCenter, Sharkey worked at America Online, Inc., where she led AOL’s social networking initiatives, including AIM. Before AOL, she served as Group President of Sesame Workshop’s Online Services and co-founder and chief community architect of iVillage. Tina also collaborated with Barry Diller on a new home shopping channel, Q2, a division of QVC, helped launch the Adobe Acrobat and New York 1 brands, and managed corporate brand strategies for Time Warner, QVC and Sony.

Media Guru Steven Waldman

FCC's Visionary Entrepreneur Explores "Future of Media"

January 31, 2011

FCC’s visionary entrepreneur conducted an extensive look at media across all platforms—regulated and not regulated by the FCC. Waldman will discuss the report which will be published just after this appearance. Steven Waldman is Senior Advisor to the Chairman of the FCC, in charge of looking into “Future of Media.” He is leading an agency-wide effort to assess the state of media and is will be releasing a widely anticipated report that will likely include recommendations designed to ensure a vibrant media landscape for the U.S. A recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review calls Waldman a “wonk” admiringly. The author writes, “The FCC oversees a large section of the historical media policy regime and can make constructive recommendations about the rest of that regime. [Waldman has] an opportunity to look carefully, with a wonk’s Coke-bottle glasses, at the laws and regulations we already have, to see how they are working and how they might be improved.” (http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/reboot.php) Waldman, will discuss how he worked with dozens of staffers, conducted hundreds of interviews and reviewed thousands of documents in working out how the media will evolve and the government’s role in the evolution. Waldman was the co-founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Beliefnet.com, the leading spirituality website, founded in 1999. Beliefnet won the top editorial awards on the Internet, including the General Excellence Award from the Online News Association and the National Magazine Award for General Excellence Online. Before coming to the FCC, the company was sold to NewsCorp. Before creating Beliefnet, Waldman served as National Editor of US News & World Report and was National Correspondent for Newsweek. He is author of the New York Times bestseller Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America. He also served as Senior Advisor to the CEO of the Corporation for National Service in the 1990s. Waldman’s work has appeared in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Review Online, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, ChristianityToday.com, The Washington Monthly and Slate. He has been a regular commentator on national television and radio programs including Fox & Friends, Fox Business, Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, ABC World News, NPR’s All Things Considered and On the Media, and many others. He was named a “Spiritual Innovator” by Time magazine.

Media Gurus Brian Napack and Andrew Heyward

Traditional-to-Digital Experts Talk about Leading Core Businesses through Their Disruption

January 12, 2011

With vast experience in most content platforms affected by digital disruption, two of the smartest and most thoughtful media leaders—Brian Napack and Andrew Heyward—will let us in on their ongoing discussions of just how today’s powerful and successful media companies can be tomorrow’s. Among other topics, they will cover the implications of the arrival of video on mobile devices, how the fierce competition for distribution may play out for newspapers, TV news and books, and how to run a core business while starting its disruptive cousin under the same corporate roof. Andrew Heyward Andrew Heyward is a nationally known news executive and expert on the changing media landscape. He helps media companies transform their businesses to drive growth and revenue in an age of rapid and disruptive evolution. As a principal in the boutique strategy firm MarketspaceNext LLC, as a senior advisor to Monitor Group, and in his own advisory practice, Heyward works with blue-chip television, newspaper, magazine, and marketing clients to develop new online ventures and profitable digital strategies. He is also an advisor to early-stage and startup firms. Heyward was President, CBS News, from January 1996-November 2005. During that time, CBS News programming grew significantly in audience, regularly scheduled hours and profitability. Heyward also spearheaded CBS News’s expansion into digital media. Before his tenure as President, Heyward was executive producer, THE CBS EVENING NEWS (October 1994-January 1996). Heyward was also responsible for developing and launching 48 HOURS, the weekly primetime CBS News series that premiered in January 1988. He has won 12 national Emmy Awards. Brian A. Napack Brian Napack is the president of Macmillan, one of America’s leading publishing companies. Macmillan’s brands include the book publishers St. Martin’s Press, Farrar Strauss & Giroux, Henry Holt, Picador, Tor, Macmillan Audio, and Macmillan Children’s; and the education companies Bedford/St. Martin’s, W.H. Freeman, Worth Publishers, i>clicker, and Hayden McNeil. Before joining Macmillan, Mr. Napack was a partner at L.E.K. Consulting, a leading strategy consulting firm where he helped media companies and investors succeed in the changing digital media economy. Mr. Napack has also held senior positions at The Walt Disney Company, Simon & Schuster, and ThinkBox, an Internet education company where he was the founder and CEO. Mr. Napack currently sits on the boards of CourseSmart, an online marketplace for college course materials; LibreDigital, a provider of digital content management software and services; and Zero-to-Three, a leading advocacy group dedicated to improving the lives of infants and toddlers. A graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, Mr. Napack received his MBA from Columbia Business School.

Media Guru Debra Lee

Chair and CEO, BET

September 22, 2010

Debra Lee is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BET Networks, a unit of Viacom Inc. and the nation’s leading provider of quality entertainment for the African-American audience and consumers of Black culture. Lee oversees a multiplatform media organization that includes several cable television networks, digital offerings, and a home entertainment business. She also oversees the company’s current growth initiatives, including international distribution of the brand in the United Kingdom and Africa. Lee has led BET’s successful original programming strategy that has created hits such as “Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is,” “Sunday Best,” “Brothers to Brutha” and many more. Lee is credited with “reinvigorated” content that she typifies as “built on supporting families, embracing and encouraging their dreams, focusing on the issues that are important to them and presenting the freshest talent and entertainment.” Prior to her being named CEO, Ms. Lee was President and Chief Operating Officer of BET Networks for almost 10 years. She first joined BET as Vice President and General Counsel in 1986 after serving more than five years as an attorney with Washington, D.C.-based Steptoe & Johnson, a corporate law firm. Prior to that, she served as a law clerk to the late Honorable Barrington Parker of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Her achievements in a 20-plus year career at BET Networks have earned her numerous accolades from across the cable industry and in the broader business community. She serves on the corporate board of directors of Revlon, Marriott, Eastman Kodak, and Washington Gas & Light. Affiliated with a number of professional, civic, and cultural organizations, Ms. Lee is also a member of the national board of directors for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Girls Inc., National Symphony Orchestra, Center for Communication, and the Kennedy Center’s Community & Friends Board. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees for Brown University and also serves on the boards of the Paley Center for Media, the Ad Council, the Grammy Foundation, and was recently appointed to the Federal Communications Commission’s Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age. Ms. Lee earned her juris doctorate at Harvard Law School, while simultaneously earning a master’s degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. She graduated from Brown University with a bachelor’s degree in political science with an emphasis in Asian politics.

Media Guru Tim Armstrong

Chair and CEO, AOL

June 15, 2010

As Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, of AOL, Inc., Tim Armstrong is responsible for setting strategy and overseeing the businesses and day-to-day operations of AOL. Armstrong will discuss the company’s restructuring, cultural transformation, and the new content-oriented strategy meant to attract the largest possible audiences along with advertisers and commerce partners.In December 2009, he took the company public with a listing on the New York Stock Exchange (http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/aol.html). About 100 million people in the United States and 250 million people globally use AOL content and services each month. Beyond AOL.com, the company owns such well-known content sites on the Internet as Mapquest, Moviefone, and Engadget. AOL serves tens of millions of customers across the world with AOL Mail and AIM Instant Messenger. In Advertising, AOL owns the largest ad network by reach in Ad.com and one of the fastest growing advertising serving platforms in ADTECH. Armstrong joined AOL in April 2009 from Google, where he oversaw the company’s North American and Latin American advertising sales, marketing and operations teams as President of The Americas Operations and worked with some of the world’s most widely recognized brands and advertising agencies. His tenure at Google covered the scaled launch of Google’s advertising efforts and defined many of the operating structures that supported Google’s global expansion. Armstrong was a member of Google’s Operating Committee, the company’s executive team. Prior to joining Google, Armstrong was Vice President of Sales and Strategic Partnerships for Snowball.com. Before that, he served as Director of Integrated Sales and Marketing at Starwave’s and Disney’s ABC/ESPN Internet Ventures, working across the companies’ Internet, TV, radio and print properties. At the start of his career, Armstrong co-founded and ran a newspaper based in Boston, Mass. and later joined IDG, where he launched its first consumer Internet magazine, I-Way. Armstrong is on the boards of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Advertising Council and the Advertising Research Foundation, and is a trustee at Connecticut College and Lawrence Academy. He is a graduate of Connecticut College, with a double major in economics and sociology.

Media Guru Roger Faxon

Chair and CEO EMI Music Publishing

April 29, 2010

Veteran entertainment exec Faxon has worked in TV, film and auction. Managing music since 1984, talked about his enviable job of running EMI’s 1.3 million song catalog and the grave challenges currently facing the industry. Roger Faxon is chairman and CEO of EMI Music Publishing and a member of the board of EMI’s parent company Maltby Capital (also owner of EMI Music.) He was named co-CEO in 2006 before taking up his current role as chairman and CEO in March 2007. Faxon joined EMI in 1994 as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Business Development and Strategy where he directed the company’s global planning process and oversaw the acquisition of related businesses as well as the company’s portfolio of media investments. In April 1999, Faxon assumed the post of Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for EMI Music Publishing before being appointed CFO of EMI Group in early 2002. In January 2005 he returned to the music publishing side of EMI when he was named President and COO of EMI Music Publishing Throughout his career, Faxon mostly worked in entertainment except for two stints: in the 1990s at Sotheby’s, he joined as COO of its North and South American operations, and as CEO of London-based Sotheby’s Europe. Early in his career, Faxon worked for the US government including directing the subcommittee on Housing and Community Development in the US House of Representatives. Before EMI, Faxon worked in film and TV for LUCASFILM as COO, for Tri-Star and Columbia Pictures in marketing, distribution, finance and business affairs, and he was founding partner of the Mount Company (producers of such movies as Frantic, Bull Durham and Tequila Sunrise.) Faxon received a BA in International Relations & Political Economy from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Media Guru Mathias Döpfner

CEO, Axel Springer AG

March 25, 2010

Mathias Döpfner—making a rare public appearance in New York as the March Media Guru—is Chairman and CEO of Axel Springer AG. The company is one of Europe’s leading and most successful media enterprises with an integrated offering of print, online and Web TV products (see Business Week article: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_34/b4097094901129.htm). It is also Germany’s largest newspaper and third-largest magazine publisher. Mr. Döpfner serves on the Board of Directors of Time Warner. Axel Springer (web site: http://www.axelspringer.de/en/index.html) creates and distributes information and entertainment through newspapers, magazines and digital media services in 35 countries. The company is on the forefront of developing new business models for media properties. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in early December, Mr. Döpfner said that, “The answer to the newspaper industry’s online dilemma lies not in choking off news aggregators such as Google, but rather in developing flexible pay models and an infrastructure that makes it easier for users to pay for content.” Döpfner added that he envisioned a system that would include everything from traditional subscription models to micro payments for individual articles. According to the article, the company plans to build the pay models around the tabloid Bild franchise and Die Welt, a national broadsheet targeted at a more sophisticated audience. Axel Springer’s media portfolio has over 170 newspapers and magazines, more than 60 online offerings for various different interest groups and information needs, as well as holdings in television and radio stations. The company employs more than 10,000 employees, generates revenues of more than USD 3 billion and had an EBITDA of well over USD 500 million in 2008. Döpfner has been with Axel Springer AG since 1998, initially as Editor-in-Chief of Die Welt and since 2000 as Member of the Management Board. Before coming to Axel Springer, among other positions, Döpfner was Editor-in-Chief of the newspapers Wochenpost and Hamburger Morgenpost. At Gruner + Jahr, he was Assistant to the CEO in Hamburg and to the Head of International Business in Paris. He worked as a writer and Brussels-based correspondent for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading German business daily. Döpfner studied Musicology, German and Theatrical Arts in Frankfurt and Boston. Döpfner is also on the Board of RHJ International SA and is a member of the Board of Deutsche Press-Agentur.

Media Guru Breakfast: Jack Griffin

President, Meredith National Media Group

February 16, 2010

Jack Griffin is President of the National Media Group at Meredith (NYSE: MDP). Based in New York City, Griffin oversees an extensive portfolio of media and marketing properties including some of the country’s most successful and best-known brands such as Better Homes and Gardens [http://www.bhg.com/], Parents and Family Circle. [ ]http://www.parents.com/family-circle-magazine/] Griffin is responsible for Meredith’s numerous magazine brands and its branded Internet and digital properties. He also oversees Meredith Integrated Marketing as well as the Company’s Brand Licensing business and its book publishing operations. The National Media Group accounts for annual revenues of $1.1 billion. Griffin re-joined Meredith in June 2003 as President of Magazines and was named Publishing Group President a year later. During a period of great difficulty for traditional media, Meredith’s National Media Group has thrived and was recently recognized by Advertising Age as Publishing Company of the Year for 2009. Over the past five years, Meredith National Media Group (formerly the Publishing Group) has set a standard for media companies seeking to organize around audiences and across platforms. In his first tenure with Meredith, from 1994 to 1999, Griffin oversaw the creation of Meredith Integrated Marketing (MIM), the company’s innovative marketing services arm. Since 2005, MIM has nearly tripled in size and expanded from its roots in custom publishing to its current industry-leading position as a sophisticated creator of CRM and loyalty marketing programs in digital, print and other formats. In addition, Griffin has led an aggressive expansion and repositioning of Meredith Interactive. Numbering over 30 web sites, branded sub-networks and blog communities, Meredith Interactive now registers roughly 20MM unique visitors and 200MM page views monthly. At Griffin’s direction, Meredith has expanded aggressively in social marketing with launch of community web sites such as Mixing Bowl and applications on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. Over the past five years, the Meredith National Media Group has successfully diversified its revenue base beyond traditional advertising, which now comprises roughly half of total Group revenues. During this period, Meredith Licensing has established numerous high-growth relationships led by the Better Homes and Gardens Home Collection at Wal-Mart stores. This extensive line of branded home products now numbers over 1,500 SKUs in bedding, bath, kitchen and accessories at the nation’s largest and most successful retailer. BH&G has also expanded into home furnishings, residential real estate and other consumer product lines during this period. Meredith Licensing has become a substantial contributor to revenue and profit. From 1999 to 2003, Griffin was with Parade, a division of Advance Publications. He joined Parade as Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing and later became President and Publisher. In 1998-1999, while based in Des Moines, Griffin served as Vice President of Marketing for the Meredith Broadcasting Group, encompassing 15 network-affiliated local television stations. Earlier in his career, from 1989-1994, Griffin spent five years with The New York Times Company Magazine Group in business and sales positions in New York and Chicago. Griffin earned his BA in philosophy, cum laude, from Boston College and a Master’s Degree from the Yale School of Management. He is former chairman of that school’s Alumni Association and a former director of the Yale Alumni Fund. He is currently a Director of the Yale Center for Customer Insights.

Media Guru Breakfast: Jodi Kahn

Executive Vice President, iVillage Network

December 2, 2009

Jodi Kahn is a true digital business strategist with a strong foundation building online consumer products. Last fall Jodi was recruited as Executive Vice President of the iVillage Network, with the mandate to rebuild the brand, re-power it to a top-ranking site, and create a cornerstone for Women@NBCU. At this breakfast, we’ll find out how it’s going for her one year later. Kahn is responsible for the strategic business operations of the iVillage Network with oversight of ad sales, technology, research and marketing. She is also charged with establishing and managing external multi-platform partnerships with the iVillage Network. She is a true digital business strategist with a strong foundation building online consumer products. Most recently, Kahn was President, Global Digital Media for Readers Digest Association, Inc. There she is credited with building digital businesses across the company, overseeing content, product development and monetization for Reader’s Digest Association’s family of 14 online brands, including allrecipes.com and rachaelraymag.com. Kahn developed multiplatform strategies, oversaw key site launches, led global digital expansion and oversaw the creation of an extensive digital content repository to grow audiences, revenue and profits. Prior, at Time Inc., Kahn led Time for Kids, the in-school magazine reaching 4.4 million students weekly. There she developed new business sources, which contributed to double-digit profit growth and subscriber increases and reshaped the ad sponsorship model, resulting in record growth for the brand. Before her tenure at Time for Kids, Kahn held a VP role at Time Inc. Interactive, where she led the integration of Time Inc. web properties and AOL. In addition, Kahn has held Marketing positions at Time and Sony/Columbia House, handling both strategy and execution. She began her career as a media planner at Wunderman Worldwide, part of Young & Rubicam.

Media Guru Breakfast: Chris Anderson

Author, Thinker, Wired Editor-in-Chief

November 17, 2009

Chris Anderson took the helm of Wired in 2001 and has led the Conde Nast publication with a circulation of more than 700,000 to nine National Magazine Award nominations since, winning the prestigious top prize for general excellence in 2005, 2007 and 2009. Anderson is the author of the New York Times best-seller “The Long Tail,” which is based on an influential 2004 article published in Wired, and runs a blog on the subject at http://www.longtail.com. Anderson’s most recent book, FREE, has also hit the New York Times Bestsellers list. He is not afraid to use terrifically simple, amusing and powerful charts, such as this one that illustrates one of the basic ideas in the book.

	Scarcity	Abundance
Rules	Everything is forbidden unless it is permitted.	Everything is permitted unless it is forbidden.
Social model	Paternalism (“We know what’s best”)	Egalitarianism (“You know what’s best”)
Profit plan	Business model	We’ll figure it out
Decision process	Top-down	Bottom-up
Organizational structure	Command and control	Out of control

From: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/mf_freer Anderson was named in April 2007 to the “Time 100,” the news magazine’s list of the 100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world. He previously was at The Economist, where he served as U.S. business editor, Asia business editor and technology editor. Anderson’s media career began at the two premier science journals, Nature and Science, where he served in several editorial capacities. Anderson holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from George Washington University and studied Quantum Mechanics and Science Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

Media Guru Breakfast: Thomas Gensemer

Managing Director, Blue State Digital, Creators of BarackObama.com

November 6, 2009

Blue State Digital is one of the most important marketing agencies you never heard of in the fast growing and cutting edge digital arena. BSD managed Obama for America’s extensive online fundraising, constituency building, and peer-to-peer networking initiatives, all of which created momentum for the President’s successful 2008 election campaign. (Read a case history on bluestate’s site.) Media Guru, Thomas Gensemer, provides day-to-day executive leadership for BSD, as well as executive sponsorship to several of the company’s largest consulting engagements. He is a straight forward and provocative speaker who will address the club in an off-the-record talk about past campaigns and the state of digital agency and advocacy work. Gensemer joined Blue State Digital in 2005 with a background in venture capital, strategy consulting, product marketing and technology startup management. Immediately prior to BSD, Gensemer was the director of Internet strategy for America Coming Together (ACT), where he managed the organization’s online fundraising, grassroots recruitment, and marketing. Prior to ACT, he led online communications for General Wesley Clark’s 2004 presidential campaign. From 1999 to 2003, Gensemer managed The Accelerator Group, an entrepreneurial venture capital fund with offices in New York, Los Angeles and London. The fund developed and funded a broad portfolio of early-stage technology and marketing businesses. Its holdings included Pyra-Blogger (acquired by Google), Openwave (OPWV), 24/7 Media (TFSM), Meetup.com, and a number of private concerns. Gensemer is a graduate of New York University and lives in Washington, DC and New York. Beyond the Obama work, Blue State Digital, (http://www.bluestatedigital.com/) is a leader in online fundraising, advocacy, social networking and constituency development programs and has helped scores of companies motivate their supporters and customers to take action online. It targets and mobilizes loyal, active online communities around candidates, causes, and products through its online initiatives. Founded in 2004, Blue State Digital’s websites and online campaign strategies are designed to motivate people around an issue, candidate, product or service. Among the company’s specialties are its proprietary software — the “BSD Toolset” — as well as its online engagement strategic consulting. Some recent clients are: political campaigns of Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Jim Webb; non-profit organizations American Red Cross, Sundance Institute, Alliance for Climate Protection, and the Save Darfur Coalition; University of Florida; and the corporation, Focus Features.

Media Guru Breakfast: Craig Newmark

Founder of Craigslist

November 4, 2009

Craig Newmark is best known as the founder and an active customer service rep of the San Francisco-based Craigslist. Craigslist is a platform where people can help one another with basic needs, like housing and jobs. The site has a culture of trust, based on shared values like “treat people like you want to be treated.” Craigslist’s philosophy is to let the on-line community participants play an active role in policing the information that is shared on the list, and to make classifieds and personal ads free to its community members. Craig used an e-mail list as a way to share information with his friends in San Francisco starting in early 1995, and launched the first community site for San Francisco late that year. As of April, 2009, Craigslist was receiving more than 22 billion page views per month, and had community websites in over 570 cities with over 50 million unique community members worldwide. Craig attended college at Case Western Reserve University where he originally wanted to be a physicist, before switching to computers, which resulted in a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science in 1975. Craig continued his education at Case Western, receiving his Masters of Science in Computer Science in 1977. His thesis was entitled “Fundamental Models of Computer Systems and Their Relationship to Information Security.” In 1976, Craig started his business career with IBM and spent nearly 17 years there until moving on to working in programming for companies such as Charles Schwab, Bank of America, and various other consulting firms. In those days he was fluent in Java, Perl, MySQL, and HTML. Craig is a vocal advocate of working with other people who use the Internet to scale up to large numbers, and ways that everyone can pitch in with a few dollars to improve society like DonorsChoose.org, microfinance in the West Bank with KIVA.org or Lendforpeace.org. Craig also believes in using the net to support veterans’ rights (through such groups as Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, IAVA.org) and for public service, including such groups as the Sunlight Foundation, the Federal Web Managers Council, and the Consumers Union. Newmark continues working with various offices of the government, is an active practitioner in social media and advises groups on use of social media. Craig recently joined the board of Our Good Works, as a founding member of the allforgood.org which supports President Obama’s summer of service initiative through serve.gov. Craig resides in San Francisco’s Cole Valley. Between bird watching and testing out new technology, he remains a critical part of Craigslist’s customer service, mostly dealing with spammers and scammers. He is an avid fan of science fiction and actually enjoys TV. “He needs to get out more.” You can see what Craig is up to on his blog at cnewmark.com and he is active in sharing his “Tweets” on twitter.com/craignewmark.

Media Guru Breakfast: Strauss Zelnick

Board Chairman of Three Media Companies

September 17, 2009

Strauss Zelnick, a leading expert in the media industry, has managed many types of entertainment companies including music, entertainment software, film and television. At ZelnickMedia (http://www.zelnickmedia.com/), he and his partners have capitalized on their broad operating experience to build a dynamic and diverse media enterprise. ZelnickMedia manages and holds interests in an array of media businesses in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia that are “best positioned to take advantage of the ongoing digitization and fragmentation of media.” Investments and advisory relationships include Arkadium, Columbia Music Entertainment (CME), ITN Networks, Naylor Publications, Online Testing Exchange, Savoy Label Group, Skymall and Take-Two Interactive Software. Zelnick currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Take-Two Interactive Software, ITN Networks and CME. He serves on the Boards of Naylor Publications and Blockbuster, Inc. (See an interview with Zelnick about Take-Two from CNBC, May 2009). Prior to forming ZelnickMedia in 2001, Zelnick was President and Chief Executive Officer of BMG Entertainment, a $4.7 billion music and entertainment company with more than 200 record labels and operations in 54 countries. He served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the company’s North American business unit from 1994 through 1998. Before BMG Entertainment, Zelnick was President and Chief Executive Officer of Crystal Dynamics, a leading producer and distributor of interactive entertainment software. Prior to that, he spent four years as President and Chief Operating Officer of 20th Century Fox, where he managed all aspects of Fox Inc.‘s worldwide motion picture production and distribution business. Previously, he spent three years at Vestron Inc., two as the company’s President and Chief Operating Officer. Zelnick also served as Vice President, International Television, at Columbia Pictures. Strauss Zelnick holds a BA from Wesleyan University and an MBA and JD from Harvard University. He also has the distinction of being the only Media Guru who has been a cover model of Men’s Fitness magazine. He was on newsstands on the November 2008 issue.

Media Guru Breakfast: Glenn Britt

President and CEO, Time Warner Cable

June 4, 2009

Glenn Britt has had the kind of career that is very rare these days. He went to Time Inc. straight out of business school and rose through the ranks of the company and various subsidiaries in the subsequent 37 years. Of course, he picked a company that has seen a lot of action since the 70s, morphing and transforming itself constantly through organic and merger growth, acquisitions and ultimately a spin-off. Just a few weeks ago, Time Warner Cable (TWC), of which Britt is Chairman, President and CEO, separated from Time Warner Inc. into a newly independent, stand-alone company. Britt, who has the reputation of being a manager’s manager, with a “supremely low profile” (Fortune Magazine), has nonetheless agreed to share his insights with club members and guests. In an off-the-record fireside chat format, Britt will talk about leading Time Warner Cable today – a company with more than $17 billion in revenue and 13 million basic video subscribers. Britt was named President and CEO of Time Warner Cable in February 2006 and has served as its Chief Executive since August 2001. Earlier this year he was named Chairman of the company’s Board of Directors. Britt has been the driving force behind the company’s aggressive deployment of advanced video services, such as video-on-demand, high-definition television, and digital video recorders. Britt has guided the continued growth and increased penetration of Time Warner Cable’s residential high-speed data product and has overseen the efforts of Road Runner Business Class, the company’s commercial broadband service. He has also championed the launch and growth of Time Warner Cable Digital Phone, the company’s VoIP service. In addition to the continued and rapid deployment of advanced services, Britt has led the cable industry’s efforts to work more closely with consumer electronics manufactures and other related groups to develop compatible standards for the deployment of future integrated products. Britt became president of Time Warner Cable in January 1999. Previously, Britt served as president and CEO of Time Warner Cable Ventures, the company’s new-business arm. There, he oversaw the launch of Road Runner, the high-speed Internet service, as well as the creation of Time Warner Telecom, a provider of local telecommunications services. He had been Executive Vice President, Time Warner Cable, since 1990 and was previously Senior Vice President and Treasurer of Time Warner Inc. Prior to the merger between Time Inc. and Warner Communications, Britt was Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Time Inc. Britt joined Time Inc. in 1972 in the Controller’s Department and rose, successively, to Vice President-Treasurer of Manhattan Cable Television, Inc. (1974), Finance Director for Time-Life Books Iran Project (1977), Vice President-Network and Studio Operations for Home Box Office, Inc. (HBO), and Director of Business Development of Time Inc.’s Video Group (1980). Britt became Senior Vice President-Finance for American Television and Communications Corp., Time Inc.’s cable television unit, in 1981, Senior Vice President - Finance of Time Inc.’s Video Group in 1984, and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of HBO later that year. He was elected as Vice President of Time Inc. in October 1986 and Treasurer the following month. He became Vice President - Finance of Time Inc. in February 1988. Britt serves on the Board of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and is a member of the Executive Committee. He is also a Board member of CableLabs, Board member of the Walter Kaitz Foundation, Board member of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund, Board member of Xerox Corporation, and Board member of TIAA. He received a B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College, where he graduated magna cum laude. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Britt received an M.B.A. from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth in 1972.

Media Guru Breakfast: Jonah Bloom

Editor in Chief, Advertising Age

March 25, 2009

Jonah Bloom, as the editor of Advertising Age, oversees editorial operations for the property across all its platforms and channels – online with blogs, sites, video and enewsletters, at events, as well as through its venerable print product. The publication and web site is one of the most intelligent and comprehensive voices that cover the confusing array of ground-breaking stories for all things marketing and media. Find out from Bloom, how a dominant, but small player in a niche media area is surviving and thriving in the digital age. He will let us in on his secrets of managing an infinitely expanding set of stories as more and more media platforms channels that sell advertising and care about media come on line. Although Bloom spends his many talents primarily on the wrangling of ornery columnists, reducing bombastic ad guys’ pronouncements into something close to truth, and of course the editing and presentation of marketing and advertising information, he does a little writing too. To get a flavor of Bloom the commentator, here are a couple of tidbits from recent columns: · “As someone whose main function in life is editing, I wonder, in the dark moments, whether I will soon be redundant. Perhaps I’ll be outsourced….More likely I’ll find myself in a losing battle with the machines.” (October 2008) · “ Not once have I picked up a newspaper or turned on a broadcast to find a lengthy discussion of how America is going to educate and retrain its citizens to make them competitive in a digitized, globalized economy. Not once have I seen a thorough analysis of what exactly is going to replace the country’s rapidly disappearing manufacturing sector…The media will continue to chase ratings, and I’m not saying there isn’t a place and time to analyze unaccomplished celebrities who forgot to don panties. But now would be a really good time for the deeply discredited media to start asking important questions about this country’s future.” (September 2008) Before Bloom joined Ad Age in 2002, he was at PRWeek magazine, a national weekly based in New York reporting on corporate communication, branding and public affairs. He helped to launch PRWeek in 1998 as news editor and went on to become editor-in-chief. He also has considerable experience reporting on the media industry in Europe, having founded and served as editor of Campaign Media Business, a national weekly covering planning, buying and selling of media in the U.K. Previously, Bloom worked at weekly Press Gazette, VNU’s Accountancy Age and PrintWeek. He is the editor of the HarperCollins book “Top Companies in Marketing & Media.” His work has appeared in The Financial Times and The Guardian.

Media Guru Breakfast: Tina Brown

Daily Beast Editor in Chief and Best-selling Author

March 21, 2009

The struggling US magazine industry lost one of its biggest names to the web when Tina Brown traded the glossy pages and lengthy essays of her past career for the hyperlinks and blog entries of a newish site called The Daily Beast. http://www.thedailybeast.com/ It debuted in early October 2008 to excellent notices. Brown describes the property on the site as “a speedy, smart edit of the web from the merciless point of view of what interests the editors. The Daily Beast is the omnivorous friend who hears about the best stuff and forwards it to you with a twist.” As the April Media Guru, Tina Brown will not only talk about this latest adventure in her long career in journalism and the media, but some of her other adventures as well. They include (in reverse order):

2007—- Tina came out with her first book—the New York Times bestseller about the life and times of Princess Diana, The Diana Chronicles
From 2003 to 2005 Tina was the host of CNBC’s Topic A with Tina Brown, a weekly series which featured opinionated guests discussing and debating provocative topics in the arenas of business, politics and culture. At the same time, she also wrote a weekly column for The Washington Post Style section.
From 1998 to 2002, Tina ran Talk Media with partners Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax Films launching Talk magazine and the Talk Miramax Books company. Talk’s publication was suspended in January 2002. Talk Miramax Books was run as a boutique publishing house until 2005, when it was made a part of Hyperion at Disney. Out of 42 books published under Tina’s tenure, 11 have appeared on The New York Times Bestseller List
From 1983 until 1998, Tina worked at Condé Nast magazines in the U.S. She was the editor-in-chief of the recently launched and seriously ailing Vanity Fair magazine. Under her direction from 1984 to 1992, Vanity Fair rose from a circulation of 350,000 to 1.1 million and won four National Magazine Awards, including a 1989 award for General Excellence. Ms. Brown herself was named Advertising Age’s first Magazine Editor of the Year. In 1992, she became the fourth – and first female—editor of The New Yorker magazine. In her six and a half year tenure, she raised circulation by 145 percent on the newsstand and 28 percent overall and the magazine was honored with 4 George Polk Awards, 5 Overseas Press Club Awards, and 10 National Magazine Awards, including a 1995 award for General Excellence, the first in the magazine’s history. Ms. Brown was the first magazine editor to be honored with the National Press Foundation’s Editor of the Year Award in 1992.
In 1979 when she was 25 years old, Tina’s editorial reputation for revitalizing publications began at the Tatler magazine, a nearly defunct 270-year-old “society” magazine in London where she was named editor-in-chief. During her tenure there from 1979 to 1983, the circulation rose 300 percent and was purchased by Condé Nast magazines in 1982.Tina Brown graduated with an M.A. from Oxford at St. Anne’s Collee.

Tina Brown graduated with an M.A. from Oxford at St. Anne’s College.

Media Guru Breakfast: Peter Sheinbaum

DailyCandy CEO

December 3, 2008

Pete Sheinbaum has been the CEO since 2005 (and COO since 2003) of one of the hippest shopping guides on the internet: DailyCandy. Mr. Sheinbaum will talk to club members and guests in a fireside chat format about managing this special company that came into being in the wake of the dot com meltdown in the early 2000s and has thrived ever since. And now, this smallish enewsletter company that had sold itself first to investor Bob Pitman, has very recently closed a deal with the gigantic corporation, Comcast, for a reported $125 million in August. Delivering shopping and consumption tidbits to the e-mail inboxes of younger women since 2000, DailyCandy has carved out a place as the guide to what’s new and hip in cities across the U.S. as well as London. The company has 2.5 million subscriptions worldwide. DailyCandy’s editorial mission focuses on six categories: Fashion, Beauty & Fitness, Lifestyle, House & Home, Food & Drink and Arts & Culture. DailyCandy publishes thirteen daily editions, which are all delivered through e-mail. In an August article on PaidContent.org, Mr. Sheinbaum was asked about the purchase by Comcast at this particular time: “He said the relationship began with the two companies exploring ways to work together on different platforms—matching DailyCandy’s listings on restaurants with movie plans. ‘Why not marry the Fandango.com and DailyCandy content together on our platform or their platform or some sort of hybrid? Same thing with Comcast.net. They’re providing local content and that’s what we do. If they can help us introduce our content to their readers, what a terrific marriage that would be for us to provide a deeper and richer experience.’ As a top 10 site, that would give DailyCandy a boost for its model.” Prior to DailyCandy, Mr. Sheinbaum was Director & CRM Practice Leader for Empower Solutions (ERP & CRM software consulting and implementation), COO of AlexBlake.com (retail e-commerce), and Manager of E-Commerce for E! Television Networks. Mr. Sheinbaum currently is on the Board of Directors of IdealBite.com and the advisory board of TotalBeauty.com.Mr. Sheinbaum holds a BA in Economics from Colgate University and an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA.

Media Guru Breakfast: Larry Burstein and Michael Silberman

Publisher and G.M. of New York Magazine

November 12, 2008

Larry Burstein was always a magazine guy. Michael Silberman has been in new media since 1995, and before that in TV. Yet, as leaders of the New York team, they’ve transformed a venerable magazine brand into a cross media brand with a rapidly expanding and award-winning Website, nymag.com, an events division, and the twice-yearly publications New York Look and New York Weddings. As the November Media Gurus, Burstein and Silberman will explain how the company made the transformation. Among the topics they will cover are: why they think that the print version of the New York will survive competing against nymag.org —and all the other websites covering their territory, how being part of a multi-platform company affects their day to day operations in selling advertising and creating content and what’s next for cross platform media brands. Larry Burstein Larry Burstein joined New York as publisher in July 2003 – a return to the title from earlier in his career. Since then, the company has become New York Media, has gained several National Magazine Awards and has generally raised its editorial profile, its prestige bona fides and its advertising success. The magazine finished 2007 ranked 3rd in the United States among all magazines in ad pages carried, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Burstein has also overseen the rapid advertising growth on nymag.com. In 1980 Burstein first joined New York magazine as a sales representative and rose to the position of associate publisher. Larry has also held top executive positions at Self, Elle, The New Yorker, and US Weekly magazines, as well as Ziff-Davis. His publishing innovations have included the first “singing” Absolute spectacular that appeared in New York magazine, to the launch of the first pink-ribbon campaign for breast cancer awareness in Self magazine. Burstein is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School and Hobart College. He has completed the New York City Marathon four times. Michael Silberman Michael Silberman joined nymag.com, as General Manager in May 2007. He is responsible for strategic planning for nymag.com on both the business and editorial sides and oversees a growing staff of more than 45. Silberman came to nymag.com from Rodale, where he was vice president and editorial director for Rodale Interactive and managed a 35-person team responsible for editorial, design, production and product development for the online editions of Rodale’s magazines. Prior to Rodale, Silberman worked at MSNBC, most recently as deputy editor, East coast, partners & strategy, managing all MSNBC.com program production with NBC News and MSNBC Cable. He first moved to the digital realm in 1995, as a senior news producer for Microsoft, developing the MSNBC Website and its relationship to the cable channel and NBC News. He previously worked as a television producer for CBS News. Silberman graduated cum laude with a B.A. in government from Harvard College. He is a board member of the Online News Association.

Media Guru Breakfast: Janet Robinson

C.E.O. The New York Times Company

October 8, 2008

Janet Robinson, president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company since December 2004 has primary responsibility for overseeing and coordinating all of the Company’s print, broadcast and digital operations. She is currently implementing the company’s long range strategy that includes: developing new products in print and online, expanding the company’s research and development capabilities, rebalancing the portfolio of businesses and managing for operational efficiency and cost reductions. Under Robinson’s watch, the company has refocused and restructured advertising operations at New York Times branded units and at New England properties, integrated The Times’s print and digital newsrooms and pursued an aggressive Internet expansion program that included acquisitions and investments in About.com, Baseline Studio Systems, Consumersearch.com, Calorie Count.com, FM Publishing, Brightcove, Daylife, and UCompareHealthCare.com. Robinson is a Director of the New York Times Company. She has been with the Times company virtually her entire career. Previous to her current position, she was C.O.O/ Executive Vice President (2004), Senior Vice President, Newspaper Operations for The New York Times Company (2001-2004) along with President/ General Manager of The New York Times newspaper (1996 until 2004.) Robinson came up through the ranks through the advertising department, starting as an account executive in the magazine division (since sold) in 1983, and ending up as Senior Vice President, Advertising in 1995. Before joining the Times Company, Ms. Robinson was a public school teacher in Newport, R.I. and Somerset, Mass. Among her many Board activities, Robinson is vice chair of the board of the Liberty Science Center and serves on the boards of the Newspaper Association of America and the Presidential Board of Trustees of Salve Regina University. She also serves on the board of New England Sports Ventures. Ms. Robinson is also a member of the Leadership Committee for The Lincoln Center Consolidated Corporate Fund and a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Robinson received a B.A. degree in English from Salve Regina College, Newport, R.I., where she graduated cum laude in 1972. In 1996, she completed the Executive Education Program at Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H.

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