'Thank God'

For now, though, the future looks brighter just by virtue of Case's absence. "Everyone in New York is walking about with a bit of relief," one AOL Time Warner executive said on the condition he not be named. "It's quite different than if Murdoch had left News Corp. or Eisner had left Disney. We're not very surprised. On the other hand, in Dulles [where AOL has it headquarters], they are quite upset. They're wondering who else from the old guard will leave. Does this mean their business model doesn't work? It's a difficult time."

"At the end of the day, this is a reminder that the media is still a business," Husni said. "In 1999 and 2000, we stopped treating it like a business and began chasing the unicorn. If you look at the numbers from those years, it's really more a cancerous growth than a normal growth. You need a model that's going to make actual money. And magazines still have that. We haven't found if the Internet really does."

In another sign of internal turmoil at the media giant, Walter Isaacson, the former Managing Editor of Time Magazine, stepped down as CNN chairman to join the Aspen Institute, a non-profit global think tank.

© 2003