Well, as part of their influencer series, LinkedIn compiled excerpts from successful people (okay, more like moguls) this spring and we extracted relevant media professionals because every now and then it helps to get a boost of advice.

Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief at The Huffington Post Media Group stated:

“Commencement speakers are traditionally expected to tell graduates how to go out there and climb the ladder of success, but I want to ask you, instead, to redefine success. Because the world you are headed into desperately needs it. And because you are up to it…what I urge you to do is not just take your place at the top of the world, but to change the world. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Combine tasty treats, sleek design, and the now famous ‘Sitting Cameramen of Astor Place’ and you get the latest episode of “Cubes.”

In this episode of Cubes, the MediabistroTV crew is invited into the New York Headquarters of AOL and The Huffington Post. Hosted by the founding editor of The Huffington Post and president of HuffPost Live, Roy Sekoff, the crew visits the cavernous Huffington Post newsroom where hundreds of writers sit keyboard to keyboard under the watchful gaze of Arianna Huffington herself who plays the always gracious hostess by offering up some tasty Greek Christmas cookies. After burning through the sugar high, the guys mingle with the ghosts of journalism past in the HuffPost Live newsroom where live news is served up eight hours a day by tables of writers, producers and editors who always know what time it is in Funkytown.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

So, how does this relate to a career, you ask? And what if you’re a guy?

There’s something we can all learn from CNN’s interviews with the most successful women in terms of advice would they give to their 15 year-old selves.

In the HR world, it falls into the bucket of professional development and in the real world, it’s just really good inspiration. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Their World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list was released and out of the 100 names, 14 women are in media. Congrats to the power women!

Jill Abramson (No. 5) – Executive Editor, The New York Times, U.S.

Anne Sweeney (No. 22) -  Co-Chair, Disney Media Networks, and President, Disney/ABC Television Group, U.S.

Diane Sawyer (No. 23) – News Anchor, ABC News, U.S.

Arianna Huffington (No. 29) – Editor-in-Chief, AOL Huffington Post, U.S.

Amy Pascal (No. 36) – Co-Chairman, Sony Pictures Entertainment, U.S.

Laura Lang (No. 44) – CEO, Time Inc., U.S.

Sue Naegle (No. 46) – President,  HBO Entertainment, U.S.

Anna Wintour (No. 51) – Editor-in-Chief, Vogue, U.S.

Christiane Amanpour (No. 53) – News Anchor, CNN and ABC News, U.S.

Bonnie Hammer (No. 73) – Chairman, Cable Entertainment and Cable Studios, NBCUniversal, Comcast, U.S.

Tina Brown (No. 77) – Editor-in-Chief, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, U.S.

Marjorie Scardino (No. 86) – CEO, Pearson, U.K.

Greta Van Susteren (No. 94) – Anchor, FOX News

Mindy Grossman (No. 96) – CEO, Home Shopping Network, U.S.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sure, we’ve all heard our share of career advice and applied it to succeed on the job and land a new one. But according to a piece on Forbes, some successful (and we do mean successful) media folks were pretty happy to ditch some career advice they were given. According to the piece, here’s a look at what they had to say:

James Patterson, bestselling author, was told to stay away from writing fiction! He recalled, “My first runner-up occurred while an undergraduate, and came from a creative writing professor: ‘You write well enough, but stay away from fiction.’ But my favorite advice was issued by a Hollywood studio head: ‘Alex Cross has to be a white man. Do a fast rewrite.’” [Tyler Perry will play Alex Cross in an upcoming film adaptation of 'I, Alex Cross.' Morgan Freeman has also played the character.]

As for Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, it’s a good thing she didn’t ditch her passion for writing after being told to get a job.

“It came at one of the low points in my life — when I was 26 and my second book had just been rejected by 25 publishers. At this point I was told to forget about writing and get a ‘real’ job. But my desire to write turned out to be stronger than my fear of poverty. I walked into Barclay’s Bank in St. James Square in London and met with a banker named Ian Bell. With no collateral, other than a lot of Greek chutzpah, I asked him for loan. Even though I didn’t have any assets, he gave me one. I will never forget that manager, Ian Bell — to whom I still send a Christmas card every year — and I will never forget the way that loan changed my life. It meant I could keep things together for another 13 rejections — and then, finally, an acceptance. Of the many things my mother taught me, the one that’s proved most useful in my life is the understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s a stepping stone to success.”

How about Joni Evans, CEO of wowOwow and former literary agent and publisher? Evans recalled: “I really never have had bad career advice except from my mom in 1965 and that doesn’t count. When I was just getting out of college, she told me to NEVER take a job that required typing or I’d be cast as a secretary all my life.  So I went around looking for an editorial job (even then) and no one would hire me.  Secretly, I went to some summer typing school and excelled…80 words a minute (probably higher today).  In about two seconds I landed a job in the fiction department of McCall’s Magazine and I’ve been typing my way up the ladder ever since.”

Ali Velshi, chief business correspondent at CNN, was told to not count on Plan A. “Worst career advice I ever got was to have a good Plan B; a strong backup plan in case things didn’t work out as planned. I’ve since learned that you stand the best chance of success by having NO Plan B, but by engaging in a relentless pursuit of Plan A.”

Glenn Beck, host of The Glenn Beck Program and founder of GBTV, indicated not playing the game has served him well.

“The worst advice I ever got was ‘sometimes you have to compromise a little and “play the game.” Any success I’ve had in my life has occurred when I intentionally ignore that advice. In fact the best advice I ever got was the direct opposite — when I was a top 40 DJ, my father told me to start talking about things that interested me and that I believed in.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

But also out today is the Folio 40, the list of “some of the most distinguished magazine and media professionals from every corner” of the industry, Folio says.

Garnering accolades on that list are David Carey, president of Hearst who grew ad pages by 10 percent in 2010 and who is leading the charge to buy Lagardere’s magazines (including Elle).

Lewis DVorkin, formerly of Forbes then of True/Slant and again back at Forbes, who has boosted Web traffic by “double-digits” and who is “leading the construction of a digital metrics-driven framework for Forbes.com that relies on audience engagement to help guide editorial priorities.” Then there’s Atlantic Media owner David Bradley who, Folio says, deserves a lot of the credit for investing in The Atlantic and trusting in it—the strategy worked as the magazine turned its first profit in decades last year.

You know who’s on both lists? Arianna Huffington. Belinda Luscombe, writing for Time, says of Huffington: “One sure sign of influence is that somebody wants to bring you down.” Folio mentions, of course, that whatever the haters say, HuffPo is basically made of money: the site brought in $30 million last year and is on track to bring in $50 million in revenue in 2011.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Bloomberg reported today that AOL will hire up to 800 full-time employees for Patch as it adds sites in markets across the country. Sites are now run by just one full-time editor and get additional content from freelance contributors. The hirings will bulk up those one-person shops. David Brauer of MinnPost.com reports that local freelance budgets are also up.

In an interview with Street Fight, Brian Farnham, Patch’s editor-in-chief (pictured), talks in depth about the hyperlocal business model and the future of his sites.

How is the AOL’s acquisition of Huffington Post affecting Patch?
We’re still figuring that out. It’s still early days. … We’ve had many active conversations with them so far, but the integration is an active machine with a lot of moving parts. I don’t have the crystal ball for how it’s all going to shake out. But I do know that in the conversations we’ve had with Arianna Huffington, she’s a huge Patch fan, definitely gets what we’re doing, loves the principle behind Patch … which is how AOL always felt too. Everyone realizes that Patch is trying to do something special and we don’t want to muddy those waters.

For even more about Patch, check out this “So What Do You Do?” Mediabistro interview with Farnham from November.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Eun’s the guy who made this silly, lighthearted video about how great AOL’s doing just a few months back.

Eun was reportedly offered a job in AOL’s video unit, but he declined. From his e-mail to staff:

With the historic acquisition of The Huffington Post, my role and responsibilities as president, Aol Media are changing. Tim and I have discussed at length how I might continue within the new organizational structure, but ultimately, there isn’t a role that matches what I am seeking to do.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

To wit: conservative columnist Matt Lewis has already announced his departure from AOL’s PoliticsDaily, saying he is uncomfortable “with the notion of being permanently affiliated with an overtly left-of-center (sometimes activist) outlet.”

He’s moving to The Daily Caller, where he “look[s] forward to learning from its founder and editor in chief, Tucker Carlson, and working alongside the terrific team he has assembled. The Daily Caller and Tucker Carlson personify iconoclastic conservatism, and so I am hopeful I will quickly fit in.”

So far no other conservative AOL writers have departed, but we shall see.

And another possible fallout of the deal: some advertisers wonder how Huffington’s left-of-center style will mesh with their brands.

“All advertisers aren’t open to all things,” Catherine Warburton, executive vice president of national buying for Universal McCann, told the WSJ.

“If [the Huffington Post] were to become the full voice of AOL editorial, then I think, yes, that would risk alienating some people,” said Christian Juhl, a president at Razorfish.

Other advertisers couldn’t care less. A Kraft Foods exec: “We are not making commitments yet, but we think that the level of engagement that the Huffington Post gets from communities is impressive and therefore something that we like to think about more.”

AOL’s quarterly ad revenue has dropped about $200 million in the past two years, so “something we like to think about more” is surely tempting.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Arianna Huffington will serve as editor-in-chief of all content within AOL, including blogs like Engadget and TechCrunch, Patch, and the Huffington Post itself (which as far as we know is not going anywhere).

Kara Swisher has been all over coverage of the deal. In her report, she notes that Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau will not be staying with the company, nor will Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman. The other 200 Huffington Post employees will make the transition to AOL, though the mothership may be cutting staff in the months ahead.

The New York Times adds that AOL’s own news sites like Politics Daily are “likely to disappear when the deal is completed, and many of the writers who work for those sites will become Huffington Post writers.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Media big shots are finally realizing the power of the internet. So of course the first thing they all want to do is run out and harness it for their own personal gain. First Arianna Huffington, then Tina Brown, now it looks like we may have Dan Abrams as well.

The New York Observer reports that chief legal analyst for NBC News has been meeting with top tier bloggers and writers around New York. “I think it’s very possible that I will pursue an on-line Web property that will include some level of blogging of and about the media,” Abrams acknowledged yesterday. Hopefully he’ll learn to spell “online” the correct way before he drops into the medium.

While Abrams would not say who he has met with, industry spies report the list includes Gawker political editor Alex Pareene, Advertising Age columnist Simon Dumenco, former New York senior editor Jesse Oxfeld, Portfolio blogger Jeff Bercovici, and The Observer‘s John Koblin (gee, wonder how The Observer got the scoop on this story).

So far there are no confirmed hires. It’s not clear is that is because of the tone of the blog venture itself or if its because journalist in general had a very poor reaction to Abram’s first internet project that he announced in November.

Last year Abrams announced he was launching a “global strategy firm” that would employ thousands of working journalist, bloggers, authors and recently laid off journalists to consult with corporations who were interested in forming new media strategies. While media professionals did sign up in droves, some questioned the ethical implications of such a position.

“I am always trying to find vehicles for my community of experts,” said Abrams. “If and when I create an additional web property of and about the media, the editorial side of it will be entirely separate and distinct from Abrams Research, the business.”

More information about the site and prospective salary ranges after the jump.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.