• Business Week et al., Monday, February 22, 2010 1:45 PM

If Google News' aggregated vision for news consumption unsettled publishers, then what AOL has in mind is sure to send them clear over the edge.

Rather than investigative journalism awards or even circulation, "Judicious use of Web-analytics software is a hallmark of what AOL senior vice-president Marty Moe calls the 'newsroom of the future,' a large and growing news gathering operation at the heart of AOL's turnaround effort," BusinessWeek writes.

AOL raised eyebrows back in November when it announced plans to begin partly automating its online news reporting process. Under the auspices of Seed.com, AOL is now employing an algorithmic system that trawls the Web for stories that readers are likely to prefer, and then parses out story assignments among a large freelance staff.

Gawker -- not exactly a guardian of traditional media values and practices -- calls it AOL's "media borg," and recently documented how its "horde of desperate underemployed journalists" are mobbing popular story subjects with inquiries.

According to BusinessWeek, this is all part of AOL head Tim Armstrong's plan to "jump-start growth by creating original online content and selling ads to appear with it."

"To succeed, Armstrong ... is leaning on AOL's background in technology," the magazine writes. "Rather than merely craft articles and passively post them on the Web, as many newspapers and magazines do, AOL is using software to determine which articles to write and then give journalists up-to-the-minute data on how much traffic those articles generate."

"We really want to enhance journalism with technology," Armstrong says. "We feel like we have a strategic window to invest in quality content."

Cue the critics. Ad Age's Michael Learmonth, for one, says Armstrong is heralding the death of "quality" -- "particularly if you define 'quality' by the standards of professionals in content industries that produce the long-form TV, film, journalism and literature once considered the highest forms of information and entertainment -- the kind that brands once paid handsomely to associate themselves with through advertising."

In other words, Armstrong is now leading a proverbial race to the bottom, which is fast eroding the value -- in the minds of both consumers and advertisers -- of content.

Journalistic principles aside, some speculate that AOL's strategy is destined to fall flat with readers. "Factory farmed content isn't necessarily what the people that actually go to a site directly may want or respond to -- in this case, AOL's actual customer," writes Daily Patricia. "Even with this, journalist-written articles, etc., it's a long shot to say that what is being searched by millions of people in general will also happen to be what AOL's actual user base finds appealing."

Read the whole story at Business Week et al. »