Commercial Journalism? Could this save AOL?

From Businessweek:

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong deploys software that helps journalists collaborate on articles readers seem to want, then reports the traffic they generate.

Tacked to the newsroom walls in AOL's downtown Manhattan headquarters are pages and pages of Web traffic data. The numbers tell the growing number of journalists who work there how well their articles are performing and—thanks to the ads that appear alongside them—who's paying the bills.

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. As demand dwindles for the dial-up Internet service that made AOL a tech powerhouse in the 1990s, Chief Executive Tim Armstrong wants to jump-start growth by creating original online content and selling ads to appear with it.

To succeed, Armstrong, who will complete his first year at the helm in March, is leaning on AOL's background in technology. 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. It helps the journalists collaborate in low-cost ways, too. "We really want to enhance journalism with technology," Armstrong says in an interview. "We feel like we have a strategic window to invest in quality content."

AOL has hired more than 500 full-time journalists, many of them veteran reporters and editors seeking refuge from the business implosion in print journalism. The company also buys material from more than 3,000 freelance contributors. As AOL becomes better known for creating its own "quality content," advertisers will pay more to put their advertising on its pages, says Armstrong, former head of U.S. ad sales at Google. "Brand ads should be a lot bigger on the Internet today and I think it's going to take hard work and creativity."

Full article:
AOL Moves to Build Tech 'Newsroom of the Future' - BusinessWeek


I suppose it's no different from Newspapers putting editorial bias on stories, but you can see the potential to generate newsworthy stories around high advert revenue categories.

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Or is that me being Monday morning cynical?

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