One disastrous deal

It's always good when a chief executive apologises for a disastrous mistake and maybe in global media terms Time Warner's sale for AOL shares at the hieght of the Dot Com boom may be one of the worst.

This morning's FT reports that Jerry Levin,who presided over the $164b deal has said on TV that

“I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently, and I guess it’s time for those who are involved in companies to stand up and say: you know what, I’m solely responsible for it,” said Mr Levin. “I was in charge. I’m really very sorry about the pain and the suffering and loss that was caused. I take responsibility.”

AOL's news production line

AOL’s new high-tech method of mass-producing news and other online content raises some interesting questions.

writes Lisa Anderson over at CJR.

Who needs editors and journalists to come up with compelling story ideas when there is AOL’s “new digital-newsroom system that uses a series of algorithms to predict the types of stories, videos and photos that will be most popular with consumers and marketers”?

From next month the company is on its own after it seperates from Time Warner and its Chief Executive Tim Armstrong's goal is to make AOL,

a magnet for both advertisers and consumers by turning it into the top creator of digital content.

"Content is the one area on the Web that hasn't seen the full potential. Hopefully, we will spark a revolution of people doing content at a different scale,

The worry for Lisa?

Once the consumer mind has been tapped, AOL editors will assign articles to a cyber army of over 3,000 freelancers around the country—a number it plans to grow through a new Web site for contributors called Seed.