Surveying the media landscape in the aftermath of yesterday’s $315 million deal bringing the Huffington Post to Aol, the Los Angeles Times‘ Tim Rutten has concluded journalism is “the loser.” Using plenty of colorful images (“To grasp the Huffington Post’s business model, picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates.”), Rutten describes the merger as a means to “push more journalists more deeply into the tragically expanding low-wage sector of our increasingly brutal economy.”

With many still buzzing about the deal between AOL and The Huffington Post, the speculation over what website might be gobbled up next is running rampant, with even a New York Times blog suggesting that Gawker Media could be next. There are many reasons why this is not likely to occur, one of which is that Gawker’s founder Nick Denton exhibits an entirely different, less spotlight-hungry personality than Arianna Huffington.

Aol’s Politics Daily blogger Matt Lewis reacted to news of his employer’s new purchase and, in a sense, new hire by making a firm decision: He’s leaving. Not only that, but he’s leaving for perennially bow-tied pundit Tucker Carlson‘s conservative-leaning news and opinion site, the Daily Caller.

With so much attention being given to the recent deal between Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and Aol, it’s worth it to see what sort of impact this has on other media companies – namely, the recent merger between Newsweek and Tina Brown‘s Daily Beast.

Arianna Huffington made the media rounds last night, with appearances on PBS NewsHour, Parker/Spitzer, and Piers Morgan Tonight, among others. Repeatedly, she made the assertion that for $315 million, AOL is buying content, not partisanship. “It’s time for all of us in journalism to move beyond left and right,” Huffington said on PBS, adding “Truly, it is an obsolete way of looking at the problems America is facing.”

AOL and The Huffington Post have a major announcement to make tonight: they are now a happily married online content monolith. The surprise news– announced shortly after the end of the Super Bowl– makes HuffPo head Arianna Huffington president and editor-in-chief of both HuffPo and the entire AOL site network.

Countdown host Keith Olbermann is touting (via his Twitter feed) a report by AOL’s John Merline that questions the ingrained canard of a liberal media bias by examining the amount of coverage given to a handful of political/media figures. While Merline’s study might seem to support the idea of a conservative media bias, a closer look reveals that it is less-than-persuasive.

The recent University of Maryland study that has been used to club Fox News like an insolent baby seal contains far more damning evidence of a wider bias.

Yahoo is making major moves to ramp up itsoriginal content: this morning, Yahoo launched three new blogs to spin off of  The Upshot. It’s a big move for the Upshot, which is only seven months old and helmed by Andrew Golis, formerly the deputy publisher of Talking Points Memo. The three new blogs include The Cutline, [...]

What does it take to make a successful transition from the page (or computer screen) to television? Alcohol, of course! Rob Shuter is bringing his popular column on AOL’s PopEater to HDNet with Naughty But Nice with Rob Shuter a show which the network promises will soon become “everyone’s guilty pleasure.” The show is set to premiere Saturday, November 6th at 1pm.

Wow. The rumors are true: AOL is buying TechCrunch, and it’s going down at TechCrunch Disrupt right now, with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong taking the stage to announce the purchase.

More details TK. In the meantime, here’s the press release announcing the purchase: (yoinked from MediaMemo)

Today Aol Daily Finance reporter Jeff Bercovici attacked Mediaite for the way we aggregate, curate and publish video clips from various television networks. But it seems that Aol engages in a far more egregious practice: running their own video advertisements in front of third-party video content; a big no-no in the world of Internet video aggregation. A high level source at one cable news network, whose videos Aol regularly uses, tells us that there is “no licensing agreement in place.”

In recent years, AOL has faced some hard times. Ever since its merger with Time Warner Cable in 2001 (and its subsequent separation 8 years later), AOL has seen drastic reductions in company value and number of subscribers. But tomorrow, AOL will attempt to reassert itself in the online world with the launch of its new video project, Cambio.

A colleague (who is handsome and wise) recently discovered an old Media Metrix report delineating “World Wide Web Audience Ratings” for December 1998. It’s a remarkable study, categorizing thousands of sites and conglomerated web companies. all of the component elements, but it’s unrecognizable. As though they’re all brands made up for movies.

In an appearance yesterday on CNBC, Jerry Levin, who led the historic $164 billion deal ten years ago, apologized for the colossal failure of the sale, putting himself on the line a decade later. “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 Levin. “I was in charge. I’m really very sorry about the pain and the suffering and loss that was caused. I take responsibility.”

The year 2009 had many media bright spots, break-out stars, dominating networks and game-changing technologies. The Mediaite 50 collects the finest, most exemplary innovators and influencers of the year, defining a media moment in time and setting the agenda as we move forward. See the full list after the jump:

AOL has a new vision for the digital future, in which a consolidated editorial product is curated and created in the most efficient way possible: by computers instead of people. That’s right — in the wake of layoffs, but amidst a concerted effort to surge ahead with online content, AOL is making due with what they have, which happens to be lots and lots of technology. And freelancers.

Edgy? Dumb? Clever? AOL revealed a half-dozen new logos yesterday in anticipation of its split with Time Warner at the end of the year, and they present a sharp departure from the running man and Illuminati triangle of the company’s dialup days. Among the changes: lowercase letters, whimsical graphics and doodles, and, most importantly, a dot at the end. Why is the dot so important?

In the next three months, Time Inc. will cut 280 jobs, whittling away at iconic titles like Sports Illustrated, Essence, and People. Time also underwent a big round of cuts in early 2007, but this is still major news. Why is it going over so quietly, especially in light of the wave of Condéfreude last month?

With the benefit of hindsight, the AOL-Time Warner merger is widely derided as a very, very bad idea. Now, on the eve of AOL’s split with Time Warner, rumors are emerging that AOL and Time Inc. are considering a “co spin-off.” Despite having both “AOL” and “Time” in the name, here’s why that merger could actually be a great idea:

Many unanswered questions are circulating about the fate of Time Inc, the magazine division of Time Warner. Today AOL blog DailyFinance is reporting that Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes has said, “Time Inc. is not for sale.” But is the company’s CEO really the most reliable source when it comes to potential business dealings? And on a blog that he owns?

AOL’s Daily Finance blog has signed a third ex-Portfolio staffer to join its Daily Finance team, further indicating that the Web 1.0 online giant is serious about expanding — and spending the money to do so.

Where other sites are being forced to cut back and do more with less, AOL seems to be merrily picking up name-brand talent in what is becoming a regular habit.

The NY Times’ David Carr writes about AOL’s transformation from gated-community ISP to content powerhouse. And while AOL deserves a ton of credit for righting a ship that appeared destined to to sink, a closer look at how the Internet giant gets its massive traffic numbers actually belies the true value of both its content and traffic. Is all this focus on content part of a larger communications strategy in advance of Time Warner’s plans to spin-off AOL as a separate company?

In today’s Washington Post, Howard Kurtz paints AOL’s Politics Daily as a fantastic wonderland of six-figure salaries, 5000-word articles, foreign correspondents who actually go overseas, and a distaste for the “hyperpartisan.” Sounds great, but can it turn a profit in an environment where traffic for articles like “Strippers Compete in Palin Look-alike Contest” is likely to dwarf Afghanistan coverage for the foreseeable future? If not, what is AOL trying to pull?

In a fascinating Washington Post column this week, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington described how AOL is scooping up some of the best print reporters from short-sighted print publications. Is racking up writing talent part of Tim Armstrong’s vision for preparing the massive online entity for spin-off?

On Monday it was announced in a U.S. regulatory filing that Time Warner Inc paid $283 million for Google Inc’s 5 percent stake in AOL. This underscored Time Warner’s plans to spin off AOL by the end of the year and places AOL’s total value at roughly $5.7 billion in the eyes of both TW and Google.