AOL Pres to staff on HuffPo restructuring: 'Let's make magic!"

TechCrunch, a star in the vast AOL galaxy, posts an internal email from AOL president Tim Armstrong to AOL staffers regarding their upcoming restructuring. The gist: Arianna Huffington will rule the galaxy. From the email.

Huffington Post Media Group — Upon closing of the acquisition, we will be forming the Huffington Post Media Group to house all content and local experiences under the editorial leadership of Arianna Huffington, whose new title will be President & Editor-in-Chief. Arianna’s vision is clear: create real-time engagement and enlightenment for our millions of users, while continuing to build a comprehensive source of compelling news, entertainment, information, and opinion. Arianna will drive the content and production cycles for all editorial functions with all editorial staff reporting up through her. (emphasis added)

This move triggered the resignation of David Eun, who was president of AOL Media until today. Now, with liberal Arianna’s new role in mind, take a look at AOL’s international plans.

International – International will become a more important part of the AOL business during 2011 and 2012 as we re-enter markets in our global platforms. The business leaders in The Huffington Post Media Group, Networks Group, Advertising, Consumer Applications & Commerce, and Paid Services will drive global plans in their verticals and be supported by the regional leaders in Europe, Asia, Canada, and Emerging Markets. We want our strategies and operational cadence to be global, but we are counting on strong regional leaders to drive execution and identify regional opportunities for growth. Ned Brody will lead our regional operational planning and analytics as well as run the Networks group. Ned will partner with the vertical business leaders and with international leads in local markets to plan and measure our strategies around the world.

Very interesting, and as they say, developing. AOL is having a big conference call with its satellites this afternoon to discuss the restructuring. The email ends thusly:

We will be holding a call at 12pm EST today to answer any questions you may have.

There is a detailed integration schedule by date and function and we are holding daily meetings with AOLers and The Huffington Post. Once we close the deal, we will send out more information on the overall next steps and hold interim team meetings to make sure everyone is informed and can ask questions.

We can help lead the next phase of the Internet and we will stay on strategy and focus on execution. Let’s make magic – TA