PR people will soon be able to pitch their clients' op-eds to AOL News, a site with 26 million monthly uniques. Opinion Editor John Merline tells PRNewser that though an official launch date is TBD, he's looking for pieces "across the political spectrum as well as corporate and industry-related op-eds, on top news of the day." One such op-ed from an American Enterprise Institute Fellow recently ran on AOL's Sphere site.

This PR opportunity comes at a point of major shifts at AOL as the company is expected to be spun off from Time-Warner by the end of the year (with layoffs), and as is rebranding and shifting the news URL to Sphere.com. The original Sphere will relaunch as Surphace. Sphere was a blog engine in its original incarnation when it was acquired by AOL in 2008.

If you traffic in opinion, you'll want Merline in your rolodex. His email is John dot Merline at Corp dot AOL dot com.