NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Like the protagonist in the classic short story, "The Man Without A Country," AOL is The Stock Without A Buyer.

Though the stock is down some 59 percent this year, value investors aren't really starting to nibble yet. And the momentum managers that used to be AOL's biggest fans don't think the company is a bona fide growth stock anymore either.

Shares of the media conglomerate have been suffering because of concerns about slowing growth in its flagship AOL Internet access business and the continued slump in advertising. And on Thursday, they received a double dose of jarring news.

AOL Time Warner COO Robert Pittman announced his resignation at the company's board meeting in Virginia on Thursday, according to the company. And perhaps more alarmingly, the Washington Post reported that AOL booked over $270 million in questionable advertising revenues from 2000 to 2002, mainly through barter agreements and swaps. (AOL is the parent of CNN/Money. For more news about AOL, click here.)

AOL's (AOL: down $0.66 to $12.45, Research, Estimates) stock fell 5 percent on Thursday to close at $12.45, near its 52-week low of $12.04. (Shares were slightly higher in after-hours trading, at $12.63 according to Instinet.) It's become painfully obvious that CEO Richard Parsons has to do something to stem the stock's slide.

"Investors are being asked to own a stock on more and more faith," says Angela Kohler, manager of the Federated Large Cap Growth fund. "There is a lack of clarity about the company's growth rate and a lack of vision on where they are going." Kohler says she sold her position in AOL last year.

But what can Parsons do?

A management shakeup could be a welcome start, says Romeo Dator, an analyst with mutual fund firm U.S. Global Investors. Dator says investors have been burned too many times by aggressive earnings growth forecasts since AOL and Time Warner merged in 2001.

Dator says Pittman's resignation will be viewed as a positive by investors. "Pittman's resignation is a step in the right direction. He always has been associated with the big promises that were made that were never fulfilled," Dator says. "Give us numbers that are makeable so we can regain trust."

The U.S. Global Investors All-American fund still owns a small stake in AOL but Dator says it sold most of the position earlier this year when the stock was trading in the upper $20s. He says even with the stock approaching new lows there's no compelling reason to buy yet.

Kohler agrees that valuation is not the issue. She concedes that shares are enticing and adds that she'd even buy the stock at a higher price, provided she had any confidence in the company's ability to grow.

Kohler says Parsons has to articulately state the strategy for AOL's Internet unit. This division is viewed as being the most problematic for the company. One reason is that more and more consumers are seeking faster broadband Internet access. And AOL's dial-up service is still the company's bread and butter product.

But Michael Mahoney, managing director for EGM Capital, a hedge fund specializing in media, telecom and technology stocks, says that an even bigger concern for the AOL unit is not speed but whether or not AOL has outlived its usefulness.

"As people gain greater sophistication in using the Net, they don't need the walled garden that is AOL," Mahoney says. "The only reason you pay for AOL is if you think there is lots of great stuff in the garden -- but everything outside the garden is phenomenal so you don't need it."

Still, fund managers think that drastic moves, such as spinning off cable assets or splitting the company in two (essentially undoing the merger), would not do the trick. "Those things are quick fixes -- and make me think of AT&T," says Peter Tuz, an analyst with Chase Investment Counsel, a money management firm in Charlottesville, Va., that does not have a position in AOL.

In the past few years, AT&T amassed a big cable empire and then sold it to Comcast and spun off its wireless division. Yet AT&T is still faced with a struggling long-distance business and its stock is a laggard. "They did so many financial machinations and ended up in the same place. None of the things stemmed the long-term decline of the business," says Tuz.

Referring to a possible cable spin-off, EGM's Mahoney says that might be a short-term positive because AOL would probably be able to offload a large portion of its $28.5 billion debt load on the cable unit.

But he adds that these benefits would be outweighed by the fact that AOL's cable assets generate large amounts of cash flow and are generally in attractive markets. What's more, cable stocks have been whacked lately as well so this isn't exactly the most opportune time to be thinking spin-off either.

Of course, the state of the economy cannot be downplayed. No matter what changes are made to management, there's only so much that can be done in an environment where advertising remains in such a prolonged slump.

Tuz says the reason he doesn't own the stock has nothing to do with management or accounting issues. He says that he looks for stocks with improving earnings and cash flow. And AOL's two major businesses -- the Internet and media -- just aren't producing reliable earnings growth.

Despite all the gloom and doom, the accounting issues raised on Thursday did not seem to concern money managers that much. After all, $270 million is a mere fraction of the $38.2 billion in revenue that AOL generated last year.

"The key thing is materiality. When it gets up into billions it is material," Mahoney says. EGM does not have a position in AOL.

Kohler adds that the accounting questions do not appear to be too problematic because there appears to be nothing fraudulent. Creative and aggressive? Yes, she says. But probably not illegal. AOL has maintained that the accounting was in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).

Still, in this environment even the slightest whiff of impropriety is enough to scare investors. "I don't think anything they've done is wrong but it adds to the uncertainty," Kohler says.

And right now, the last thing AOL needs is more uncertainty.