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Listen to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Fire Patch’s Creative Director During A Conference Call (JimRomenesko.com)
AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong fired Patch creative director Abel Lenz two minutes into Friday’s call with Patch employees. Lenz’s sin: Taking a picture of the CEO during his talk. Business Insider The call was supposed to be Armstrong’s attempt to rally the troops. During the first minute or so of the recording, Armstrong says things like: “If you don’t believe what I’m about to say, I’m going to ask you to leave Patch… We have to get Patch into a place where it’s going to be successful.” But then things go suddenly awry. At exactly two minutes into the recording, Armstrong addresses someone in the room with him. He says, “Abel, put that camera down, now.” Then, without taking a breath, Armstrong says, “Abel, you’re fired. Out.” Business Insider A few minutes later, Armstrong complained about leaks to the media. He said the leaks were making Patch seem like “loser-ville” in the press. He said, “That’s why Abel was fired… We can’t have people that are in the locker room giving the game plan away.” When media reporter Jim Romenesko tweeted at Lenz, he replied: “I appreciate the interest Jim, but I have nothing to share. Go Patch!” TechCrunch The stakes at Patch are high because AOL has promised it will see positive revenue by the end of the year, which is a tall order given its most recent earnings results. These cuts and shifts in strategy are drastic measures, but that’s exactly what’s required if Armstrong wants to make good on a promise of Patch profitability by year’s end. NY Post By some estimates, AOL has spent more than $300 million on Patch since 2009, and it has yet to turn a profit.

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Social Times: The ad agency guy was actually just joking when he made a reference to summer camp “gynos.” Months later, we’re talking five million YouTube views, a tripled HelloFlo customer base and this companion Google+ hangout

TVNewser: Today’s Joy Behar farewell on The View included some choice words for a deceased ABC News legend. Relax; it wasn’t Peter Jennings.

StockLogos: In this version of the NHL, it’s possible for the Chicago Brockhocks to take on the Dallas Starmies. Seriously.

There was obviously and understandably no shortage of opinion pieces in the Washington Post this week about the Jeff Bezos deal. But today, fellow journalist Bernard Goldberg takes the paper to task for one of those items.

In the lead paragraphs of an August 6 “WP Opinions” item, Ruth Marcus suggested that selling the paper to Bezos was Donald Graham’s “reverse Sophie’s Choice moment.” Goldberg thinks that’s simply ridiculous and, offensive:

Grotesque, I think, comes closer to describing the comparison Ms. Marcus makes. The decision to sell a newspaper is akin to the decision by a mother about which of her two children to save and which to give to the Nazis for extermination? In what universe would that be?

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Here’s a look at the FishbowlNY stories that made the most buzz this week.

1) Time Adds Ryan Sager, Callie Schweitzer and Chris Wilson

2) Oprah Tells Larry King About Racist NYC Incident

3) Should Bloomberg Vet Have Been Fired for Headline Flub?

4) It’s Not Tina Brown’s Fault That Newsweek Failed

5) Tina Brown Punks Howard Kurtz

Keep up-to-date with the latest FishbowlNY news. Click here to sign-up for the FishbowlNY daily newsletter, bringing you our articles each afternoon directly to your inbox.

A very reliable Patch-connected source, who wishes to remain anonymous, has passed on to FishbowlNY the main details of this morning’s company-wide conference call.

As we reported last night, Steve Kalin is out as CEO. The new man in charge, joined at the hip with AOL chief Tim Armstrong (pictured), is Bud Rosenthal. Armstrong sees Rosenthal as an individual who can be a game-changer during the company’s transition to, hopefully, long-term profitability.

Armstrong admitted that “leadership” has been missing for a long time at Patch and that if staffers are looking to blame anyone for the difficult current state of affairs, they should blame him. With one major caveat: those who believe Patch has become a joke should walk out the door, now.

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Keep an eye on Bryan Scott Dugan. We have a feeling this freshly-minted journalism grad is going places.

Along with helping edit Mental Floss magazine, Dugan is also as of July 31 full-time with the New York Times. But he’s not quite in the big city yet. Instead, per a nice write-up on cherokeephoenix.org, this member of the Native American Journalists Association and Cherokee Nation citizen is getting his feet wet in the Sunshine State:

Dugan is working at the newspaper’s editing center in Gainesville, Florida, which serves as an area for copy editors to prepare stories for the paper’s national and international editions and other newspapers that subscribe to receive the New York Times articles.

Dugan is a copy editor for the wire service and a designer for international versions of the newspaper.

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Alec Baldwin Set to Host New MSNBC Primetime Show (Mediaite)
Mediaite has learned from a senior source in the cable news industry with knowledge of MSNBC’s programming that actor Alec Baldwin is getting his own weekly show in MSNBC’s primetime lineup. According to our source, the so far untitled show will air Fridays at 10 p.m. ET and will feature a large dose of Baldwin’s outspoken liberal politics. The Atlantic Wire Currently, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell runs at 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday on the network, meaning Baldwin wouldn’t cut into any other personality on the channel’s time. Instead, the actor’s rumored show would replace a series of documentaries on prisons. THR / The Live Feed Reporting has also emerged as a recent passion of Baldwin’s. He hosts a weekly WNYC podcast of interviews called Here’s the Thing. And HBO will premiere his documentary, Seduced and Abandoned, later this year. He and James Toback filmed the project, which features interviews with actors and directors about the risks and rewards of big budget filmmaking, at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

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We have been hearing the same rumor today. According to Business Insider’s Nicholas Carlson, as Patch is gearing up for a very Black Friday August 9, it has already jettisoned two of its highest ranking execs:

Patch president/COO Steve Kalin and chief content officer Rachel Feddersen are out, a former Patch executive who remains in contact with people at the AOL-owned local news network says…

We’ve been unable to get AOL public relations to confirm or deny the news. An AOL spokesperson told us the company is not commenting on Patch personnel matters.

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