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As AOL Prepares To Downsize Patch, CEO Fires Employee During Meeting
An anonymous reader writes "AOL is closing or plans to sell nearly half of the 900 'hyperlocal' news websites operated by its money-losing Patch Media subsidiary (TechCrunch is also owned by AOL). Hundreds of staff layoffs are believed to be imminent. AOL acquired Patch in 2009, soon after ex-Googler Tim Armstrong took over as CEO; Armstrong was also a co-founder of Patch. During a tough conference call last Thursday Armstrong told Patch editors: 'Something at Patch has been missing for some time and that's leadership – leadership with a capital L'. Armstrong then demonstrated his grasp of Donald Trump's management style by firing an employee during the meeting for taking a picture. At 1:18 of the NY Post's sound clip from Jim Romensko: 'Leaking information Patch isn't going to bother me. I'm not changing direction'. At 2:00: 'Abel [Creative Director Lenz], put that camera down. Abel, you're fired. Out.' Armstrong later explained that 'The reason I fired Abel is I don't want anyone taking pictures of this meeting' and that, much like a sports team, AOL couldn't afford to have people 'giving the game plan away'."
I hope he is treated similarly
I'm sure that meeting really helped staff morale!
Was he not supposed to take pictures? He was the creative director; maybe he was just being creative.
Dude stayed on after AOL bought his gimmick company.
Dude lashed out because he's still stuck holding the bag.
Not that the guy with the camera was being in any way professional, but if this guy wants to make sports analogies, his scull has split down the keel and he just tossed one of the rowers overboard.
1.) you say you're missing leadership, yet you're worried that there's a game plan to give away?
2.) someone takes a picture in the meeting, and you assume it's to upload the game plan to Instagram?
3.) was there a stated rule against taking pictures? If not, you're firing someone for breaking a rule that wasn't stated? If so, is firing the man really the example you want to set for a first offense, instead of requiring that the image be deleted?
4.) you're running a subsidiary of a company whose only asset is its name's association with the 1990's...and your subsidiary is losing money...and you're firing people during a meeting, as if that's going to help matters in the slightest?
Who wants to bet that the next board meeting will involve some chair throwing antics?
... "circle the drain" is not a game plan...
This shameless staged plag for AOL and associated media properties brought to you by the dumbasses who believe shameless staged events like this are real.
there is no picture of that meeting. It was confidential and shit. But, apparently, audio totally A-ok. Is this a clown-company or something?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
They killed it months ago. Now they are just dragging the corpse through the streets instead of giving it a proper burial.
Last year there was an actual reporter posting actual news relevant to and about our town. Readers posted comments - sometimes hundreds on a single article. There were lively discussions about school issues, traffic safety and other local issues with generally one to three new articles every day.
Then they announced "exciting upgrades." The look and feel of the site went from OK to awful. Our local reporter has been "reassigned to a regional area." The local news is an irregularly updated mish-mash of cut 'n' paste police blotter info posted well after it has already been available on Nixle, reposts from other news sources (and not very local), and "reporting" consisting of things like a brief listing of the city-council agenda followed by an "article" saying "Were you at the meeting? What are your comments?" And still they sometimes can't get any news posted for days. Really?
They have added lots of "sponsored" Patch localities advertising Planes, Smurfs and the like.
The "local" reporters are now, if you look at their profiles, all over the country and making errors in articles that just make them look like idiots to anyone actually living here. Reviews and articles about places that closed a year or two ago do not make for credibility.
Much of the supposedly local news is just repackaged national stats. "How is unemployment in YourLocalTown compared to the rest of the country?" and the like. Other stuff is somewhat local looking blog stuff that turns out to be identical on all the sites.
It's sad. The site used to be fun and interesting. Too bad they couldn't make it a successful business.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Even the most primitive form of leadership starts with setting an example. An example of self-control makes the leadership more functional.
A more advanced form is setting clear expectations and communicating them, for example by having a "no photos" rule. One person I read about enjoyed Marine boot camp because unlike his family, the rules were the same from one day to the next.
Then comes raising new leaders, which is done by mentoring and assigning increasing responsibility. Intimidation creates followers, not leaders.
If this incident is typical then as a leader I consider him a total loss with no insurance.
This is amazing on so many levels. First of all, Abel was taking pictures for the company intranet blog. Like he did on the previous meeting and the meeting before that.
Second: does Armstrong genuinely think there are people out there, outside of AOL, who actually give a shit what their "game plan" *IS*?
"Move along. Nothing to see here" is even more condescending when its patently false. The whole story, not just that one incident, is one of a company in trouble and its inability to effectively navigate the downward spiral.
From http://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-audio-listen-to-aol-ceo-tim-armstrong-fire-a-patch-employee-snapping-a-photo-2013-8 :
We hear that Lenz, based in New York, would always take pictures of people talking on company-wide conference calls so that he could post them on Patch's internal news site.
The good in Patch was that it put a few extra bucks in the pockets of somebody I know. It really was local, and seemed to be building genuine community. The bad was their e-mail alerts that were not timely or meaningful. I eventually turned them off. Alas, the web site itself just wasn't interesting enough to pull me in on a daily basis. I'm not sure why. The free dead-tree local papers continue to be my source for "the skinny" on stuff that's too local for the biggies (e.g., the bowling alley and the strip club being demolished to make way for condos, that kind of story).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's also a story about the kind of execs that Google nurtures. Another one is running yahoo. Funny that.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
In my experience there is never just one cockroach. This sort of short tempered thing is rarely done in the public eye. Even if the guy were an serial abuser he would still keep it hidden from the public. Thus I suspect that he fits a long pattern of CEOs who do this sort of public stress related nonsense only as they are cracking under unimaginable stress. Rarely this stress is caused by their own imminent firing as that is usually hidden from them until the trap door is sprung. This sort of stress is caused by really bad numbers. Numbers so bad there is just no spinning them. Numbers that not only say things are bad now, but numbers that say, there is no recovering from this. Normally these CEO types are able to delude themselves through screwing with the numbers but at a certain point the numbers are rotten no matter how much tempura you dip them in.
I saw this just before Air Canada did their bankruptcy, I saw this before Nortel went busto, even Sun before its long hard slide started having upper management go a bit off.
My favorite one was a tiny corner store when I was a kid. We went in and a friend of mine each had around $1.50 I paid for something but my friend asked how much a certain product was, The owner said, "$1.70" My friend said, "Oh that is 20 cents more than before" and put it back. The guy started screaming "Are you begrudging me 20 f*****g cents?" He then picked up a bat from behind the counter and chased my friend out of the store. The next day there was a big red notice on the door saying that the locks had been changed and that he could get back in his store when he paid the last 6 months rent.
So when I see CEOs acting insanely I see that stressed-to-the-max store owner from all those years ago. So if I were playing the stock market I know I would bet hard against AOL.
Or maybe the guy is a dick 24 hours a day and this just leaked out for the world to see. I'm betting.... both.