More bleak leaks out of AOL's local news network, Patch: Jim Romenesko got his hands on two internal emails asking staffers to make more sales. Asking is one term, pleading, in a panic, is another. You never want your boss to say "We had $36K day yesterday, when we need to be having $100K+ days."

With a thousand nervous staffers and executives on the line, AOL's CEO Tim Armstrong announced a bloody swath of new layoffs via conference call. He also, a sort of Shakespearean firing-within-a-firing, axed a creative director on the spot for allegedly taking a picture. Here's the audio.

Things are a little tense over at AOL, with hundreds of Patch staffers facing layoffs as the hyperlocal news service continues to slide. And it's not just them: during a meeting about the layoffs, AOL's chief allegedly canned an exec just for trying to capture his likeness.

Super-local news isn't paying what they thought it would, and Patch continues to implode. Today is a bloodletting day.