Problems at Patch.com

This reporter thinks McNamara was thinking of that skank Lurleene instead of focusing on the match. She won't be allowed in his room until at least the end of the season.

 

I'm sure some of you value your jobs at Patch, but you're no more in the same industry as the journalists at places like the New York Times as I am.

 

She IS the Patch editor right now.

 

Who's she going to blame if her kid doesn't get a scholarship?

 

Basing this on your extensive experience in the industry, huh?

Are there Patch sites that fit your description? Yup. Do all of them fit it? Absolutely not.

 

That some working for Patch today will someday be at the NYT, I have no doubt, and to some extent, the few who eventually make that move are honing their skills at Patch that will get them there. But the Patch product isn't journalism as we've known it. I don't think it's even claiming to be. Certainly not with the stated role of LE's blurring the line between reportage and flackage....

 

I'm not defending the model, but to say there is no Patch sites doing good journalism is ignorant at best. Not that it is surprising. Most of this thread has been one long display of ingorance.

 

I don't think there's been that much of a push to lump every Patch site together. As you said, some of them are doing a great job but I feel that's more by luck than design.

To run a good Patch site, you need to hire someone who's either A.) Been in the business and still cares or B.) Wants to get into the business and views this as a first step.

The person running the site has to see Patch as a legit journalism tool and not just a website and that's the distinction. The sites in my area are, by and large, all about the flowers and parades with the occasional news story and that's not you become a real news source in your community.

It seems like the larger plan is to make Patch a free site where "the community" blogs but the problem with that logic is that no one gives a shit what all but a handful of bloggers care about and, those bloggers that do have that sort of following are going to want to be paid in real dollars not in "experience".

 

That's kind of your opinion though, no? I sometimes feel that traditional media give way, way too much credence to things like the Political Party Committee's every move, and the infighting between town officials. The reality is that the majority of some towns have residents who will never attend a town council meeting, and could careless that Republican John Smith is on the outs with Democrat Sandy Jones.

I'm not saying that the answer is to completely ignore covering town government and politics in favor of profiles and parades. However, I'm not convinced Patch (and I realize I'm biased since I work for them) should be taking its cues for coverage from traditional media, since their floundering online has given it the window to compete in the first place. If some paper had the silver bullet to online coverage, I think we would have seen it by now, and the fact that Patch is trying something that's different isn't the worst thing in the world.

 

There are some people on Yelp who write good reviews -- doesn't make them or, by extension, the rest of the people on Yelp journalists.

Unfortunately, you're defined by the worst of what you do, not the best. If an airline has three planes go down in a year due to pilot error, no one is going to bother to point out that most of the airlines pilots do good work.

 

I know a guy who owns a coffee shop and also writes a column in Specialty Coffee magazine. I know another guy who owns a coffee roaster and shop. He writes a column for Roast Magazine.

I don't think either would be insulted if I didn't consider them to be journalists.

And, the odds of either of them working for the Times someday is about the same as a person currently working for Patch.

 

YF: Does Yelp market itself as journalism? Not that I've ever seen. And most trade publications have submitted articles by people who might be subject matter experts or at least people in the field who would not be considered journalists, but that doesn't mean that magazine doesn't do journalism. And the Times-worthiness of a Patch editor or a trade mag submitter is a red herring of an argument; they're a super-longshot, but that's the case with people who work at almost all non-dailies and an overwhelming number of dailies with 4- or 5-digit circulation.

You *can* do journalism at Patch, from what I've seen. You can also do non-journalism, but that's really up to you, so long as you're doing something. But it's not particularly fair to say that working for Patch puts you outside the tradition because of what another Patch site does, any more than dismissing a dedicated weekly sports editor because some weekly SE five states away routinely wears his school's colors and high-fives players after touchdowns.