Problems at Patch.com

So now the coffee salesman who comes on to a site for journalists is pissing on people who win awards in journalism. Nice.

If you have such little regard for the profession, why do you post here? Again: Nobody goes to a site for your profession and mocks people there like you do here. Perhaps if you know so much about the field you should enter it. It could certainly use your skills and talents, apparently.

The shame of it all is you used to make reasonably coherent posts about Patch, which is an entity with a ton of question marks. Chalk it up to blind squirrel, acorn, etc.

 

Not a journalist:

http://www.tampabay.com/sports/football/bucs/article971088.ece

 

Let's take a poll of the Patch readership in tennis mom's town and see if they mind.

 

I take offense to this. I know awards don't mean anything in the grand scheme of things but it's nice to get that little pat on the back every once in a while and, personally, I think you should be striving to win awards if for no other reason than the fact that you want to be better than your competition.

Of course, I just won four awards recently so maybe I'm a little too close to this.

 

Why can't you just strive to be the best without having an award in mind? Nothing worse than award-grubbing managers who trumpet a bunch of plaques, but still put out a mediocre product less and less people buy.

 

But enough about Tony La Russa.

 

You can strive to be the best in any way you want but, if you're competing in an awards contest with your peers, why wouldn't you want to win? And if you're not entering that contest, and your peers are, why aren't you?

Awards shouldn't be the end-all, be-all but shouldn't you take pride enough in your work to want to be the best as judged by a (theoretically) independent panel?

 

BYH, what in what I said do you disagree with?

I understand brands and how you build them. And, a brand either stands for journalism or it doesn't. It's one or the other. You can't do a little journalism.

As for having an opinion of journalism, I've been a consumer of it for over 30 years. I've been a subject of journalism, and a source. (See http://www.sptimes.com/2006/01/29/news_pf/Business/Another_swing_at_spon.shtml)

To lay the whole, "you're not a journalist," crap on me should offend you as much as when an athlete gives you the, "you never played the game" line.

I'm a fan of journalists & journalism.

What always shocks me is when journalists don't defend their profession's standards and assign criticism where due.

As for this site, I like it. It's populated with smart people. The posters here have great knowledge in a wide variety of subjects. They are passionate and make me think.

Some of the posters I disagree with (Azrael, Michael Gee, Bob Cook, JR, etc.) are among those I've gained a tremendous respect for.

And, even my piss poor spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and writing has improved.

I'm not going away. Get used to it.

It's not personal either. Patch just isn't good journalism (or a good business plan).

 

Been reading this thread with great interest. The thing that puzzles me is why so many journalists have so much contempt for Patch, a site that has probably hired more of us in the last year than every newspaper in the U.S. combined. You guys seem to take joy in their ethical lapses and can't wait to be the next in line to blast the site and the concept.

They're hiring people like us. The regional editor in my area is a former ME at the local 80,000 daily, and he's a terrific pro. They just beat his former paper on a fairly big story, and it won't be the last time.

Look, not all Patch sites are doing quality work. But why do so many of you have so much animosity toward them? Because they're trying something new and different to connect with local readers? Maybe all our papers should have been trying something new and different the last decade so we wouldn't all be getting laid off and furloughed and watching our papers shut down. They're giving a lot of laid-off reporters & editors jobs. How is that a bad thing?

I get the criticisms. I don't get the glee you guys have when Patch screws up and the vigor with which you scream and shout and rant that this "isn't journalism."

Call it what you want. It's jobs. It's benefits. It's a chance for a lot of people who didn't have any other chances.

 

It's $40,000 jobs in major metropolitan areas, I can't say with much knowledge about the benefits (free iPhone!), the pay is far more likely to go down than up under Arianna Huffington's control, and it's all a mirage anyway based on Tim Armstrong's ego trip that most likely began after his daughter's sixth-grade soccer game didn't get the proper writeup in the local paper. Once that initial funding dries up, it's going to be another AOL boondoggle that heads to the scrap heap. In short, it is just the latest thing that has been sold as the savior and new model of journalism, it's headed for failure and it isn't putting the media world or the profession on any firmer footing.

You may label all of those reasons "contempt." I see it as a critical appraisal.

 

Speaking of fads, what's Jeff Jarvis up to?