Problems at Patch.com

You could say the same about plenty of smaller newspapers. Probably a few big ones, too. But you won't, because you have such a hard-on for Patch.

 

OOP, honest to goodness I don't think anyone is rooting for Patch to fail. And you're right: Newspapers are shoving many thousands of journalists to new careers. But we are automatically skeptical of any entity that promises to keep journalism alive as an option for those who never wanted to do anything else, especially given AOL's earlier ADD approach to journalism.

I hope Patch survives and thrives and proves everybody wrong, but I fear it will end like so many other great journalistic hopes: Badly and abruptly and with the journalists paying the price while those responsible skate on to their next hare-brained scheme.

 

BYH, that type of end wouldn't surprise me one bit.

However, the disrespect shown the journalists who do work for Patch and the bullshit people like Stitch continue to throw at the wall in desperation to take potshots at them grew thin a long time ago.

 

What's up in Rhode Island? Our local public radio station blog is reporting that one of the managing editors (also head of the state press association) has seen his byline and bio disappear from the Patch site and cannot be reached for comment.

 

Count me as another who hopes Patch gets through the growing pains, starts to make money and flourishes. I have friends working for Patch, and I'm with others who say anything that provides a way for people in our business to work is great.

That said:

Unfortunately, AOL has shown a willingness to do just that -- cut and run -- when other grand plans have failed in the past.

 

He left more than a week ago. I also don't think he's the head of that press association anymore - Internet journalists aren't allowed.

 

He's not. The current head of the press association is Mark Murphy of Providence Business News.

And I'd be interested in finding out more as to why he left. Let's just say that he left an interesting impression on folks at the RIPA banquet last year.

 

I can tell you he did not leave a positive impression on my town's Patch editor in her (limited) dealings with him.
Also, last year, I interviewed for a Patch editor job in a town which Patch eventually decided not to enter. Yet, when an editor job came up this summer and I checked it out, this guy told me, "You have one strike against you because you were rejected last year." Rejected? For a job that the company decided not to create? What. A. Fool.

 

Problems at Patch? Maybe not...

They're claiming to have tripled traffic last year according to this story and some of the other flackage they're running on their own sites. The losing hundreds of millions part can't be good, but if this is true, there must be some value to what they're doing...

http://techland.time.com/2012/01/11/aols-hyperlocal-patch-network-triples-traffic-in-2011-but-what-does-that-mean/

 

Page views but no revenue?

Newspaper sites have already mastered that trick. Patch is supposed to use AOL's know-how to be different.

 

Sounds like the story of the Michael Scott Paper Company.

Now they can lose even more money.

 

$100 million in loses and "paltry" revenues, according to the Business Insider story that's linked to in the Time piece. So that makes Patch one more news outlet that can't figure out how to monetize the web. Oddly, it makes me feel good because they can't figure out how to do it any better than old-school media outlets. But it really sucks for them, since they have no print ad sales to prop them up. At my place, what little print advertising we still have is keeping us afloat. We're making a "paltry" amount on the web too, which makes you wonder why we spend so much time and so many resources on it. Obviously, there's no choice in the 21st Century ... everyone has to be online in a big way. But bearing in mind that there's no money in it and we give the content away for free, sometimes I wonder what the point is.