Problems at Patch.com

Only thing is, Patch has no volume. Supposedly it has about 3 million unique visitors a month, far below Bleacher Report's 17 million.

I find it interesting that Patch is spending about $50 million a year, and has more than 1,000 full-time editorial employees, yet has no more traffic than FanHouse does with its 70-100 people.

 

I live in one of the 15. And the only reason I'm aware of it is because I've been in the business and have friends working there. I've seen nothing about it anywhere other than journalists talking about it.

 

My former co-worker who works at one told me, "This is a complete disaster. I'm just praying that this lasts longer than I think it will last."

She thinks the summer would be optimistic.

 

Mizzou,

Why does she think is a disaster?

Is the content bad? Is the management totally inept?

 

It's all quantity and no quality. When your churning out five articles/videos/whatever a day, good luck making any of it decent.

Plus she's asked several times a day, "What the fuck is Patch.com?" which was funny for a few weeks, but not so funny anymore.

 

Also in the original plan they forgot about little things -- like a backup for the local editor. Some local editors are work six days a week routinely. Some of the local editors who are single are working all seven days. Patch is trying to get that under control with, but it is still a huge problem. Local editors are expected to personally file five or six stories/videos a day and also manage 12-18 freelancers. Just impossible.

 

It might have made more sense if the regional editors were the ones reading copy, with the local folk serving as mojos.

 

We're about to destroy our Patch rival on a story -- again.

It's all so horribly misguided. Nobody wants to read about library talks, bad garage bands, etc.

If they would just take the time to report one juicy breaking news story, it would get more hits than the 5-6 stores/videos/photo galleries they are haphazardly throwing up there now.

Armstrong clearly has no fundamental understanding of what online readers want, and until he does, they are going to continue to not receive an audience.

 

I've seen some good sites. A couple of them in this area are run by 20-year vets. They read like they are. The others are pretty lackluster and focused on the local church bake sales and whatnot. (There ARE some good sites run by the younger editors, but it seems to me they're few and far between.)

That tells me they weren't planning for this to be successful. Had they been, they would have hired people who had serious editing chops and let them build a strong product, not hire a 23-year-old reporter who can't spell nor edit copy.

 

That just isn't accurate. I know a few Patch local editors and they are expected to have a total of four or five stories per day, including freelance contributions and some regional stories (in places that have other neighboring Patch sites).

There are definitely some flaws here and I wonder if it can last, too, but some of the information out there is way off.

 

Not sure which part of my post you feel is "way off."

From The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/business/media/17local.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=2&adxnnlx=1296910836-4ujg9zmSq/xIln5Lunu3wQ

Current and former Patch journalists say the operation is like a start-up in that experimentation is encouraged. But the bare-bones staffing — one full-time journalist for each community — can also mean working seven days a week and publishing articles that lack depth simply to meet a quota, they said.