Problems at Patch.com

That plan could impact a lot of the sites in this area, because there are many small town with individual Patch sites.

I hope AOL's Silicon Valley central-office layoffs don't affect my (non-journalist) neighbor, who just started working for one of their companies on the East Coast after being unemployed for more than a year.

 

Sports coverage does horribly unless you're very, very consistent with it, or you have no other competition for your area.

 

Also, sports is easier to cover without paying someone. Some parent or some student almost always wants to become the next great thing and will use writing about tennis matches or track meets as a vehicle to pursue that. Good luck finding some random Joe to cover a planning board/zoning board/council meeting for free.

 

Or you do what most of our local sites do, and cobble something together from the athletic directors' daily announcements... and our paper. There's been minimal sports coverage around here lately, all of it boosterism, and almost none live.

I'm only surprised because Patch has a regional sports editor based in this area.

 

I do kind of wonder how popular just general preps coverage is though - a lot of times, judging from the "angry complaints" thread on this board, your main audience is parents scrapbooking. It's hard to argue there is a ton of news value in covering a 5-20 basketball team that has 50 people in the stands, and if you're an online publication, you don't have people clipping out the article from the paper.

If you have a really good team, a really popular team (defending state champions or something), or you're consistent with the coverage, I imagine the numbers are still good. But outside of football and playoff sports, I think it's harder to move the needle on any online high school sports coverage (not just Patch), especially when you have outlets like Facebook which lets fans of the team network and cut out the media middleman.

 

That first link was speculation based on information from one anonymous source. Not that I'm surprised at how quickly it was jumped on here. Part is the AOL hate (much of which they have earned), but much has been people assuming Patch was doomed from day one and now they seem to be rooting for their predictions to be right rather than hoping people keep their jobs.

I know at least two Patch sites in my area just hired new editors. Doesn't seem like the route to take if cuts are coming.

 

By the way, Sarah Lacy, who wrote the piece that Simon posted, sure seems to have some issues with AOL, Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington.

She worked at TechCrunch when it was purchased by AOL. Left because they then passed her over for a job she says was promised to her.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/81757234/

 

I always thought the preference was to comment on old threads ratyher than start new ones that are DPs.

 

And there is no comment.

http://jimromenesko.com/2012/03/02/there-is-no-comment/

 

I've noticed this as well. Harmless in a sense, but you'd still like to see more good local coverage.

Fortunately, my local Patch is still all over the local high school's playoff runs and the town council's latest business. At this point, I'd be lost without them. I live in a large suburban county that the major daily 15 miles away thinks of as "the sticks." We have a couple of weeklies that aren't horrible, though one is basically realtor-funded and leads every other week with an update on home sales figures. Patch has been heaven-sent for us.

 

Yeah. This one isn't that old. I see no problem with adding comments here rather than start a new one every time a blogger with an agenda takes a swipe at Patch.

 

I'd like to see a list of stable places that have a strong long-term outlook, that can be trusted to nurture a media operation through good times and bad.