Problems at Patch.com

In the suburban metro area where I live, the local Patch sports editor, responsible for feeding about 18 town sites, has lost his stringer budget completely. He's not even 100 percent on sports now, but doing real estate stuff as well.

And this is after an uptick in local ads, he says.

 

I thought there would be interest here in this Columbia Journalism Review cover story by a former Patch local editor, http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/the_constant_gardener.php?page=all

 

I think this is one of the fairer outside articles I've seen on Patch, with the caveat that I still attribute many workload issues (60+ hour weeks) to people not being comfortable with letting go when it comes to news. (i.e. At any publication, you simply will not cover everything, and you have to be comfortable with just going the fuck to sleep at some point.)

 

Good link, thanks. Interesting. Take away for me was towns with no newspaper are interested in what's happening...cool...but you can't reasonably expect to produce an entire newspaper's worth of content, online or otherwise, with one person. Insane.

 

Great read. Shows what they're doing well and what they're not.

I'll keep my fingers crossed. As a journalist, I'd hate to see people lose their jobs, however difficult; as a reader, I love my local Patch and don't want to lose it.

One nit-picky thing: He says some editors focused on "sports and schools," while some focused on "hard news and politics." In a local community, there's hardly anything "harder" and more "political" than schools.

 

The interesting and informative Patch story linked above proves yet again that companies that depend upon advertising to survive usually do a terrible job advertising themselves.

 

That's a pretty interesting observation.

 

Patch had a paid announcement and graphic on the scoreboard at the Nets game tonight. No mention of the areas Patch covers, though.

 

AOL buys Patch some more time:

 

Saw that, too. Seems like much of AOL's "profits" come from selling assets.

 

So they really are in the journalism business after all.

 

AOL has patents?