Problems at Patch.com

LOL.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_LQ4_MhDu4

 

Patch.com is not dead yet, according to the head of the venture capital group which acquired it back in January. However, instead of the one-reporter-per-town model, there are only 65 reporters?!? nationwide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/business/media/patch-sites-turn-corner-after-sale-and-big-cuts.html

 

So with national advertising, they're no longer having the reporters sell ads as well? Yippee.

 

At least when I was there, this didn't actually ever happen, at least in my region. Then again, the oversight and management overall was so poor that I imagine it could have in other regions. IIRC, one woman ran for a town board and got elected while she was an editor, and her manager was unaware. (Or maybe it was that she was on a board and didn't divulge it at all through the hiring process... Either way, it was a bad sign.)

With so little staff, I imagine Patch is going to turn profits from here until infinity, although it's probably the new owners mostly relying on legacy hits, lots of aggregation and becoming Huffpost Local in a way. Not that that's a necessarily bad thing, but it's also quite the mutation from the company's original stated goals.

 

Never heard of any reporters in any region having to sell ads, but failures in planning and execution with advertising were a big part of the problem.

The model with one reporter per town has been gone for a long time, even before 90 percent of the staff was cut loose in January.

Mutation from the original stated goals is kind. Patch isn't even close to what it set out to be.

 

So the Patch body is in the ground but you're dancing on the grave? Get the fuck over yourself, you arrogant ass. News content, especially newspapers, was, is, and always will be filler between the ads.

 

An ad weasel told me that once. I replied that people don't buy the newspaper to read the ads, but if he really felt like his contribution was more valuable than mine, we could arrange to publish a content-free edition just to see what the community reaction and fallout would be.

 

Many people do buy the paper just for ads. Particularly Sunday.

But I'd bet good money those folks only read the inserts (Best Buy, Walmart, etc.) and the classifieds. A former shop of mine actually sold just the ads on big shopping events (Black Friday, for instance).

The ads tucked in the sections, not so much.

Your point about the content-free paper is spot on, though.

 

My point, dipshit, is that there were stories of Patch reporters and editors, who, were already working 60-hour weeks who were also made to sell the advertising as well because the geniuses in Patch management didn't feel like hiring an advertising person. My yippee line had a period next to it, not an exclamation point. I figured most would get the sarcasm.

I'm not dancing on the grave of those poor people who busted their asses to put out a good product in spite of incompetent management. I'm dancing on the grave of the highly-paid fucktards who had no clue what the hell they were doing.

 

I got your point, though I have yet to come across a Patch editor who really was forced to sell ads. Unfortunately, a lot of good people lost jobs along with the folks who screwed things up. Sadly, there were plenty of people rooting for the thing to fail and cheering its demise even before that last big cut in January. I think that is why goalmouth overreacted.

 

Here is a story of Patch wanting editors to drum up ad sales leads:

http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-requires-patch-editors-to-drum-up-ad-sales-leads-2011-9