You may have heard how police in Baltimore announced a "credible threat" by gangs to attack officers. Seems they put a bulletin to that effect up on a network used by police departments across the country.
By adamg - 2/20/14 - 9:57 am
The Boston Business Journal reports the hemorrhaging hyperlocal network has rehired the Framingham Patch editor it laid off along with most of
By adamg - 1/29/14 - 4:02 pm
Patch, the once promising hyperlocal network, today took a scythe to its remaining workforce, laying off hundreds of employees.
By adamg - 2/8/12 - 2:18 pm
Jim Romensko reports a new "chief content officer" will reduce full-time and freelance budgets and call for greater emphasis on easily churned out content:
By adamg - 4/26/11 - 3:49 pm
Forbes reports that the Huffington Patch has changed its plans for world hyperlocal domination.
By adamg - 1/11/11 - 7:25 am
Waltham-based Wow What Savings wants at least $5 million from AOL and its Patch subsidiary for setting up a similarly cloned group-buying site at wow.com.
By adamg - 8/5/10 - 11:07 am
Dan Kennedy gets an earful from an editor at one of Patch's new Boston-area sites.
By adamg - 7/14/10 - 11:53 pm
The AOL hypermicrominisuperlocal effort is opening up sites for Jamaica Plain and the South End.
By adamg - 6/24/10 - 6:12 pm
David Ertischek, editor of GateHouse's West Roxbury and Roslindale Transcript, is leaving to become editor of Patch's soon-to-emerge West Roxbury site.
By adamg - 6/13/10 - 10:50 pm
AOL's Patch hyperlocal network is advertising jobs for editors of new sites in Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Charlestown and the South End, as well as all of Boston, according to postings on the AOL corporate site.
By adamg - 4/16/10 - 8:05 am
Patch, AOL's attempt at a national network of community sites, recently went live in Needham, giving that town's online news consumers three different places to read about Peter Smulowitz and the guy charged with trying to kill his young child - whom Wicked Local says is a girl, Boston.com's Your Town says is a boy and Patch says is a child.
All three sites are very similar in what they seem to be doing: News, sports, calendar listings, information about the town (Patch helpfully notes which officials are "important officials"). In other words: Recreating a traditional weekly community newspaper, from back in the day when stuff like that was called "local" insteady of "hyperlocal." Wicked Local and Your Town have more depth at this point, having been around longer, and their writing is a lot more polished. Wicked Local is bloggier, Patch makes its employees volunteer in the town and is encouraging local folks to generate some user content (i.e., write for free), Your Town links to stuff on other sites (and has what appears to be dead forums - the most recent post was from almost two months ago).
Ultimately, of course, the question is whether even a well off town like Needham can support three full-time Web sites - are there enough advertisers who want to reach those 30,000 people?
If you live in Needham, how do you get your local news these days?
By adamg - 4/6/10 - 8:44 am
Not only does AOL's nascent Belmont site have an editor, it's hiring freelance news and sports writers (hey, anybody else old enough to remember when people like that were called "string
By adamg - 4/4/10 - 2:14 pm
Neal Simpson, who's spent the past three years covering Brookline for the Tab and Wicked Local, sent out e-mail today to announce he'll be working for Patch, which is taking on GateHouse and Globe YourTown sites in Boston's leafier suburbs.
By adamg - 3/17/10 - 10:12 am
Yes, yes, at some point I should stop linking to Patch's ads for editors and reporters to "radically reinvent community journalism," but for now I'm still fascinated by its move into GateHouse/Your Town territory, so here are the ads for AOL's efforts t
By adamg - 3/10/10 - 5:25 pm
AOL's Patch is moving into Brookine - they're looking to hire somebody to shmooze local businesspeople for listings.
By adamg - 2/19/10 - 6:43 pm
Patch, the AOL rich-white-suburban news division that claims to have the resources to start hundreds of neighbor
By adamg - 1/21/10 - 10:45 am
Patch, which is AOL's latest effort to blow through millions of dollars hyperlocal play, is looking to bust out of its current Tri-State playpen and move into the Boston area, starting with Sudbury.
