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Comment by anthonyb | Hacker News Reader

Well, this is the first I've heard of Patch, so I went and had a look at http://www.patch.com/

...

Er, is this supposed to be a news site? There's not a lot of actual news, but I can go and see what's happening at "Propwash Junction". Which isn't actually a real place but a Disney ad. Real news is at least two clicks deep.

Doomed!

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This, for example, is basically a press release, although it doesn't say that. Instead, it claims that it's a contribution from a "community member":

AT&T Network Enhancements Strengthen Nation's Fastest, Most Reliable 4G LTE Network in St. Louis

http://chesterfield.patch.com/groups/stl-tech-news/p/att-net...

I visit patch pretty often and actually had no idea they were owned by AOL. While it often misses activity going on in my area (Brooklyn, NY) it's still one of the easier ways of finding out what's going on nearby. I check Police & Fire a couple times a week since it's a high crime area and the local editor does a decent job of summarizing the things I'd miss otherwise.

Edit: I don't actually navigate the site much, instead I just visit area.patch.com/ and the rest is easy to find.

The problem is local news on a large scale means finding thousands of people who for some reason want to write for pennies about what's happening locally. On top of that advertising isn't exactly easy to get. When Patch first came around they also looked at gaining traffic from an SEO perspective for local queries but as algorithms changed their organic traffic plummeted.

It is supposed to be local news. As in stuff from your local small town.

I did use it once. There was a hostage situation in my small town and somehow a Patch page ended up with some coverage of the event.

Patch is basically hyper local news. I've followed the one for my town in the past (Kensington, MD) and there's a lot of overlap and shared stories with neighboring ones. (Silver Spring, Bethesda, other areas in Montgomery County) The ones around here are fairly decent and get good coverage of community-related news like school stuff. I haven't seen any ads masquerading as stories on the ones here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened elsewhere.

Actually the local patches seem to be useful and engaging. Brad Kava the principal at santacruz.patch.com actually makes an effort at journalism

Having a Patch operation in my town, I can speak from experience.

They put papers in the most affluent communities only to attract high-buck advertisers. The quality varies, but where I live, they hired away the town's weekly newspaper editor. This editor has since left. Essentially, the editor is required to personally produce a high, minimum number of articles per day. Everyone else but the ad sales person works as an independent contractor on dollars per piece or photo. I have sometimes seen good journalism from these contractors, but most of the good ones seem to have left.

Patch attempts to bring in outside bloggers and letter writers from the community simply to increase clicks and controversy. Initially, they tried to pay these bloggers, but that ended very fast.

Most of the articles are designed to be timely pieces about the schools, town sports, weather, traffic, politics, or local views about current events. In fact, it seems like they believe the most important thing they do is spin national news by interviewing locals about controversial, state or national news stories like PPACA or gay marriage decisions since it creates lots of clicks. On the plus side, they have done more to cover local politics than any other outlet.

Patch doesn't seem to have launched in Seattle yet, so here's Redmond, WA's: http://redmond.patch.com

Here's what my neighborhood has, in comparison: http://www.capitolhillseattle.com

CHS beats the pants off of Patch.

If your little small town has a patch site, it's great. They actually have stories about what's happening in the town, not just violent crimes. Stuff that used to be in the local newspaper before they fired all their staff or merged or went out of business. Of course they are generally one person operations, so quality varies I'm sure, but I really like it.

is it purposely avoiding major cities? (and all the neighborhoods in or near them?)

I can't find any coverage in SF. And I checked for LA, Boston, Austin, NY (each borough)...

I believe that's the idea, yes. Small communities tend to be underserved for news content and local businesses don't want/need to advertise in their region's metro news sites, but may be interested in something more local.

Yes, I think Patch's 'point' was local news for smaller communities - if I'm remembering right, with a focus on affluent areas that could support ad sales.

It's not avoiding neighborhoods in or near them, they just aren't necessarily easy to spot in their list.

For example, there are http://hollywood.patch.com/ and http://southsanfrancisco.patch.com/

Chris Stucchio ('yummyfajitas) works (or worked) there.

It appears he is still working there, as a software engineer: http://www.chrisstucchio.com/work/resume.pdf

My friend started there couple weeks ago in a dev position. They gave him a 30% raise. Tomorrow morning or this week he finds out if he gets to keep the job. Most likely he should given he's a dev.

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