From a content perspective, the conversation about AOL’s decision to buy the Huffington Post has focused on the national audience HuffPo brings to the party.
But AOL has its own little content initiative that Arianna Huffingtonwill be charged with managing as well. Patch.com is AOL’s entry into the very local news market; the company has launched Patch sites in more than 800 communities, with a goal of reaching 1,000 by year’s end. It’s spent more than $50 million in the process – so far.
AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong was a co-founder and investor in Patch before he came to the company, and he led AOL’s acquisition of the startup. He views Patch as an important player in the effort to rebuild local news coverage following the retreat of newspapers hobbled by the double-whammy of the Great Recession and the migration of ad dollars online.
Mentioned later in the article is 2010-2011 Reynolds Fellow Lisa Skube and masters graduate Tram Whitehurst:
These entrepreneurial publishers are on the front lines of community journalism, and their perspective on corporate efforts such as Patch are valuable ones. That’s why Tram Whitehurst, a master’s graduate at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, has been collecting their views about the importance of very local news efforts and about how Patch fits into that ecosystem.
Tram has been working with Lisa Skube, a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at Missouri, as part of her effort to build a connection and facilitation tool for journalism innovators. The Patterson Foundation has enabled Lisa’s work, and we are working with her to nest the tool with an established innovation community for testing.
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