Patch Is Staying Nimble

Hyper-local site company Patch is attempting to change the way local readers find their news. Many things they do have been tried before, like Sidewalks.com, Digital Cities, and many other newspaper sites, but their approach to staffing has been the biggest differentiator. Now there is news that they’re going to shake up their staffing model again, by adding “8,000 Bloggers in ‘Full-On Course Correction’.”

Jeff Bercovici’s blog in Forbes does a good job of talking to the main players, like editor in chief Brian Farnham.

Whether it will work or not isn’t as important, I think, as is the effort they (Patch) are making to shift with the changes of readers’ needs. Will more bloggers make the local news more relevant? Or will the readers want what the new Chicago Reader editor refers to as the new buzz phrase in publishing, “curated content” on their sites?