Merrill Brown is mostly right when he criticizes Patch for being too suburban an enterprise. But he ignores Patch’s efforts in two New Jersey cities — Newark and New Brunswick — which failed to live up to expectations because of a lack of resources.
The local ecosystem that Brown describes — massive advertising teams, robust editorial operations — were never in Patch’s cards. The one-man operations created had potential, but only with significant back-up resources and a long gestation period that would have allowed the larger infrastructure to cement itself.
Even in suburban communities, most Patch sites fell short of their promise. But the short-staffing is exacerbated in an urban environment where the longstanding failure of legacy media to spend much time in cities has left potential urban readers disconnected from news organizations. Where Patch failed was in ignoring the real needs and promise of both of its New Jersey cities (I write this as the regional editor who helped launch the New Brunswick site), while expecting both to turn a profit well before the seeds had been given time to germinate — which is a mirror of the company’s larger failure.
Patch as a larger news organization replaced good journalism with gimmicks — 10-best pizza places, for instance — and far too much generic regional content. Good local journalism and local identity had costs, which Patch was frantically trying to scale back. In slashing its budgets, Patch homogenized its content. It became exactly what its critics expected: A corporate, Walmart-style news organization that impose cookie-cutter news agencies on its 800-plus communities. That is not a prescription for success, whether Patch continued with its foolish red-lining approach or not..
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Hank Kalet 