- I feel a little bit wary about Patch.com. When Brian Farhnman spoke about the boundaries of each Patch being unclear I feel that if they don’t stop at the city limits various patches in a close proximity will begin to mesh together and start to seem the same. I’m certain that if most towns had a patch that many residents would also check out other patches local to the or where they do business. I think that the idea of a hyper-local news site is a good idea but needs to be done carefully otherwise the market will be saturated with the same information.
- I’m bothered a little bit by the “one man show” model on Patch.com. To me only having one editor do a majority of the reporting makes it feel like a blog with guest authors. It seems extremely overwhelming to the editor and makes me wonder how this would affect the quality of the coverage on the site.
- I’m really bothered still by the Seagrams story he told us. To know that the NY Times would re-do a survey several times to keep advertisers happy, well that just goes against everything we were taught. I’d like us to talk more about church and state.
- What about the quality of journalism in the future using both models? Sending citizens out to cover stories with little experience or a quick journalism crash course. How will this affect in depth reporting?
- Also Farnham says having citizens add stories to their Patch sites, such as a local coach putting up a story about the team. To me this sounds like the online version of the local town paper which is full of these type of stories.
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I like overall idea of Patch.com but it needs work. I agree with most of your arguments. I dont like the idea of just one editor, each section of the website should have an editor. And I didnt even think about news overlapping in certain areas, that could lead to confusion down the road.
It’s a good start but I don’t feel like it has been fully thought through. Again it seems extremely overwhelming for just one person to be doing all that work.