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Health & Fitness

Patch Sold - Not sure why I'm the one telling you...

In a deal who's details are yet to be disclosed, if ever, AOL has announced it is turning over control of the Patch a holding company called Hale Global.  The Patch serves some 900 localities, according to Nicholas Carlson of Business Insider.

Carlson's best guess at the deal is that, "probably means AOL got little or zero money from Hale Global for Patch. It's possible that AOL has even committed to investing cash into the joint venture. An AOL spokesman wouldn't say either way."  Kind of harsh in my opinion, but it's just an opinion.

The deal comes roughly 5 months after AOL announced they would be closing 300 Patch around America and consolidating efforts.  While AOL plowed millions into efforts to pump up writers and ad sales the numbers just didn't add up to more than a bottomless pit, followed by a make good commitment to either turn it around or turn it loose by the end of 2013 by its CEO Tim Armstrong.

Now comes the hard part; deciding what worked, what didn't, and where it goes from here.  You guessed it, I have an idea.

When you look at what the Patch did well, it covered local stories quickly, gave short and cheap marketing opportunities to local businesses, and did something almost no other local paper has been able to achieve- created a blogosphere with many and varied writers (though it's arguable that the comment section domination has soured participants who tire of the same four general comments; left bad, right bad, then something unintelligible by yomammy, followed but something slightly less intelligible by kk).

1) Like most good ideas, no one is going to love this thing like someone who owns it.  Step one would be to franchise the opportunity and empower local marketeers to innovate and expand.

2) Step two is to get the local market motivated with citizen journalists who actually get paid.  It may only be $20 for writing up the basketball game, but for a highschooler who's going to go anyway it's a cheap and effective way to make a little money, improve their writing skills, and build a resume.  There was once a day where four years of college wasn't necessary to be a great reporter.

3) Retool to encourage better blogging.  Local businesses should be encouraged and taught how to write a blog to help promote their business.  The better an advertiser they are the more Patches their blogs will be carried on to promote their ideas.  Far too often people of Hudson have no idea when club sign-up happens, how a community meeting turned out, or that chickens make people happy.  It would also help if the Patch's actively shared blogs better from across the local and state communities.  If you want advertisers in Hudson, run their blog in Stillwater to attract customers.

4) Promote, promote, promote.  If there is one thing the Patch suffered from it was a lack of public awareness to it's existence.  When taking the Citizens Police Academy a few years ago Micheal Foley came out to photograph the class driving police cars through a course.  If not for that I would have had a tough time identifying it on the web.  Many people I know have no idea of its presence, which is a real shame.

In all this is what is called "creative destruction".  Just as Worldcom spent billions to lay cables across the ocean to expand the world wide web, it was its eventual financial failure that enabled other companies to pick up the pieces for penny's on the dollar and innovate the system creating a true world wide (surveillance) web that we have today.

I wish the best for Patch, it's a great platform, just be sure wherever it goes next allows people to embed YouTube again.  That will be the final step in creating a local media.  No need to report the game, just post the highlights for everyone to see.  An advertiser could even sponsor the recording…now where has that been done before?

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