The Newsonomics of Patch’s Unraveling

Overall, Patches have proven out a truism: More news coverage is better than less news coverage. Patch has added content to the mix that its competitive dailies missed. Now many of those will be gone, along with all the uncountable coverage losses driven by the loss of those 17,000 largely ...

Read More

Nine Questions on Patch’s New Push: National Hyperlocal?, SEO Sauces, and the Case of the Besieged Florist

So who's the ad competition? Maybe we should ask, who isn't? ...The question, here, is one of sustainability. Certainly, there's the question whether Patch can sustain itself, as its parent AOL struggles to find a new identity and growing business model. Then, there's the question of the ...

Read More

Metro Papers Are to Community Dailies What the Cineplex is to the Roxy

The small town press, online and off, looks to have a far different trajectory than the metros. Re-creating the Roxy, in news, may be as good a guideline as any to chart the future.

Read More

Nine Questions: Philly.Com Gets Risque, Anti-Trust and Newspapers, Senior Niching, craigslist Killers and the Sweet Science of Content

What is Christine Varney taking from her newspaper industry talks? Obama's new anti-trust chief has drawn a lot of attention for her interest in Google's books deal, and beyond that, to Google's great search dominance. Varney has also been meeting with news industry people, management and ...

Read More

Seattle Times: “We’re the LOCAL Traffic Leader”

The two sites still appear fairly close in most metrics, with the major disagreement coming on the basis of what the Times considers it stronger "local" penetration. The impact on advertisers is, of course, another story again, as the dirty, little secret of many "local" news websites -- for ...

Read More

Nine Questions: Flipping the PI, NY’s 4 Dailies, Re-Kindling Women Readers, Talking USAToday, Journalistic Deviance and More!

8) Will the Post-Intelligencer Flip the Switch in Seattle? You know, go online-only. (Is online the onliest medium?) With Hearst's Ken Riddick and the PI's Michelle Nicolosi working through the what-ifs, we may have a new, great test to watch. We’d be able to compare the online PI to the ...

Read More