Salmon: MediaNews/Journal Register has better prospects than Patch

Reuters
Felix Salmon sizes up Digital First Media, the new management company headed by John Paton that will run MediaNews and Journal Register Co, and concludes it’s “much more likely to solve the problem of building strong — and profitable — Web-based local media than is AOL’s Patch.” Among the reasons: Papers know how to sell local ads and share content. “Digital First will, for the foreseeable future, be able to continue to have that hard-to-replicate feel of an old-fashioned newspaper, even as it embraces reader-generated content, new-media workflows, and the rest,” Salmon writes. || Related: Paton tells Staci Kramer that it’s too early to say whether he’ll maintain the recently created paywalls at MediaNews papers. | How’s the journalism? After pointing out six things to watch out for at Digital First Media, Ken Doctor asks how Journal Register’s journalism compares to before.