It has been about a year since Maplewood, N.J., saw itself plunged into hyperlocal blogging. I started my site at the end of 2008. Soon after came Patch.com, which launched sites in Maplewood and neighboring Millburn and Short Hills in February.
Then, last March, The New York Times entered the fray with ‘The Local,’ its pair of sites that focused on the same three New Jersey towns as Patch and two Brooklyn, N.Y. neighborhoods. These developments drew interest from Newsweek, New Jersey Monthly and others.
A year later, I am still plugging away on my site part time. ‘Local’ New Jersey editor Tina Kelley, a Times veteran of more than a decade, took a buyout in 2009 and gave up her gig. And Patch has grown to some 30 sites in three states.
Patch Editor-In-Chief Brian Farnham, a former editor at Time Out New York, declines to reveal exact Web traffic or revenue, but says Patch is meeting expectations.
“We are on target,” Farnham said in a phone interview. “This year will be a key, looking to expand more nationally.”
Right now, Patch has sites in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, targeting mostly suburban towns with little existing daily coverage. Farnham said the sites are averaging monthly unique users equal to about half of the populations in its towns.
“We’ve been pretty smart about the communities we’ve picked,” said Farnham. “We are trying to digitize small communities, reflect the communities online.”
Patch has a full-time paid editor for each town, with sites that provide news, sports and Twitter updates, as well as resources for local businesses, events, community listings and even obituaries.
“The way a successful newsroom works is not any one thing,” said Steve Johnson, a Patch regional editor and former MSNBC Web staffer. “It is a bunch of things, and it is the same for hyperlocal.”
Patch pays freelancers for their work. Johnson told me in a phone interview that paying contributors rewards residents for covering events. “When it gets to be 10 o’clock at night and the city council has another hour to go, will they stay?” he said of unpaid writers.
He also said with traditional newspapers cutting back, often on this type of local reporting, Web sites such as Patch have an opportunity to fill the gap. And with today’s mobile journalism tools, the on-the-go news is even easier.
“You can sit in the front seat of your car with a $300 camera and a $1,000 lap top and do it all,” Johnson said.
Patch’s reporters range from veterans with years of experience to recent college graduates. But all follow the approach of getting news published quickly and sticking to relevant stories for residents, not out-of-town readers or other editors.
“The key we have here is that we do not have a daily newspaper, we have pitched ourselves as the daily newspaper,” said Heather Collura, editor of Patch’s site in Summit, N.J., an upscale bedroom community just five miles from Maplewood. “What makes Patch special is that we are in communities that sometimes get ignored.”
Collura, 23, grew up in Roxbury, N.J., but has lived in Summit since launching its site in August. She monitors a police scanner, as all Patchers do, and roams the city looking for news among residents, and the traditional government, school, and law enforcement routes.
“People are very welcoming and tech savvy and embracing of the idea,” said Collura, a Syracuse University graduate and veteran of stints at the Asbury Park Press and a USA Today internship. “What we report happening here is what is happening on the ground.”
In a phone interview, she stressed that the Web approach, ranging from Twitter items to full-length stories, allows for coverage of the big and the small, from a local restaurant closing for renovation under a new owner — a story she found while visiting the former Broadway Grill one day — to the more traditional, such as a jewelry store robbery in broad daylight she discovered simply by listening to the scanner: “That was my second day on the job. It was a breaking news story and we had it first.”
But being in one city all day also allows for the scoop that a long-awaited second Dunkin’ Donuts was about to open in town: “I Tweeted that one.”
By contrast, Cecelia Smith overseeing Patch’s site in Darien, Conn., is fresh out of New York University. But as a long-time Darien resident, she knows the town and has many contacts built in to her network of friends. “It makes it helpful to a certain extent,” said the 23-year-old by phone. “You understand how the community kicks.”
Among the stories Smith has broken since launching her site in August is the criminal history of a candidate running for First Selectman, akin to the town’s mayor. Smith dug up information on a past attempted murder conviction for the man, who lost the race.
“That really put me on the map,” said Smith, whose competition includes two local weeklies and a nearby daily in Stamford.
Smith also covers government meetings and casual events, such as a block party. “We cover more than the papers,” she said.
Patch got one of its biggest boosts in June when AOL purchased the company, offering more investment and a brighter future. “They have been the perfect mix of investor, but letting us do our thing,” said Farnham. “As a big company, they have some terrific resources available to us.”
Reports at the time put the price tag at about $10 million.
“You don’t want to go too fast, but that is the dream,” Farnham said.
CORRECTION: Cecelia Smith’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this article.
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