By Gretchen Millich, WKAR News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkar/local-wkar-946401.mp3
LANSING, MI – For some time, traditional newspapers have been cutting back on their coverage of community news. Several media companies have stepped in to fill that void with "hyper-local" news websites. The most successful of these so far is Patch.com. Last year, AOL put $50 million into setting up hundreds of Patch websites nationwide.
Twenty-four Patch sites are now up and running in southeast Michigan, and it could be just a matter of time before one goes online in the Lansing area.
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Nancy Hanis was teaching journalism at Michigan State University last summer, when she got a call from AOL. She was offered a job hiring local editors and launching Patch websites in southeast Michigan. She says she couldn't turn it down.
"It seemed to me to be so forward looking and what I thought might be part of the future of community journalism and resurrecting it," says Hanis. "So I just decided that it was too exciting of an opportunity to miss."
Each website is based in a community, where a local editor lives and reports on that community. Hanis says you won't see national or international news on Patch, unless there's a tie-in to the community.
"We really try to focus people's everyday lives," she says. "The businesses along main street, things going on in the schools, government meetings. Things that, especially in Michigan, a lot of communities have not had this in a long time, because there are weeklies and there are some dailies, but the staff for these weeklies and dailies have shrunk to a point where they can't cover every single government meeting, they can't cover every school board meeting. And we do."
Kristin Bull goes to a lot of meetings. She's the local editor for Rochester Patch and covers the city of Rochester and Rochester Hills. After college, Bull worked as a reporter, then took some time off as a stay-at-home mom. When she was ready to go back to work, she wanted the independence and flexibility that Patch offered. She works at home and except for the occasional freelanced piece, writes most of the stories herself.
"A typical day would be getting up, checking e-mails, stopping by the sheriff's department and getting police reports, meeting an interview for coffee, writing in the afternoon," says Bull. "Then at night, there's always either events or meetings going on, so, I have a lot of friends who are like 'What are your hours'? I really don't have any specific hours. Whatever is going on, I'm there or whatever needs to be done, I'm doing."
Stephen Lacy says this kind of reporting is typical of traditional community news. Lacy teaches journalism at MSU. He says the only difference is that instead of being dropped on your doorstep once a week, Patch is online.
But Lacy says an online business like this is risky. Like most news outlets, Patch makes money by selling advertising and there's a lot of competition for online ad dollars.
"There are more advertising outlets now than there have ever been, and that number will only accelerate because it's fairly easy to start web organizations," says Lacy. "So you're not just competing with other newspapers, you're competing with community sites, you're competing with actually citizen journalism sites, which are non-profit, but 55 per cent of them had advertising."
So far, AOL has located its Patch websites in Michigan in communities that tend to be more affluent. Lacy says he's not sure where Patch is headed next, but he'd like to see Patch in mid-Michigan.
"I wish I could predict if it would and I'm not sure anybody, outside of AOL and they won't tell you, would be able to predict that," he says. "I think the important thing is a market of this size is probably attractive. You've got East Lansing and Lansing and the west side. So there are some opportunities that don't fit the exact model now, but it very well may be that we see the model evolve and AOL decide they're going to change and try this sort of community."
Patch regional editor Nancy Hanis says AOL is committed to expansion. Almost every day, a new Patch site is going online somewhere in the country. AOL set an initial goal of 500 new sites for 2010, but ended the year with more than 700. But Hanis won't say if Patch is ready to start up in the Lansing region.