Apr 14, 2011

AOL-Huffington might double its Patch force

Arianna Huffington, now the editorial voice behind AOL's news team, has announced the company will hire as many as 800 writers to work on its 800 or so Patch sites across the country, Bloomberg reported. From the story:
“Each site will now have its own team,” Huffington said in an interview. “It’s always greater and better to have a team.” Until now, content for each Patch website has been produced by a single full-time local editor and freelancers.
Teams also help prevent exhaustion from setting in. Individual Patch editors do almost everything necessary to publish their city-based sites. That is tiring and can lead to myopic story selection.

An extra body could also pick up slack for projects, since it's likely there will be Patchwide stories and series. For example, I'm told California's Patch sites paired up with California Watch to help localize the latter's series on earthquake safety in public schools - "sloppy" and "mess" were some of the words one Patcher used to describe the process. It may just be growing pains.

Here's more from the Bloomberg story:
“We are basically going to make Patch a lot more social,” said Huffington, 60. “It’s a great way to have people in the town, from the mayor to high-school kids, engaged.”
That sounds nice. I don't know what it means.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

AOL has lost 16 percent of its value this year. Patch already accounts for 20 percent of their workforce. The idea that a company is such a poor financial situation is going to add 800 more staff writers to a project that has almost zero traction in terms of advertising is either a lie or suicidal. My bet is the former.

Anonymous said...

Very hard to view much of what Arianna says to be completely truthful...

Anonymous said...

You can trust her, she's progressive and leaning forward.

Anonymous said...

This sure brought out the ex-LANGers who still can't find a job.

Anonymous said...

I am the first poster and have nothing to do with LANG. I would be happy if 800 new jobs materialized in this market, even if Huffington underpaid and overworked. But it's just not going to happen.

Todd said...

A straight-faced Huffington Post editor visiting Thailand last month explained nonstaff contributors aren't paid because they're *not 'real' journalists!* He bristled angrily to any further questions about HuffPo's practices.