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.

Four today

1. Hello walls. The Belo-owned Dallas Morning News is charging for online content: Newsonomics; The New York Times is set to launch it's own paywall: MarketWatch; and Gannett now wants to charge, too: Bloomberg

2. James Fallows embraces inevitability. Atlantic

3. A way to rescue investigative pieces from stagnation? Nieman Journalism Lab

4. Actor seeks intern to help with new job hunt. Internships

Bloomberg hires for Daily News reporter for Capitol beat

James Nash, who worked for the LA Daily News before heading to the Columbus Dispatch to cover the Ohio statehouse, will be the Capitol reporter in Sacramento for Bloomberg News. Nash has also done stints at the LA Business Journal and the Press-Enterprise in Riverside.

Four in the morning

1. The MOCA whitewash story is waiting to break nationally. fishbowlLA

2. The battle over the Hollywood farmer's market. Which Way, LA?

3. AOL's Patch opens another shop in Long Beach. LA Observed

4. Huffington Post says it will turn a profit. Bloomberg

Unbankrupt

MediaNews Group emerged Friday from bankruptcy and cleansed of about $765 million in debt, Bloomberg reports.

The Chapter 11 filing included a reorganization of the company's board. Dean Singleton and Jody Lodovic will continue to run MediaNews, while the banks and lenders took a bigger chunk of the ownership. As Editor & Publisher reports:

Secured lenders exchanged their debt for an 89% stake in the company, but Chairman William Dean Singleton remains in control of the chain with the power to appoint four of the seven directors.

Whether the reorganization plan affects newspaper operations over the long term remains to be seen. Bank of America and the other major creditors probably won't be very patient about seeing returns on their investment after forgiving so much debt.

MediaNews is the second largest newspaper publisher in the country. Holdings include the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, which publishes the Daily News, Daily Breeze, Pasadena Star-News and six other dailies.

Pulling back the shroud on the Fed

A federal appeals court has ordered the Federal Reserve to disclose the names of financial firms that benefited from a $2 trillion loan program designed to prop up ailing companies after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

From Bloomberg:

The Fed had argued that it could withhold the information under an exemption that allows federal agencies to refuse disclosure of “trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential.”

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, “sets forth no basis for the exemption the Board asks us to read into it,” U.S. Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote in the opinion. “If the Board believes such an exemption would better serve the national interest, it should ask Congress to amend the statute.”

An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court seems likely.

MediaNews, Belo want to block Google, too

MediaNews Group owner Dean Singleton said he will follow the lead of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and block Google News from linking to stories that are put behind pay walls, Bloomberg reported today. MediaNews plans to start charging for some content at papers in Chico, California and York, Pennsylvania, and Singleton said that content would be off limits.

From Bloomberg:

“The things that go behind pay walls, we will not let Google search to, but the things that are outside the pay wall we probably will, because we want the traffic,” Singleton said.

Belo, which owns the Riverside Press-Enterprise, also announced tentative plans to charge for some online content and said it would likewise block Google from indexing those stories.

Four in the morning

1. After breaking up with Los Angeles Times, Washington Post rushes into the arms of Bloomberg. LAO

2. The people who want to recall Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R. Claremont, have gathered 54,000 signatures toward their effort. If successful, the recall election would take place just a few months before Adam's primary bid. Star-News

3. To get more local news reports on its website, NPR will spend $3 million in grant money to support local beat reporters at 12 affiliate stations. Poynter

4. Unequal access to information spurs calls for public service media. WaPo