AOL aim for Patch expansion

Patch, a US network of neighbourhood blogs owned by AOL, is aiming to expand hugely in the next year.

Their president, Warren Webster, says that the company is planning to add 400 sites to its network – a huge increase considering it only has 100 sites at present. In order to achieve this, it will be hiring 500 reporters. AOL had already pledged $50m of investment into Patch but it was unclear how this cash was to be spent.

Suitable towns are being selected using an algorithm that considers factors like average income, voting patterns and rankings of local schools. Each community has one reporter and each cluster of sites has someone selling advertising space.

Webster says that journalism is the priority:

“Our philosophy from day one was that the first priority should be to build an engaged audience through journalism. The second phase is to leverage that audience for local businesses that want to target customers. We’re at the beginning of phase two now.”

Patch say that the cost of running one of their sites is only four per cent of the cost of running a local newspaper for the same market, even discounting delivery costs.