It appears that AOL is approaching the social media concept differently this time by starting from scratch and going for a more localize scheme of operation. The trademarks make it clear that AOL could gradually integrate as a localized social media platform.
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Citizen journalism is back on the bus for the 2012 presidential election with AOL Huffington Post Media Group’s relaunch of OffTheBus.
Readers of AOL’s hyperlocal Patch network of sites will gain access to hyperlocal deals and the ability to complete transactions with local merchants as the result of an agreement between AOL and American Express to bring the global financial services company’s Serve digital payment and commerce platform to Patch sites nationwide.
However, CEO Tim Armstrong put a positive spin on the numbers, saying the company posted its first gains in display advertising revenue since the last quarter of 2007. I applaud AOL for making gains in revenue, which looks promising. The company’s turnaround plan is beginning to take form. I haven’t marked AOL gone yet.
The State of the News Media 2011, an annual report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Internet & American Life Project, examined AOL‘s investment in news prior to its $315 million agreement to acquire The Huffington Post.
According to the report’s findings, prior to the HuffPost acquisition, AOL added 900 employees during the summer of 2010, with about one-half of them going to its Patch hyperlocal news network.
According to the PEJ News Coverage Index, 42 percent of top stories on AOL News in 2010 were written by AOL staff, up sharply from 7 percent in 2009.
As for Patch — currently in around 800 towns, with a goal of topping 1,000 by the end of 2011 — AOL spent $50 million in 2009 alone. According to comScore, Patch had 3 million unique visitors in December 2010, about 80 times its audience of December 2009.
As for its new acquisition, not factoring in hires announced Monday or last week, most of HuffPost’s staff was made up of curators and editors, and not content creators, with just four out of 60 staffers in 2009 named as reporters, and that number at around 18 in 2010.
Just two business days after it was out with the old at AOL and Huffington Post Media Group, it was in with the new, as the division created by the merger of AOL and The Huffington Post announced several new hires, including two high-profile additions — Twitter co-founder Biz Stone as strategic impact adviser, and veteran journalist John Montorio as culture and entertainment editor — as well as the promotion of HuffPost senior political editor Howard Fineman to editorial director for the group.
Huffington Post Media Group and AOL also announced the addition of two new neighborhoods in Newark to Patch, in partnership with that city’s Twitter-friendly Mayor Cory Booker, and the launch of its 30-Day Service Challenge employee volunteer initiative.
Stone will advise on social impact and cause-based initiatives, including the development of a platform to make it easier for people to perform services in their communities. He will also recruit other companies to invest in and deploy best corporate practices, and create and develop a video series spotlighting companies and executives that are stellar in philanthropy and corporate responsibility.
Montorio boasts more than 30 years of experience reporting, writing, editing, and managing news staffs, including stints with The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
In his new role, Fineman will help shape Huffington Post Media Group’s overall coverage, as well as working to integrate AOL news and information brands. He will also guide coverage of the upcoming presidential campaign coverage, continuing to report for HuffPost, and retaining his role as an analyst for NBC and MSNBC.
Other new editorial hires across Huffington Post Media Group:
White House correspondent Jennifer Bendery, who had been covering The White House and House and Senate Leadership for Roll Call for the past three years;
Culture/style reporter Caroline Dworin, who had been a regular contributor to the City section of The New York Times and appeared in anthology More New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of The New York Times;
Workplace reporter Dave Jamieson, who formerly covered transportation issues for TBD;
General assignment writer Saki Knafo, who previously wrote for The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, The Believer, GQ, and Publishers Weekly;
News editor Simone Landon, who had been producer of Morning Edition for Rhode Island Public Radio;
Real estate editor Catherine New, whose work has been published by The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Metro Newspaper, Flavorpill.com, Men’s Vogue, and Psychology Today;
And four new Jefferson young journalists: Katherine Bindley, who graduated from Georgetown University and was a regular contributor to The New York Times City section, as culture/style reporter; Laura Gottesdiener, who graduated from Yale University and was a staff writer for The Brooklyn Paper, as lifestyle reporter; Joy Resmovits, who graduated from Barnard College and has been at The Jewish Daily Forward since 2010, as education reporter; and Laura Stampler, who graduated from Stanford University and has written for The New Republic, The Nation, and The Miami Herald, as lifestyle reporter.
Journal Register CEO John Paton is aiming high, telling Beet.TV that his 324 or so publications, which serve more than 900 communities in 10 states, will beat Aol’s Patch and The Huffington Post in its home markets.
Paton said his company’s sites are reaching 16 million monthly unique visitors, up from 13 million last year.
Patch, the Aol-owned network of hyperlocal news sites, has gone Hollywood, as Pandora Young of sister blog FishbowlLA reports that Hollywood Patch made its debut Thursday.
Anna Bakalis is the editor of Hollywood Patch, and contributors include Tina Daunt, Steve Galluzzo, and David Markland, according to FishbowlLA, which gave a tip of the hat to the site for breaking stories on an issue with permits at the Hollywood Farmers Market and the closing of bar and restaurant Kung Pao Kitty.
Plagiarism took root in Aol’s Patch once again, as Pandora Young at sister blog FishbowlLA reports that Palo Alto Patch posted an apology for publishing content from VentureBeat.
FishbowlLA points out that there are currently 123 community Patch sites in California, with more on the way.
The apology read:
To Palo Alto Patch Readers:
We recently discovered that one of our freelance writers lifted information for one of his business reports from VentureBeat, an online news site covering technology and innovation in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
While we provide all of our freelancers with a plagiarism guide, we also audit to make sure that all Palo Alto Patch content is original or fully and properly attributed. The writer has been told that taking work of other writers or news organizations without attribution is absolutely not acceptable. We have apologized to VentureBeat, whose work was copied. We apologize to you, the reader.
We know that you expect Palo Alto Patch to provide accurate and original reporting on our community, which is why we will continue to be relentless in making certain our reporting meets the high standards our readers expect.
The launch of Sonoma Patch, a hyperlocal news site covering Sonoma, Calif., which is part of Aol’s Patch initiative, crumbled the paywall of local twice-weekly newspaper The Sonoma Index-Tribune, after just three months, fellow local newspaper The Press Democrat reported.
The Index-Tribune began charging readers $5 per month for Web-only access in September, with that newspaper’s publisher and editor-in-chief, Bill Lynch, writing to subscribers that free access to its content “is a business model for newspapers that cannot be sustained,” according to The Press Democrat.
However, once Sonoma Patch debuted in late November, The Index-Tribune took down its pay wall, The Press Democrat reported.
