Having a Patch operation in my town, I can speak from experience. They put papers in the most affluent communities only to attract high-buck advertisers. The q

Having a Patch operation in my town, I can speak from experience. They put papers in the most affluent communities only to attract high-buck advertisers. The quality varies, but where I live, they hired away the town's weekly newspaper editor. This editor has since left. Essentially, the editor is required to personally produce a high, minimum number of articles per day. Everyone else but the ad sales person works as an independent contractor on dollars per piece or photo. I have sometimes seen good journalism from these contractors, but most of the good ones seem to have left. Patch attempts to bring in outside bloggers and letter writers from the community simply to increase clicks and controversy. Initially, they tried to pay these bloggers, but that ended very fast. Most of the articles are designed to be timely pieces about the schools, town sports, weather, traffic, politics, or local views about current events. In fact, it seems like they believe the most important thing they do is spin national news by interviewing locals about controversial, state or national news stories like PPACA or gay marriage decisions since it creates lots of clicks. On the plus side, they have done more to cover local politics than any other outlet.