Scrambling for the scraps

There's a major battle going on for local digital marketing dollars. An outfit called Patch is in the middle of it. BJ Alums reported earlier on a local version in Bath-Fairlawn involving former BJ folks Kymberli Hagelberg, its editor, Dave Wilson, Sarah Vradenburg and David Lee Morgan, Jr.

The problem is pulling in more money than you're spending. AOL acquired Patch for $7 million. Last year AOL said it put $50 million into Patch.

Most newspapers in these days of cutbacks and plummeting revenue can't afford to put reporters in every town in its circulation area. That's where Patch, and others like it, come in. It tries to get a newspaper veteran to run the show, such as Kymberli in Bath-Fairlawn, then line up relative amateurs to scour their town for news tidbits (although the BJ trio with Kymberli certainly are not amateurs). A New York Times story says Patch pays its local editor $38,000 to $45,000 a year. Patch has been concentrating on affluent areas, such as Bath-Fairlawn.

Maybe 100 people see some items, compared to thousands who read newspapers. But these add up. In December, Patch sites combined for more than three million visitors. And sometimes Patch articles are picked up by mainstream media.

The target, of course, is advertisers. Tiny businesses, maybe one-person operations, can afford to advertise in Patch, but not in the BJ. The key, of course, is how many customers they get for each dollar they spend in either. And outfits that have been trying to plumb these tiny, specific markets have been collapsing all over the country as they climb over each other for the crumbs.

Click on the headline to read the New York Times story on this phenonemon.