The publisher of a Los Angeles neighborhood blog, AltadenaBlog.com, says he was approached by Patch with an offer to lure him away to create a new Patch site in the same neighborhood. Calling the AOL local news startup “Poach” instead of Patch, Timothy Rutt writes a blog post to the community explaining why he turned down the offer. “It was tempting to have the opportunity not to hustle for a buck and have more resources at hand,” he writes. “(But) we think we serve you better than any Poach site could. Because we don’t answer to any corporate masters, AltadenaBlog has the ability to be nimble in its coverage.”
Timothy explains that he’s been telling neighbors to “buy locally” for years — the slogan on top of the site reads, “Your independent, advertiser-supported, locally-owned community news source.” He asks his readers, “What would we be if we shut this down to create a second rate version of ourselves at the behest of a corporation that has no real interest in this community, except to extract dollars from it?”
To compete with the incoming Altadena Patch site, Timothy says he’s adding correspondents, beefing up features and actively seeking more sponsors. “So we thank Poach on one hand for basically telling us to step up our game,” he writes.
As many of you know, AOL is spending $50 million this year to roll out local news sites across the country, competing with community newspapers and independent neighborhood blogs. (Full disclosure: I co-founded Next Door Media, a network of neighborhood blogs in Seattle that may soon be competing with Patch.)
Update: Timothy has posted some remarks in comments…
