Hey, there! Log in / Register
Why Republicans should fear 'the Patch'
By adamg on Tue, 05/17/2011 - 8:57am
The hyperlocal Ariannanet, not nicotine, that is. On Red Mass. Group, Swamp Yankee finds our local Patch sites to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy, i.e., run by members of the commie Obama clone army, busily dog-whistling their liberal agenda in Little League reports and car-crash photos:
I searched the background of local editors in some communities that I know intimately, and, as I suspected, the editors are sophisticated, liberal activists.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
LOL
I'm forwarding this post to a few friends -- a former editor of Somerville Patch and contributors to South End and Lexington Patches. Maybe they'll stop by with their reactions.
Love it!
Republicans have had an Orwellian "Fair and Balanced" Ministry of Propaganda pushing out their outright lies and innuendo with a 'clear as their tongue in the GOP buttcrack' political agenda for YEARS. There's no way anyone can deny the effectiveness of Faux News over the years. It's been a story of corporate power over public discourse. But recently they seem to be on the wane a bit (people get bored I guess).
So now, finally, one of the few actual liberal media elite (as opposed to the fictional hordes of quiche-eating scum that run the "liberal lamestream media" -- what? like G.E.?) gets the idea of trying to do an end run around the top-down approach and insinuate herself into an Internet-based local media movement and the GOP cries...WAHHHH! It's not FAIIIRRR!!! Like a 13 year old being told they have to be home by 11:00 on weeknights. Love it.
On the flipside I don't like Huffington and don't view this as a good thing, even if I do agree with the politics more often than not.
Adam, you're not working for Lyndon LaRouche are you?
Spartacus Youth League, actually
I love going to lefty cabal meetings with my fellow SYLers, because when one of the White House aides (it's amazing how they get around) calls the roll and asks if the Spartacus Youth League is present, we stand up one by one and yell:
"I'm from the Spartacus Youth League! No, I'm from the Spartacus Youth League! No, I'm ..."
Ahem.
No, I linked to that because, as you can probably tell, I like ridiculous things. And accusing a bunch of overworked Patch editors making, oh, $40,000 a year of being "sophisticated liberal activists," when everybody knows "sophisticated liberal activists" live in expensive Cambridge townhouses and spy for the Russians, is pretty ridiculous.
Huffington didn't start Patch and she had nothing to do with the hiring of most (if any) of the local editors. Pre-Huff, Patch actually did something pretty smart: They hired away as many reporters and editors as they could from that other hive of scum and villainy, GateHouse. And they hired noted lefty Pat Purcell's kid to be publisher.
Like Ron, I know some of the folks who work for Patch, mainly because I knew them when they worked at GateHouse. Now, granted, I'm part of the Liberal Media Elite, but I've never detected a Hidden Agenda in their writing - they cover the nitty gritty of local life in small towns and Boston's leafier neighborhoods. I dunno, maybe in their off hours they all get together to burn American flags as they think up new ways to declare war on Christmas, but I haven't noticed any real change in Patch sites since Huffington took over.
Count me in
Yeah, I have an agenda, but I don't think anyone, myself included, could even classify it as anything except random, insane postings of a angry, bitter middle-aged man.
Be sure to read me at http://backbay.patch.com
Yeah, Arianna must be the problem.
swamp_yankee cites The Boston Globe and James Cameron movies as insidious vectors of creeping liberal influence, and flatly asserts that progressives control all forms of old media. That's, um, quite a statement to make. It must be tough to go through life when every washroom breeds Bolsheviks. Somehow I have a hard time believing that Patch editors for tiny zones of a city (daily readership ~= 15) are as bad as, say, a baldly partisan septuagenarian who owns controlling interests in every major English-speaking news market, and unabashedly uses them to promote his own political views.
But then again, as a confirmed leftist agitator, I suppose I'm just drinkin' that Kool-Aid.
Billy Bragg's Advice
Nobody is stopping swampcootie from starting her own revolution ... or even just calling for a whaaaaaaaambulance!
that's me!
hola! i'm the sophisticated liberal activist that swampyankee named in his sophisticated conservative report. thank you for bringing this to my attention.
say what you will about patch/aol/huffpost, but i think it's refreshing that us local editors have been encouraged to "out" ourselves in our patch profiles -- i.e. share our personal politics, cultural and religious affiliations, etc. so readers can have a honest picture of where we are coming from, and, apparently, extrapolate our bias. which, you know, all humans have.
JOURNALISTS ARE HUMAN. (even the ones on the patch.)
and this one is also queer. REPUBLICANS, TAKE NOTE!
"and this one is also queer.
"and this one is also queer. REPUBLICANS, TAKE NOTE!"
Why - are you into Republicans?
Hey now
She said she's queer, not over the top, kinked-out sicko...
McDonalds Effect
The question is, how much flexibility will the local editors actually be given to report news, political or otherwise? There is a difference between owning a neighborhood coffee shop versus a McDonald's franchise.
There is a post today on Authentically Local where a Calif. blogger competing with Patch says:
"I’m more convinced than ever that local news needs to have local ownership — the cliche is “it needs to have skin in the game.” The metaphor I use is the ham and eggs breakfast: the commitment of the chicken is different than the commitment of the pig. As a resident of Altadena and someone who runs his business here — I’m the pig!"
http://authenticallylocal.com/post/5580332824/four-questions-to-ask-when-patch-moves-into-your-town#disqus_thread
I'm still hopeful that Patch is additive but their uniformity creeps me out a bit. Should a South End neighborhood news site look exactly the same as one in Sacramento?
Signed by a local pig at NorthEndWaterfront.com
Sticks & Stones
Whoa! That must really sting! Those nasty, verbally abusive Republican bullies. I'm telling . . .