Main Line Patch News Site Makes Cat Celebrity and Demostrates Socialized Media's Impact on "News"

Hymies New Drive-Thru Window & Hyper Local News Coverage

When I got a lunchtime call saying that a truck crashed into the front window of Hymie's Delicatessen last month, all I had to was call up Merion Patch to get both an account of the mishap and a same-day quality video. This is what I love about Patch. Where else can you get this on-the-spot hyper local coverage?

I wake up one morning to read a story about Zoe, the Merion feline that went missing when a home around the corner on Bowman Ave was burglarized. A lost cat story! Better yet, a day or two later I was greeted with the emailed headline" Missing Cat Found.

And this is, in a nutshell, what many love and hate about Patch news-sites. The hyper-local news creates a neighborhood pulse which can't be beat. But is it news? And are there any journalistic standards or ethics? For instance, it took careful reading between the lines to determine that the Missing Cat was Alive (yea!) and not dead. Also, no third party sources are cited to confirm the report's validity.

There is an intriguing and quite literally "eyewitness," homespun quality to Patch reporting/posting much of the time. At a national, corporate level, Patch encourages and is institutionalizing user-inspired and created content. To me, it seems a natural progression of Social media self-reportage.

And overall, I'm pretty impressed with the effort of my local Merion-Wynnewood-Ardmore Patch editors' effort to adopt journalistic norms, and I've yet to see anything patently libelous or ethically irresponsible. The blogging and posting forums, when not over-run by unoriginal content and spam offer vibrant forums for opinion and local event information.

But in some communities across the country, Patch editors, underpaid, overworked, and often under-trained, have drawn the ire of citizens thrust into the spotlight without the typical cautions and protections that Major League news entities afford suspects and victims of crime. 

Patch has a Mayberry RFD, Wild West, William Randolph Hearst quality that can be romantic and charming, as well as potentially harmful and unsettling. If the cat is found alive or dead, that's one thing, but if/when an Accused Party is eventually cleared and there is no journalistic standard to balance stories - as some have decried in other Patches across the country - the bloom can fall off the charm and romance pretty quickly.

But that's all a digression. At it's best, Patch is a juicy neighborhood grapevine of petty crime tidbits, human interest, and some pretty good local business coverage.  Patch's anyone can contribute quality combines the excitement, intimacy and danger of a citizens arrest and facebook over-share all into one.