>Ridgewood Patch and Glen Rock Patch Merge
The staff of the Ridgewood blog
Wednesday ,December 14, 2011
(Ridgewood , NJ) Last week AOL’s “hyper local” online news network Patch consolidated 4 of its New Jersey local websites. The Patch in Ridgewood has now merged with Glen Rock and the Franklin Lakes Patch has been merged with Wycoff . Sources claim it was a business decision done to better serve both readers and advertisers.
However Ad Age reports that Patch spokesperson Janine Iamunno said the decision was “editorially driven,” coming from editors who felt there was too much news overlap in the towns. Previously the Patch also reduced freelance budgets to make the sites more profitable.
AOL the parent company is under pressure from the recent merger with Huffington Post and is still struggling with how hyper local the Patch’s news coverage and and advertising should be.
