Monrovia News Site Wants Bloggers

The news website, Monrovia Patch, and apparently - from my spot-checking - all the Patch websites across the country, will be trying to build out their sites using local bloggers, who will be paid, according to Monrovia Patch, in "gratitude." http://goo.gl/0447j

Opinion: This is interesting because it appears similar to the strategy Arianna Huffington used to build her Huffington Post website, and since she is now in charge of Patch I would guess this move is her handiwork.

Using volunteer writers worked well with Huffington Post, but I suspect that the contributors there built her website because of their political passion (the site leans left), not because they wanted to add to Arianna's millions.

Anyway, there are two things that occur to me:

First, I'm not sure people will be as anxious to work for free for what they may consider to be more of a business (Patch) than a cause (Huffington Post). But, I suppose, we shall see.

Second, I have never understood Patch's business model. Its expenses have always seemed too high. Still, we need good local journalism and Nathan McIntire and his team have been doing it. So I hope this is not an indication that Patch is abandoning professional journalism for mostly-volunteer reporting. I hope that's not happening, but I'm afraid that's how I would bet.

- Brad Haugaard