AOL's brand of local news websites are growing faster than ever. Just last week, LAist posted about two new Patches in the San Gabriel Valley and today are two more in North Hollywood/Toluca Lake and in Monrovia. Craig Clough will take the helm for North Hollywood/Toluca Lake, which is likely going to be tough. While some of his fellow site editors have very defined and sometimes relatively small cities and neighborhoods, North Hollywood on its own is a behemoth. That is, if he will cover news and events north of Burbank Boulevard, where the NoHo Arts District ends and lower income neighborhoods start coming into play as you move northward. One of the criticisms thrown at AOL is for not launching in lower-income cities where hard local news is especially needed (in southeastern L.A. County, for example, where Bell, among a number of scandal-filled cities, are located). Clough's introduction video, however, hints at covering those least covered areas.
The second Patch site to launch today is in Monrovia, bringing AOL's San Gabriel Valley presence to four cities (Altadena, South Pasadena and Sierra Madre are the others). According to its editor Nathan McIntire, a USC journalism graduate and former Pasadena Star News reporter, Monrovia was the third "general law" city in California.
