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Not a Warm Welcome for AOL Patch in Some Communities

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Patch, the AOL-owned hyper-local neighborhood news website, is springing up in communities all over the Los Angeles region, but not all communities are handing out a warm welcome. Over at Yo! Venice! writer Bret bemoans that the new Venice news site is run by someone who does not live in the community, but rather Hollywood. He compares the portal to Walmart, which, interestingly enough, is the same comparison Timothy Rutt of Altadenablog makes in an interview with LA Weekly in a story today.

In our opinion, it's too early to tell how quality Patch websites will be in the long run, but so far the experience has been uneven across the network. Saul Daniels, a long-time LA Times veteran has done some amazing work with Chatsworth while other local sites are just simply boring (and this comes from a guy who really, really, really enjoys reading city council agendas).

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