Los Altos Patch Directory
Competition for readers arrived in the local Los Altos newspaper business a couple of years ago in the form of the online only Patch.com, a brand of financially troubled AOL.com. Unlike the venerable “weekly,” The Los Altos Town Crier (LATC), Patch.com publishes content daily.
But only this year did the competition for advertisers begin. Los Altos Patch.com had been content to live off of national ads, but this year it began to promote free listings to Los Altos businesses – all the names and addresses already in a database. If you are the verifiable owner of the business you can “claim” the listing and add your own content including a photo. Reporter Connie Chung spent last Thursday April 19, hanging out downtown to help folks easily claim their listing.
Checking the Los Altos Patch directory, in the food-dining category, the uptake is not bad. What is bad is that customers can rate the business just like Yelp. Quite a few 1 stars. Ouch! What’s good is that Patch ran a “Reader’s Choice 2012 ” vote and story. Los Altos Patch has also added a real estate open house story every week with a convenient .pdf list.
Clearly, Adrianna Huffington is hoping to get some local Los Altos businesses and real estate companies to start buying online display ads. And maybe start paying for “grooming” of customer comments!
This free directory challenge has not gone unnoticed by LATC. The organization did a refresh of it’s web site which included….tada…a free business directory! But at this time the look and feel of the LATC directory is not competitive with Patch’s. It appears that to add your unique business content, you will need to have some kind of paid advertising relationship. Call Bruce Barton.
LATC hired Snow Technologies, the folks who designed and maintain the City of Los Altos Hills web site. Snow Technologies appears to have keep the quaint, old look of the orginial LATC site, but also seems to have added display ad insertion, a spot for a video ( Youtube channel), and a more powerful Search of the Archives )
Let’s reflect on the good points / weak points of our two town papers.
Frequency
LATC is printed weekly on paper (!) and used to do only weekly updates of the online version. That has changed, and the paper now updates it’s website during the week with Flashes. (Although it seems to remove them from the online Archives.) Patch.com can deliver fresh content to your email inbox daily or even more frequently. But some of the day’s stories might be from another Patch.com in another town – not always too relevant.
Content Breath
LATC is our newspaper of record, does a workmanlike job of covering the full local menu — government, lifestyle, business, crime, accident, society, school, and school sports news and issues. Its editorials are widely read and have impact. Patch.com has mainly lifestyle, crime, social and school content with intermittent coverage of government news. Patch is doing an extraordinary job covering the LASD – BCS issue, staying very balanced for the most part. And it is trying out some interesting live online discussion technology to cover LASD meetings in real time. It does not write editorials.
Patch is doing an extraordinary job covering the LASD – BCS issue, staying very balanced
Philosophy
Paul Nyberg, publisher, and Bruce Barton, editor, have a saying from Wyatt Erp in their conference room: “ Fast is good, accuracy is essential.” When I read anything in LATC, I do feel 99.9% sure it is a fact. The problem is no paper gets ALL the relevant facts, or covers all the stories people in its area might want to hear. A newspaper can’t do long-form journalism that helps us think. And also because of space constraints it has to pick what is news of interest to the many and not bother with the news of interest to the few. More obscure or very complex stories that will only appeal to a small minority of readers go into the “nice to have” dustbin.
When I read anything in LATC, I do feel 99.9% sure it is a fact.
Patch.com definitely does “fast,” but on occasion will get something wrong – for example, was that golf course home’s fire in a six-car garage or in a rented carriage house? Fortunately, these are not stories that affect our decision-making! I
Production Resources
LATC has a staff of at least 14. Los Altos Patch.com appears to have one full-time reporter-girl Friday and a few part-timers who may actually be volunteers.
Advertising Prowess
LATC is circulated to the greater Los Altos Community. There are about 15,000 parcels in the City of Los Altos, City of Los Altos Hill and the unincorporated areas. We take that as a rough estimate of circulation. We don’t know the “readership” and perhaps LATC doesn’t either. LATC has been the monopoly supplier for hyper-local advertising for over a decade…since that penny shopper disappeared. Its bread and butter are all the mom & pop retail and business services in the area.
Big chains can do direct mail and build sophisticated websites and email lists so we seldom see them advertising in the Crier. But direct mail and email lists have become affordable for mom & pops too.
Patch.com measures its reach by unique visitors, page views, and ad click-throughs. With its new free directory listing, it is taking some first steps to capture some local advertising dollars down the road.
EDITORIAL COMMENT:
This is probably a zero sum game.
Although AOL acquired Huffpo financially, Adrianna may acquire AOL, in practice… by being promoted to CEO at some point. Watch out when Adrianna is running the show. And it’s a cinch to predict more M&A in the local newspaper businesses of the Bay Area.
In the meantime, Los Altos Politico is delighted that LATC has responded to the heightened competition from Patch by hiring a younger staff and bringing in some fresh technology. The stories seem better. The paper is taking its role as the voice of Los Altos even more seriously than before. Bravo.
Los Altos Politico is delighted that LATC has responded to the heightened competition…Bravo
