AOL hires chief content officer for troubled Patch - Peter Lauria via Reuters ⇢

AOL hires Rachel Fishman Feddersen as Chief Content Officer for failing Patch, whihc was acquires for $150M, and which is estimated to have lost $150M more:

Peter Lauria via Reuters

AOL Inc, which has been investing heavily in content to make up for declining revenue from dial-up Internet access, has hired an executive for the newly created position of chief content officer at its struggling Patch hyperlocal news network.

The company will announce on Wednesday that Rachel Fishman Feddersen will be joining Patch in the new role reporting to Jon Brod, head of AOL Local, effective February 14.

Whatever the outcome of this hire, Patch is the wrong model for hyperlocal, which isn’t going to be a bunch of zipcode-based journalism. Hyperlocal will have to be much more than an attempt to replace the now- or soon-to-be defunct local papers or TV news shows. It will have to be much more about creating a place for public discourse than reporting on public discourse.

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