Not a Slow News Day in Sewickley

As you may already know, the parent company of Patch has laid off all of its Pittsburgh-area editorial staff, while leaving the local Patch sites intact. As Halloween approaches, I'm looking for a zombie metaphor to describe the present condition of these sites, but it looks like one prominent media blogger beat me to it.

I've been active as a blogger on the local Patch sites for over 2 years now. As much as a local feel could be experienced there, and the site presented a way for local groups and individuals to utilize an online presence effectively, I always found it paradoxical that a hyperlocal website could be controlled by a large national corporation.

For me, the factors leading to the stripping of human resources from the Patch sites are directly connected to unreasonable revenue expectations on the part of someone in New York who doesn't know the Pittsburgh area.

Without an astute professional such as Larissa Dudkiewicz at the helm, it looks as if Sewickley Patch is being populated mainly with news stories distributed from an out of area source. Several local bloggers and others are attempting to maintain some level of local relevance of the individual sites in most of the areas affected, and I'm hopeful that more interested people in the Sewickley area will step up and do the same.

Among my primary focus areas as a blogger are breaking news events, and providing additional information and insight into areas of personal interest and/or expertise.

With that in mind, Monday, October 28 was a more eventful day than usual in the greater Sewickley area. From the morning on, the local news outlets were abuzz with the following:

• In the 500 block of Glenfield Road in Aleppo Township, fire crews from Aleppo, Emsworth, Ben Avon, Bellevue, Ohio Township, Sewickley, and Groveton (Robinson Township) battled a house fire in a 2-story single family structure. Two residents were displaced by the fire. The Allegheny County Fire Marshal is investigating.
• Sewickley Academy found itself in the unique position of drawing all manner of media attention with the revelation that the school fired a teacher last week, and also contacted the Allegheny County District Attorney's office with information on the teacher that was dismissed. This has apparently triggered an FBI investigation as well.
• Later in the afternoon, Quaker Valley High School was evacuated, and the building searched, after an alleged bomb threat was found in a restroom. The scenario was repeated on Tuesday afternoon, with students seen sitting on the artificial turf of the nearby football stadium until the 'all clear' was given.
  QV Superintendent Dr. Joseph Clapper, in a letter published on the district website, reiterated the district's intent to pursue and punish those found responsible for the threats. He also urged parents to "Please help to reinforce the philosophy that school safety is everyone’s business by talking with your child about the importance of informing an adult anytime something is said or done that makes him/her feel unsafe".

Has the Sewickley community's experience with Patch been a successful one? Does it show that a site that belongs as much to the community as it does to its editorial staff can help to communicate, inform, educate, and inspire on the extremely local level? More importantly, can it (or something like it) exist as a combined labor of love and business enterprise, and not necessarily one dedicated to the extremes of either?

The answer to those questions perhaps lies in those who are excited about the possibilities of new media, combined with enough old media expertise to make the business end of it work. 

Some of that is already in process.  Several former Patch editors are joining into a new local site venture, now visible at the site AcrossRoss.com. The site's editor, Richard Cook, formerly ran the North Hills Patch. Plans are in the works for additional "Across" sites covering Moon and Cranberry - Larissa Dudkiewicz is slated to shift her focus to Moon Township as part of this effort.

Does Sewickley deserve similar attention? Judging from what went on this week so far, combined with how Patch, in its prime, enhanced the experience of living in this area, I would say "absolutely".

While in Colorado I wrote several times about efforts to engage local communities into a cohesive and sustainable online news and information presence. I often held up the YourHub network of local websites, operated by The Denver Post, as an example of a viable, well-run way to do this. Judging from my most recent look, it still is.

Several media blogs offered up speculation that the "unstaffed" Patch sites in 17 media markets are staying up in hopes that AOL can sell them. If there's any truth to that, maybe there are some local professional media companies in the Pittsburgh area willing to reclaim the "zombies" into the land of the living, rather than just killing them off.

On that note, Happy Halloween.

The opinions expressed in this weblog are solely my own as an individual and private citizen, and do not represent the opinion or policy of my family, my employer, or any other private or public entity.

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