The media landscape is changing fast, and there’s a great new source for hyper-local news called Patch.com, a network of news sites for small geographic areas. There already are four Patch sites in Cobb County (East Cobb, Northeast Cobb, Kennesaw, Smyrna-Vinings), and a fifth one (about South Cobb) is coming soon.
The Smyrna-Vinings Patch coverage area includes Atlanta Galleria and offers an opportunity for tenants at Atlanta Galleria to learn about what is happening in our local area and also to submit news about their companies.
Patch, an AOL-owned media play with hundreds of community sites across the country, demonstrates a trend across journalism: more narrowly focused media. In some cases, as with Patch, the narrow focus is geographic. Think about it: While the AJC is focused on all of metro Atlanta and even includes statewide news, the Smyrna-Vinings Patch covers a fraction of just one county. In other cases, outlets are popping up to focus narrrowly on a partcular industry. For instance, there are several email blasts, including Bisnow and Real Estate Rooster, focused just on news about Atlanta’s commercial real estate market (Thanks again Bisnow for the recent story about Atlanta Galleria).
So what does this say about journalism long-term? Hard to say, but for now we enjoy both our old-school big-picture media (Did we mention the AJC recently did a story about the Galleria? And we were also mentioned in the Atlanta Business Chronicle not too long ago?), as well as new, cool hyper-targeted sites like Patch!
Congratulations Patch team on all the launches in Cobb and beyond!
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