
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Everyone agrees that the decline/disapperance of local news is a big problem. No one agrees about the best way to solve it.
So let’s check in on a new AI push from Patch, the people who have been trying to do local news, online, at scale, for more than two decades.
Last spring, Patch CEO Warren St. John announced that he was running local newsletters for thousands of communities across the U.S., without employing a single human to make them. This week, I asked him how it’s going.
No one is going to mistake these “Patch AM” emails for a fully-staffed local news outlet — and in fact Patch relies on other local outlets to help populate their newsletters. But they also seem like a well-meaning effort to provide residents with something, as opposed to nothing. Or, in St. John’s words: He’s providing them with a Kind bar, not a 5-course meal.
Does that make you nervous about the future of news? Or optimistic? Somewhere in between? Take a listen and let me know what you think.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
4.4
549549 ratings
Everyone agrees that the decline/disapperance of local news is a big problem. No one agrees about the best way to solve it.
So let’s check in on a new AI push from Patch, the people who have been trying to do local news, online, at scale, for more than two decades.
Last spring, Patch CEO Warren St. John announced that he was running local newsletters for thousands of communities across the U.S., without employing a single human to make them. This week, I asked him how it’s going.
No one is going to mistake these “Patch AM” emails for a fully-staffed local news outlet — and in fact Patch relies on other local outlets to help populate their newsletters. But they also seem like a well-meaning effort to provide residents with something, as opposed to nothing. Or, in St. John’s words: He’s providing them with a Kind bar, not a 5-course meal.
Does that make you nervous about the future of news? Or optimistic? Somewhere in between? Take a listen and let me know what you think.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
7,843 Listeners
10,734 Listeners
2,679 Listeners
9,522 Listeners
666 Listeners
3,646 Listeners
3,678 Listeners
3,131 Listeners
3,143 Listeners
1,484 Listeners
91 Listeners
2,164 Listeners
43 Listeners
23,612 Listeners
5,458 Listeners
711 Listeners
5,472 Listeners
6,428 Listeners
2,285 Listeners
368 Listeners
1,220 Listeners
1,076 Listeners
106 Listeners
152 Listeners
3,427 Listeners
1,737 Listeners
1,109 Listeners
1,330 Listeners
208 Listeners
59 Listeners
413 Listeners
35 Listeners