Not such a big fan anymore.

I have been a fan of local news from Cleveland Heights Patch the past two years. 

When I first found Patch, I was impressed with the effort it was making to revive real local news reporting.  Local government coverage, business reports, real community news and event calendars.  Substantive reports on important issues.  Local voices like mine, too.  I recommended Patch to my friends and neighbors, and participated in Patch promotions to lend my name to what I thought was a very worthwhile endeavor.

Lately though, Patch reads like it has changed strategies to attract readers.  Mimicking local television news broadcasts, nearly every daily lead story now is about crime.  Sensationalized crime.  If I didn’t know better, I might surmise I was living in a war zone instead of my rather peaceful Cleveland Heights neighborhood.  Eight of the past 10 days, the lead story has been crime related.  The IHOP shooting, burglaries and break-ins, the police blotter, and on and on it goes.  Today, a recap of burglaries from the police blotter and another story about the accused dog shooter (duh?) were deemed more newsworthy than stories about our city program for curbside recycling of computers and toxic electronic waste, and an in depth story about financial assistance available to homeowners for major repairs through the Home Repair Resource Center (disclosure; I am HRRC board member). 

The Patch narrative now also seems to be about "Cheap houses for sale in Cleveland Heights!"  Your regular headline the past several months, not mine. There is an occasional home featured in normal price ranges; however the narrative readers get is that property values are collapsing all around us. Really?  Should we run for the hills?  This kind of shallow reporting makes little sense from any perspective.

I’ve been a student of journalism, and an avid consumer of quality news reporting for most of my life, and I understand all too well the relationship between exciting, enticing headlines and advertising revenue that creates profits and incentives to try to make a living in this business.  And I got excited watching Patch rise from the muck of today’s media.  That said, it is disappointing to watch it start to decline into the mire so quickly.