Our City has a new online news website – College Park Patch.

The Patch is a national network of news websites that is run by AOL network. Back in March this year, AOL poured $50 million into Patch. According to TechCrunch,

Another fascinating tidbit in the filing is related to hyperlocal news site Patch.Patch, which currently offers hyperlocal news for 37 small towns and communities in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and California, was acquiredby AOL in June of last year. According the the 10-K, AOL plans to invest up to $50 million in hyperlocal news site Patch during the remainder of 2010. And it’s been reported that Patch will roll out to “hundreds” of communities in the future.

So far I like the Patch. The best part of the website is that it’s purely “local”. The other news site that have been reporting city news are the Gazette, and the DiamondBack . While the Gazette used to exclusively cover College Park news before, recently their local editions have started to cover other neighboring cities such as Huntsville and Mount Rainier. The Diamondback is a great UMD student newspaper, and thus understandably does not cover the entire city, especially the northern part  of our City. The College Park Patch will probably be recognized as College Park only news site. I hope they stay like that way in future.

I first came to know about the Patch a few months ago through its editor Lauren Evans, who came to one of our CBE (Committee for a Better Environment) meeting at the City Hall. She has also recently become part of our College Park Day organizing committee.

Like other community news site, the Patch lets you create your own profile and submit comments (OP-Eds etc.) to the site. The site also has an impressive section on the city’s business directory.