Pros
Working from home, while it had its downsides, really was excellent. Initially it also provided reporters the opportunity to really get to know their coverage areas. That all changed after the first couple of years, though. There was also great flexibility - at first - as to how we chose to cover our areas. That, too, changed after the first couple of years. Working at Patch also had the potential to help reporters grow their networks, both within the company and throughout the areas they covered. There were, to be fair, some amazing reporters and editors scattered throughout the Patch network. It was a joy to get to work with some of them.
Cons
Where to begin? Across the board, reporters and editors dealt with high school-esque, clique-ish behavior. With little to no oversight, that behavior had the potential to, and did at times, could become untenable. After the first couple of years, we began the steady move away from journalism to curated clickbait. We were told to hire "writers" from the community, many who had little-to-no journalism experience, but we couldn't afford professional freelancers, anyway. We were easily working 12-15 hour days regularly. If those hours had really been dedicated to journalism, I might still complain.. but I would see the value. Instead they were dedicated to creating identical, banal, vapid pieces of content dictated from HQ with no regard for the needs of our individual, local markets. We had no copy editors, and kids just out of college, who didn't know the difference between "its" and "it's," were editing final copy. It was a disaster, embarrassing, and worst of all, for those of us who considered ourselves journalists, we really did not have opportunity to learn or grow as professionals.