I've never had everything I did right as a lifelong journalist -- great ideas, initiative, work ethic, network of sources, knowledge and concern about the community I was covering -- shot down by such sheeple Patch called middle and upper managers who gave no credit or control to seasoned people like myself on the ground representing the company to the readers (the most important part of community news that was and still is completely ignored by the people that still somehow run Patch). The whole experience ended up being a nightmarish exercise in surviving passive-aggressive micromanaging behaviors that turned into personally obsessive in my case on the part of my immediate manager. I filed three letters of grievance to HR in regards to the outright harassment I received and absolutely nothing was done -- my manager was always protected.
Aside from zero regard to the way humans desire to not be personally harassed 24-7 and to have a life outside of work, Patch had no longterm plan for profitability, and the game plan as dictated by corporate for us changed minute by minute with, again, no regard to our on-the-ground sensibilities of what each of our unique audiences wanted. I woke up with anxiety attacks not only in deep dread of starting my day (and ending it) under the constant psychotic virtual watch of my sociopathic manager but also facing churning out god-awful mandatory daily posts such as "5 Things To Do Today" (to be posted at 6 a.m.!), "Best Places to Get Chicken Wings This Weekend" (my area had maybe four bars that served the same old frozen wings the same exact way), and "Activities for Mom and the Kids" -- list after list after list thought up by the brilliant corporate think-tank at Patch to "engage readers."
The only real push back from local editors (most of whom lacked any kind of protest to any kind of stupidity slathered on them due to fear of losing their jobs) came when we'd lost all money to pay freelancers, had no help at all to fill the sites -- and the minimum post count per day was cranked up from 7 to 12, all to be done by ourselves! The content was worn down to lists, picture posts, police blurbs, occasional fluff written by a reader, aggregated (i.e. stolen) links to real news, and maybe, just maybe -- one real story, researched and reported as fast as humanly possible by us, the local editor trained in multi-layered storytelling and formerly passionate about putting our skills to practice before working for Patch.
Somehow, Patch sites are still active today under the watch of about 70 editors (down from about 1,000 I think) who oversee 10 -12 sites each. How that is humanly possible I don't know. And neither do they.
