A Slow Death For Patch?

I used to have Patch as one of the three pages that would auto open when I launched my browser - Yahoo, Facebook and Patch. I thoroughly enjoyed the local flavor, up to the minute reporting and the posts and comments that were made by the likes of Cat, Rat, Jow, Maurice, Geoff, George, Mike, Lt Drat and many others.

Sometime towards the end of July Patch changed its format and interface. Gone are the tried and true areas of SPEAK OUT, TOWN SQUARE and all the other methods that Livermore residents could use to post both useful and occasionally useless information. I see nothing from any of the regular commentators that kept the Patch pages filled with trivia, history, call-outs on city government, humor, election fodder and the nuggets of gold that they produced.

I have been patient and looked at the new Patch all month and see that virtually no one is even commenting on any of the Patch posts. Articles that used to have dozens and even hundreds of comments and replies have dwindled to near-nothing. At the time of the writing of the original letter to the Editor there were 20 editor provided articles on the homepage, with a total of 7 comments. There are no Livermore resident based articles or posts at all.

Instead of SPEAK OUT and TOWN SQUARE areas, Patch chose to create new areas that link to other Patch sites across the US.  There was an article there about the UCLA flood that was posted on or about  July 29th and it was still listed as ‘new’ news three weeks later The Marple Newtown Patch (not even in Californwas prominently promoted in the state news section, yet there were NO other state news stories that had anything to do with California.

Was this change done on purpose to squelch the voices of the local public?

If so, Patch has succeeded, and I bet along the way, Patch readership has gone downhill dramatically.  If that was their intent - to stop all the local people from posting - then they have succeeded, and have made a failure of that once, really good online publication.

I have removed my Patch bookmark and browser auto option for Patch, because it - AND its content - is no longer relevant to me.