What if...

With newspaper bankruptcies spreading, a persistent question is: what if a city's lone daily newspaper goes out of business? Then what? Patch, a start-up company founded by Google ad man Tim Armstrong, is testing the brave new waters to see if it has the answer. The site has set up shop in parts of New Jersey, trying to see if a small nucleus of editors and contributors can be more successful at attracting user contributions than purely crowdsourced sites and other well-intentioned near-failures. Newspaper companies would do well to closely track its progress. The idea of a newspaper/citizen journalism/social network hybrid is appealing, although during a recession newspapers should probably focus on growing internet revenue and maintaining a nominal level of local reporting first and foremost.

If an upstart local news operation like Patch wants to start gaining name recognition and legitimacy, there's a path that has already been blazed by a number of sites on a national level: Offer up exclusive content and editor/reporter interviews to local TV stations, free of charge. Witness how TMZ took off when its videos of celebs behaving badly (Michael Richards, anyone?) were played over and over again (with a TMZ bug burned in) on entertainment TV. Look at how within a year of its launch, Politico had enviable brand recognition because its reporters and editors were appearing on numerous cable news shows (with politico.com below their name in the lower thirds). It's truly a mutually-beneficial relationship. Mr. Armstrong can thank me later for the free advice.