Patch scales to 30,000 U.S. communities with AI newsletters
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Patch, the hyperlocal digital news platform, has expanded its editorial presence to nearly every town in the U.S. using AI, according to CEO Warren St. John.
Why it matters: The AI newsletters, which are trained to pull information from vetted sources — including from Patch — have expanded Patch's reach from 1,100 U.S. communities to 30,000 in just a few months.
- Of Patch's 3 million newsletter subscribers nationally, 400,000 subscribe to its new AI newsletter products, per St. John.
The big picture: The AI newsletters shift Patch's business from a local publisher to a hyperlocal information platform.
- The 120-person bootstrapped company, which was sold by AOL in 2014, is profitable and has been for many years.
- Asked whether Patch is looking for a buyer, St. John said, "We just want to run a sustainable business on our own terms."
How it works: The free newsletters are created using AI built on Patch datasets that are human-curated, St. John said.
- The newsletters include a list of five news stories that feature headlines and brief summaries with links to original articles on local publisher websites. Patch vets the sites its AI models can pull stories from.
- The emails include lists of upcoming local events pulled from multiple sources, including hundreds of Patch's own hyperlocal event calendars.
- They also feature customized updates on local weather, as well as trending local social media posts from Patch-vetted accounts, such as local police and fire department accounts.
- The newsletters are published twice weekly or daily, depending on the community.
Zoom in: The tech and infrastructure used to deploy the newsletters were developed internally by Patch engineers late last year, leveraging large language models from various generative AI platforms.
- St. John said the newsletters supplement the original reporting of its 85 full-time newsroom staffers and won't replace the work of any of Patch's journalists.
- The effort required Patch to develop a taxonomy that matched local town names to vetted publisher sites. AI models can often inadvertently pull news headlines from towns across different states with the same name.
Yes, but: St. John, who has been leading Patch for over a decade, concedes that the AI newsletters don't deliver as robust of a news experience as its human-curated products, but they do keep more people informed.
- While not a five-course meal, they do "a dependable, replicable job, giving you basic nutrition and catching you up," St. John said. "We can build on that. We can layer up over time."
- Case in point: Patch added a breaking news reporter to cover Georgia after seeing strong growth and engagement with new AI newsletter products there in its beta launch last summer.
Zoom out: In the few short months the product has been activated, Patch's revenue has seen a notable boost, St. John said.
- The AI newsletters deliver scale to Patch's existing self-serve platforms for local business ads, classified postings and local event promotions. Patch's self-serve platforms are its highest-margin revenue source.
- Previously, the majority of Patch site visitors couldn't sign up to receive additional newsletters or hyperlocal products. Now, Patch offers a newsletter product for the vast majority of zip codes in the U.S.
What to watch: The new AI email effort makes Patch a competitor to platform companies like Nextdoor, which is also starting to introduce local news content to its customized user feed.
