AOL’s Patch to Hire as Many as 800 New Journalists

AOL’s Patch websites are looking to hire as many as 800 full-time employees at the local-news operations across the country, Bloomberg reports.

Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of AOL’s media operations, said she intends to increase content at the Patch websites covering about 800 local markets, and AOL may hire as many as one full-time journalist per Patch site. Huffington said she will also name a new editorial executive to work on its social-media soon.

Great news for locally-oriented journalists! We wonder if it will counteract all the chatter about whether the unpaid bloggers suing Huffington have a cause of action. AOL-Huffington Post news, we have noticed, swings dramatically from good to bad, often several times in the course of one day. It’s like the PR team hoards good press releases to drop whenever there is a lawsuit or mass firing. Whatever they’re doing, it seems to be working.

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