Ledes don’t come much cheezier than this:

“It was the purrrfect weekend for cat lovers at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium.”

So begins a recent story about a cat show headlined “Little Miss Feline.”

This feather-light feature did not appear in print-based, “legacy media” like The Baltimore Sun or Towson Times but in the online-only Lutherville-Timonium Patch, one of two dozen recently-launched “hyper-local” websites in Maryland that are part of a much-watched new AOL-owned national chain.

To be fair, the HoCo Times and the Sun have their share of schlocky writing, rewritten press-releases and soft features, as almost all media apparently do in Baltimore these days. And Patch sites, which first appeared in the area in August, have already reported some original information and even broken some news.

But given the big talk about how Patch is going to reinvent local news-gathering with $50 million and 500 new reporters nationwide, it’s striking how much thin, cat-show-type content there is on these sites.

Recent stories have included this piece, which notifies readers that the PSAT’s are coming up and students should bring a # 2 pencil.

Then there’s this dressed-up government press release announcing that “the 2007 Clean Indoor Air Act, passed under Gov. Martin O’Malley, has helped Maryland achieve a 32 percent drop in adult smoking.”

The headline is “Fewer smokers in Maryland, Perry Hall.” A woman in the story who doesn’t like the smell of cigarette smoke was apparently interviewed in the establishment referenced in this we’ve-got-a-local-angle lede:

“Long gone are the days of relaxing with a cigarette while you wait for your Keno game to play out at the Batters Box sports bar on Belair Road.”

Then there are the pieces like this one, about an Ellicott City acupuncturist, that hardly pretend to be anything other than free ads.

“I felt that Mr. Lee was very thorough and detailed in his approach with a great bedside manner for anyone who might be new to Asian herbal and holistic modalities,” wrote Soo Young Lee in an Oct. 10 “business review.”

“Please call to make an appointment and leave a message if you get the voicemail. (410) 300-0693”

Media on the margin

If the journalism doesn’t look like Pulitzer material, the reporters themselves can be forgiven. They’re young, work from home and put in long hours for what sources tell us is modest pay, approximately $35,000 to $40,000 with benefits.

(Patch editors declined to comment on the specifics of salary and conditions, but we’re told 70-hour weeks are not uncommon and that freelancers have been offered as little as $40 for a story with photos. Production quotas, sources say, are something like three “stories” a day and a Tweet every three or four hours.)

That brisk pace for Patch staff helps explain how AOL expects to match the content output of a traditional newspaper at 4.1 percent of the cost —  as AOL president Warren Webster explained it to media analyst Ken Doctor recently.

Beyond the production demands, could another reason for the less-than-compelling content be the focus on suburban and hyper-local.

Cracking wise on the fact that all the Patch sites across the country use the same design template, a Baltimore public relations executive remarked “aren’t all suburbs the same anyway?”

That kind of thinking is clearly anathema in Patchville.

Suburban news, ready for its close-up

Patch’s sweet spot, according to Patch’s southern region editor Tim Windsor, will not be major urban centers, but the fringe communities outside of the city that are under-served by existing media.

These were the first places where newspapers made their cuts. Baltimoreans need only think back to the multiple county editions of the Sun that have vanished in recent years.

Newspapers had to make those cuts “as the financial model has come undone,” Windsor said.  “More often than not, they’ve retreated to their urban core.  They’ve had to pull back from outside areas, probably not by choice.”

“Patch has its own model, its own identity,” he said.

That model has some valuable features, especially compared with the Patuxent sites: the design is airy and easy to navigate (though links are frequently still bad). The editors put up videos and photo galleries pretty quickly. (Republican Howard County Council candidate opining on the dangers of living wage laws. Photos of cute kitties from that cat show!) There’s also a smidge of refreshing diversity, at least of the Asian variety, in the Ellicott City Patch: lots of references to Korean businesses, churches and food.

Problem is, that boosterism for local businesses infects the editorial content. A feature about Ravens running back Ray Rice appearing at a Timonium sports memorabilia store ends with this.

“Great Moments is a locally owned and operated store with locations in Westminster, White Marsh and Timonium.” Huh?

Journalistic ethics and quality aside, will these corporate-funded start-ups threaten Maryland media outlets?

According to Windsor, Patch isn’t interested in needling traditional media or aggregating existing coverage.  Staffers speak of Patch’s stance in the Baltimore media market as cooperative, adding to the overall quality of regional news coverage.

“We’re not in this to hurt existing media.  We don’t win if someone else loses,” Windsor said.

“I think our role is complementary and additive.  There’s enough news out there and we’re not trying to re-report what the Sun or Towson Times is doing.”

Existing media: anxious, blaise

Sources at the Sun-owned Patuxent Publishing (which publishes Towson Times and the other Baltimore-area newspapers most threatened by Patch) say management does not regard Patch as “complementary” at all.

“There’s a lot of talk about what to do and I know we’re going to be beefing up our neighborhood pages,” one staff reporter said.

The Baltimore Sun’s editor, Mary Corey, referred the Brew to her communications director, who then never returned calls or emails.

The Sun’s Howard County reporter, Larry Carson, meanwhile, was comfortable talking about Patch in part because he barely knew of its existence. (He said his only possible encounter with a Patch person was “someone shooting video at a fire station groundbreaking in Savage.”)

Carson and an education reporter (who also covers Anne Arundel County) are all that’s left of the Sun’s bureau in Howard, which once included 8 reporters, two editors and an editorial assistant. “This is it now,” said Carson, who works from home.

Looking for the first time at Ellicott City Patch, Carson said “Hmmm, I don’t see much here. . . Well, it’ll probably get better after it’s been around for a while.”

Changing of the guard?

If Carson sounds a little jaded, his Patch counterpart up in Towson, Tyler Waldman, comes off pretty psyched about the prospect of covering local news. Waldman is the editor of TowsonPatch. He heard about the job from a friend while working on a project together as a student at Towson University, and was hired in May upon graduation.  He is the sole full-timer at the Towson Patch, and relies on a large pool of area freelancers to provide additional content.

Waldman, like all new Patch hires, received a journalism-in-a-box kit that included a MacBook laptop, digital camera, an air-card for web access anywhere, a Blackberry, a police scanner, and a power inverter to keep it all juiced on the road.  His job description includes writing, editing, taking photos, meeting with officials, hiring freelancers, compiling the crime blotter, and anything else that needs attention.

One minute he’s covering a candidate speech, the next, story-izing the closing of the Dulaney Superfresh. He stokes a daily blast with the weather and unattributed tidbits gleaned from reporting or other media.

“Last night, the County Council voted on and passed laws that, among other things, ban a substance called “spice” and limit hours so-called hucksters can operate. Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty activist (and yes, a nun), will give a talk in Goucher College’s Athenaeum tonight.”  There’s a modern feel to the amount of  “voice” on the site, though  the sensibility being voiced feels a little gee-whiz.

“Basically I’m a one-man news outlet,” Waldman says.

When asked if he ever worries about missing a story while juggling so many roles, Waldman concedes that there are limitations in sheer manpower.   He looks to the bigger media picture and Patch’s place as a cooperative part of it.

“Missing stories happen in every outlet, but the fact that we are here now and there are more reporters working in the county means there will be fewer total stories overlooked.  We see ourselves as part of a larger ecosystem,” Waldman said.

“Patch isn’t as much about bringing the new toys as it is about bringing the type of community news people used to do.

Media watchers: waiting to be impressed

So far, the stories Patch does look into haven’t generally been of the deeply-reported variety.

Lead items on the Greater Annapolis Patch recently included a recipe from a local food blogger-consultant headlined “Kale: King of Calcium,” and a 275-word story on the tight race for the District 6 county council seat that reads as though it was reported from a desk chair – no quotes, no first-hand polling-place accounts.

“The content itself is not compelling,” said Alan Mutter, a former newspaper reporter, media executive, and mew media consultant who runs the “Reflections of a Newsosaur” blog in Silicon Valley.  “When these sites try to do news stories, they are not very professionally done.  Last night the lead story on the College Park Patch was ‘How to Gussie Up Your Guest Room’ with a bar of soap, and the top restaurant listed in the food guide was Taco Bell.”

Mutter questioned the utility of Patch sites at all, asking what they offer that others, with more reported-out content, do not. Lopossay, who had the same reaction to Patch content, was a bit more sympathetic.

“These are kids whose only experience is working for the (Towson U.) Towerlight,” said Lopossay, who said freelancing barely pays her bills.

“It’s sad, they’re working really long days and weekends (at Patch) and just killing themselves. I know, I see it on their personal Facebook pages,” she said. “But they’re passionate. I tell my students, ‘Maybe you guys will find an answer.’”

Snipes and scoops

When critics snicker about lightweight content in Patch, Windsor offers up Doug Donovan. Donovan, a former Sun City Hall reporter, brought his daily journalism skills to bear on a recent story for Lutherville-TimoniumPatch about 5th District county council candidate Gordon Harden failing to pay taxes for several years. Donovan went to the Towson courthouse to dig up the tax liens filed against Harden to build his story.

(Like other reporters at new local news websites, however, Donovan has had to scrap to get recognition. The Sun gave Patch “first reported by” credit for the story, but only, he complains, in the print edition. Bel Air Patch, he notes, had better luck getting Sun credit for first reporting the story of a 14-year-old there hit and killed by a car.)

But will all Patch staffers have the instincts, knowledge, and perhaps least likely of all, the time for such shoe-leather journalistic enterprise?

“They’re acting as chief cook and bottle washer,” said Joan Jacobson, former Sun reporter, sometime Brew contributor and a longtime leader of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild’s Sun unit.

“One thing I have noticed is that the industry’s willingness to use cheaper labor is expanding,” Jacobson said, after reviewing the Patch sites. “It’s a dumbing down of journalism, and an extension of the idea of trying to do more with less.  It all looks to me to be very simplistic.”

Patch coverage is only going to be as good as the entrepreneurial journalists on the ground ferreting out stories and cultivating sources. Will the company give its staff the time and training to distinguish between news and promotional flack and produce work that matters?  Will the business model make that possible?

Whatever Patch does, a wounded industry will be watching.