No, you're not losing it! Patch looks a bit different today. We made a few changes to the homepage to make it even more user-friendly. And we've moved a couple pieces of furniture. For those keeping score:
* We tweaked some words in our navigation bar to save space (e.g., "Traffic & Gas" is now "Commute")
* We moved the weather icon next to the Patch branding so you can find it more quickly!
* We moved, well, YOU closer to the top! (Our "shout stream" is now front and center to show all your comments off.)
* And of course we prettified a few things.
While the site might look a little different, we still offer the same robust coverage of everything happening in Reading and North Reading. That was, is, and will always be our mission. We hope you'll let us know what you think of our tweaks - drop a line or offer a comment below!
Community Editor Danielle Masterson danielle.masterson@patch.com
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Showers with a chance of thunderstorms in the morning... Then showers likely in the afternoon. Patchy fog. Near steady temperature in the mid 60s. South winds 5 to 10 mph...becoming northwest in the afternoon. Chance of rain 90 percent.
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Barry
10:33 am on Thursday, March 29, 2012
Too bad we're still stuck with a combined Patch.
The combined Patch stinks.
Few in either town wants to read about the other town.
Christine
10:47 am on Thursday, March 29, 2012
I agree. Reading and North Reading are two very different towns. Why share one Patch?
peter lucci
12:04 pm on Thursday, March 29, 2012
You all know the old saying, "you get what you pay for"...the big wigs at AOL corporate headquarters couldn't care less whether Reading & No Reading had their own Patches. They just continue to bleed red ink.
Chris Fuccione
12:28 pm on Thursday, March 29, 2012
I saw this title and was hoping that AOL woke up and separated the two towns but I was wrong.
John Intorcio
1:03 pm on Thursday, March 29, 2012
I was fooled by the title too. I miss the "hyperlocal" content that Patch was founded on.
Fred Chalmers
4:35 pm on Thursday, March 29, 2012
How about creating two new tabs on the home page: one for Reading news and one for NR news. It solves two big problems at once: maintains the illusion of a combined site for the AOL nitwits who dictated the merger, while also providing your users with a quick & easy way to segregate the two towns.
Mary
9:46 am on Friday, March 30, 2012
Contrary to popular belief. Reading and North Reading are completely two separate towns with two different ways of life. Please, please separate the Patches again!!! I don't really care what's going on in North Reading. I live in Reading. I'm sure people from North Reading feel the same way. Both towns have their own identities. Next you'll be putting Reading-North Reading together with Lynnfield because we were all part of Lynn Village a couple hundred years ago.
John Intorcio
11:07 am on Friday, March 30, 2012
Don’t be fooled by the justification based on similarity of the towns. It’s all about expenses to the site owners and how many eyeballs they can offer advertisers. By consolidating sites, there are more eyeballs per advertisement and therefore more revenue. Don ‘t blame your local editors either – I’d bet you dollars to donuts that they weren’t in favor of the decision. What I don’t quite get is why the “output” content of the site can’t stay segregated yet still combined as an advertising “bundle” for the site’s clients. It would be as simple for the editors as placing a tag on each article so that it would appear with the proper town’s stories and sho0wing the same advertisements on both sites. Keep squawking. If enough of us complain long and loud enough…
M.L. Fox
10:20 am on Monday, September 3, 2012
Not loving this. Two totally different towns.. Change it back please!