NPR
August 17, 2010

AOL is best known as an Internet service provider, the one that sent out all those promotional CDs back in the ’90s. Now, the company is working to reinvent itself, and as part of that, it is making a big push into hyperlocal journalism with a project called Patch.

On Tuesday, it launched its 100th local news site. Patch says it will expand to 500 small communities by the end of this year, but it faces big competition and an uncertain future.

Lauren Evans holds a BlackBerry up to her ear as she quizzes a College Park, Md., police sergeant about a recent wave of robberies. She is surrounded not by the buzz of a traditional newsroom but by other customers in Starbucks.

Evans says she works “pretty much anywhere” — from bagel shops to the curb outside a fire station.

She was headed there to ask some questions about a new firetruck but ended up getting a call on another story. Evans describes herself as a one-woman news-producing machine.

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