Unafraid to Have an Impact

It's true that I started calling it "Patch Con" because I thought it needed a snappier name. Something that would recall the playfulness of I-Con or Comic Con. But almost immediately while I was at Patch's Grassroots Regional Conference in New York City earlier this week, I fully understood and respected my company's choice of "Grassroots" as the event's official name.

All Patch local and regional editors from the East Coast gathered at Grassroots with our editor-in-chief and upper management team to talk about Patch's role in the community and where we're headed. It's a grassroots effort to explore and expand hyperlocal journalism, with a focus on community engagement – that is, you.

We want Three Village Patch to be an internet destination that informs, educates, answers questions, and inspires you to get involved. We can't be successful without your voice to complement our own. Come back often, tell us how we're doing, and tell us what you want to see covered. Click here to see how you can contact me.

But there's more to this message than just a reiteration of the same "Hey, we're over here" kind of statement we made back in June when we launched Three Village Patch.

At Grassroots, we were treated to a special guest speaker, one whose name is not unfamiliar in Three Village after her appearance at Stony Brook University this past Monday: Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. Her message was that we need to cover stories in a way that will be part of the solution. According to Huffington, it's OK for what we write to have an impact. Having an impact doesn't mean picking sides, of course, but we also need to come to terms with the possibility that the truth doesn't always lie squarely in the middle.

"To have an impact, without being partisan, while being factual is one of the highest objectives we can have," Huffington said.

Not only do we need to have our facts right, but we also need to "tap into some kind of deeper wisdom."

Of course we'll keep on covering the school board, the university, local government, police and fire incidents, sports, and the local business community – all the things that make this town tick. But there's more to it than just that, and that's what I want to bring to the forefront. I emerged from Grassroots with a refreshed attitude towards modern journalism, and it's my goal to apply it here in Three Village.