Huffington Post Joins AOL

It's only been news for about 14 hours, but AOL's acquisition of Huffington Post has become the top media story for the day.

But what does this mean for Patch? I wanted to take a moment and talk about this.

As AOL is Patch's parent company and Patch is a local news outlet on the web, how will Arianna Huffington's website affect local news.

According to Tim Armstrong, AOL's CEO, "the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform."

 "This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way," Armstrong added in a note to employees.

Huffington is now the editor-in-chief and president of the Huffington Post Media Group which overseas AOL's news outlets, including Patch.

Personally, I read Huffington Post and their stories are some of the stories passed around on social media outlets the most - linked on Facebook and Twitter often and usually the top news spot in a Google search. They have allowed citizen journalism to have a voice in national and global issues, something we at Patch do on a regular basis at the local level.

Although AOL and Huffington Post will be working out the exact meaning of this new partnership in the next few weeks and months, for you as a Patch reader, I hope this new partnership will allow you to get more news at your fingertips and give you a place to voice your concerns and thoughts on not only local issues, but national and global ones as well.