Patch Making a Difference Beyond Catonsville

If you have been following the news in the past week, you might have seen that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was using a state police helicopter to go to his son's baseball game.

The story was actually broken by , as the event occurred in a town where there is a Patch site. Patch's editor-in-chief Brian Farnham wrote about Patch's role after the event gained national attention.

In his blog, Farnham talked about how the story was reported locally and how it meant different things to the national media covering it. Patch's role was to report the facts and cover the story, as it was happening in that town. It was also equally important what the score of the baseball game was in that community, so Patch was also covering that in addition to what became #coptergate.

In Catonsville and Arbutus, we had our own breaking news story Thursday in the case of a on campus at UMBC. Arbutus Patch editor happened to be on campus covering the commencement for Lansdowne High School, and the massive fireball generated from the explosions happened almost right in front of him.

This is the type of story that we at Patch are well-positioned to report, as editors live and work in the communities they cover. Over the course of a week, we are out in the community doing interviews, visiting business owners and always working on stories. When breaking news happens, it doesn't take that long for us to get there. And we live here, so we'll keep following it as it develops.

If you're a regular reader of Catonsville Patch you'll know that I often write about the part of the job I love the most, which is making connections in the community through the site.

While we're still a new company and this site isn't even a year old, I believe we have written some great stories and provided a great service to the community. I think every community deserves the type of quality news coverage that Patch is providing, and the incident in New Jersey and the breaking news at UMBC are just two of those quality examples.

And rest assured, if any helicopters used by state officials happens to land anywhere in Catonsville, we'll be on top of that story.