Patch is basically hyper local news. I've followed the one for my town in the past (Kensington, MD) and there's a lot of overlap and shared stories with neighboring ones. (Silver Spring, Bethesda, other areas in Montgomery County) The ones around here are fairly decent and get good coverage of community-related news like school stuff. I haven't seen any ads masquerading as stories on the ones here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened elsewhere.