Anna Tarkov

Poynter Online — Not long after he started working for Journatic, Ryan Smith felt there was something not quite right about what the company was doing. The Chicago freelance journalist started working for Journatic, which provides outsourced journalism work for newspapers, in January of 2011, and he was glad to have steady work, even if it paid $10 an hour with no benefits.

Poynter Online — The Tribune Company has gotten most of the media's attention lately for working with Journatic. They've even launched an internal investigation into the content provider. But as Brian Timpone told us, Journatic works with many more news companies.

Knight Digital Media Center — Amid much hoopla and skepticism about Patch, AOL's group of 800-plus hyperlocal news sites, little has been said about the sites themselves. How much news do they produce? How do their users interact with them? To find out, I took a closer look at four Patch sites around the country for a month.

AnnaTarkov.com — The media ecosystem needs journalists, but it needs other players as well.