Happy 1st B-Day, Palo Alto Patch!

Palo Alto Patch, which launched Sept. 22, 2010, celebrated its one-year anniversary Friday evening in the company of good friends who now make up its growing online family.

Gary Anwyl, a member of the bluegrass Stoney Mountain Ramblers from the Menlo Park/Palo Alto area, joined four other musicians who got the cozy, but lively crowd dancing, enjoying good food and drinks and having a great time in the AOL building's auditorium on 395 Page Mill Rd.

"I look at the website and it has a lot of the latest stuff on it," Anwyl said. "There's certainly value to real-time news."

Faithful reader and contributor Philip Spiegel remembered the start of his relationship with Patch in July 2010. He recalled the company's desire to start a Patch site at Stanford until the university said the company couldn't use the name.

"I have a wonderful time writing about events at Stanford," Spiegel said. "It's a very timely publication and the fact that it's online means that you can hyperlink to a lot of other things that are on the Web."

Spiegel said another important thing about the site is its ability to follow up on comments from readers. "It's such a valuable resource," Spiegel noted. "It's doing extremely well."

Palo Alto Mayor Sid Espinosa was among those in attendance, as well as Palo Alto Vice Mayor Yiaway Yeh and other city officials, community leaders and Patch editors and contributors.

Under the editorship of Aaron Selverston, the site has grown in readership consistently since its launch with a robust following of Palo Alto readers.

It has gained attention for its quality digital media reporting, its community programs—such as summer journalism training opportunities for high school students—and its on-the-ground coverage of

"I'm thrilled to say congratulations to Palo Alto Patch, to Aaron and to the whole team. It's been a fantastic year. I get Patch every morning and I'm a faithful reader," Espinosa said. "What I like about it is that information is power and at a local level, we're losing so much of our news. So here we have a whole grassroots, story driven, human interest focus publication that's really connecting with Palo Altans and telling their stories.

"It's a fantastic resource for this city and I'm looking forward to many more years of success," he said. 

Bill Hamburgen, base player for the Stoney Mountain Ramblers, said he was pleased to help celebrate the publication's anniversary since he considers Selverston a good friend. 

"I remember when Aaron started working on it," Hamburgen said. "I started checking it out and now I phone stuff into Aaron once in a while. I have him on speed dial on my phone so if I see somethings happening I can let him know."

He added: "It's cool to have someone responsible for the local scene and getting it online quickly."

Hamburgen praised Palo Alto Patch for its coverage of the tragic train accident at the Charleston crossing during which an elderly couple couldn't make it across the Caltrain tracks. "I found out about it first from Patch. That was cool. I could read about it on my phone."