Catch, the online news venture from The Patrika Group (with also publishes Rajasthan Patrika) has gone live today, becoming the latest to join the online news gold rush of general news sites. Catch is among the more visually appealing and well segmented of the new launches, and interestingly, probably the first to integrate advertising from the get-go, with a large 300x600 ad unit on the homepage. Both the homepage and the story pages also feature a 300x250 ad unit in the right sidebar, and a 728x90 ad unit at the bottom. Catch is Delhi based and headed by ex-Tehelka founding member and journalist Shoma Chaudhary, with former Mail Today editor Bharat Bhushan as editor. Former DNA and Tehelka journalist Kunal Majumder will also be working with Catch, while Payal Puri, former editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, is responsible for lifestyle and features on the site. Approach to content: "Your Wire", "Quick Pill", video aggregation, The Deck, X-Packs The site is responsive, and reformats for mobile screens, and it appears to be using a custom-build CMS, which appears to have enabled the site to provide a quite unique interface. Some noteworthy approaches to content showcasing and sharing: - There's a "Your Wire" segment for quick news updates on the site, which splits quick updates as "Important, Interesting and Ignored". The Wire page allows quick access to each of these segments on a single page. A similar approach is taken to 'The Skip', which offers a quick read of content. - The editorial section, named 'POV', is displayed as…
