Backfence Inc.

""We are not editing content, we are just letting the community do what it wants to do. It is a cost issue, a philosophical issue and a legal issue. We just believe there are stories out there that need to be told that people want to tell . . . and they don''t want it mangled by somebody else."
Mark Potts, in an Oct. 14, 2005 MGP interview "

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On June 29, 2007, BankFence.com posted a notice on its 13 websites that it was shutting down. Read analysis by:

Paul Farhi writing at the American Journalism Review

Kate Kaye writing on ClickZ

Peter Krasilovsky writing at his LocalOnliner blog

Rafat Ali writing at PaidContent.org

EARLIER LINKS:
Backfence secures $3 million in venture-capital funding
Backfence local advertising strategy discussed
Read a Q&A session with Mark Potts at: http://www.mallasch.com/journalism/article.php?sid=1184

This Just In, From The Guy Next Door

by Howard Kurtz

Potts and his partner, Susan DeFife, are launching Backfence.com in two Fairfax County towns, McLean and Reston, early next year. If the idea flies, they would expand to 16 other metropolitan areas over three years, with 10 town-size sites in each market.

What makes this a noteworthy challenge to the traditional Big Media model -- we report, we decide -- is that Potts and DeFife want ordinary folks to do most of the work, with no more compensation than an occasional T-shirt. That would be a seismic shift from the top-down approach in which news organizations judge what is worthy of mention and customers have to take what they can get.

EXCERPTED FROM: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60249-2004Dec12.html

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