Introduction and Narrative: Personal Democracy Forum is an annual conference and ongoing weblog that focuses on how technology is changing politics. Personal Democracy Forum was founded by Andrew Rasiej, who has a background in music, education nonprofits and advising politicians. Micah Sifry worked on the first conference and was soon taken on as a partner. Personal Democracy Forum does not have a political partisan bias, “we have a bias towards celebrating the most innovative uses of technology that open up the process and make it more participatory, accountable and transparent,” says Sifry.

Main Goal: To serve two communities that are colliding with each other: technologists who are interested in hacking politics and political hacks who realize that they have to understand how to adapt to and make better use of this new networked environment. Personal Democracy Forum is a space to help these groups better understand each others needs and potentials.

Notable Achievements: In January Personal Democracy Forum started another side blog - Tech President, that focused on how the candidates are using the web and how the web is using them. It recently won a Knight Batten Award. Personal Democracy Forum has also become “an interpreter for lots of mainstream news reporters that are trying to understand this arena,” says Sifry.

A Surprising Realization: “The thing that never ceases to amaze me is when you combine hypernetworks and search, the result again and again is that the right like-minded people find you,” says Sifry. Often the people that PDF hears from are exactly the people Sifry is looking for, “they have their own really interesting experiences and insights.”

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: “I’m a great believer in always making new mistakes,” says Sirfy. As for the conferences, the biggest mistake has typically been over-programming. In running the organization as a whole it has probably been not knowing exactly where to focus, says Sifry. The lesson has been to only do a few things, but do them well.

Money: After four years the conference itself is modestly profitable and helps drive the editorial engine, though Rasiej who is the prime backer of the whole thing still has yet to recoup what he has put in.

While the editorial is running at a loss, Personal Democracy Forum does make a bit of money back in private consulting and hopes to eventually find a new revenue stream through content syndication.

Advertising is not looked at as a plausible model “I don’t think honestly there is enough demand for this kind of specialized content,” says Sifry.

Future Goals: “A partial answer to that, we own the URL techcongress.com.” But the main focus is on the yearly conference and based on the success of last year’s conference PDF is headed towards expanding it to a two day event with a third day unconference.

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

I’m interested in knowing where the cutting edge is in online journalism that effects politics. The media system is a more open and dynamic and whether that’s changing the political discourse is one big subject. There is a lot of possibility to open up the political process through the use of technology and more people participating in what their representative are up to, monitoring them, giving feedback. The question is, now that the media has opened up how citizen journalism can move in and add to the role of watchdog that was formerly done by corporate sponsored media.

Introduction and Narrative: In the past year Gannett has undergone the largest transformation in the company’s 102-year history. All 86 papers across the country, except for USA Today, have changed from traditional news centers to 24-hour, local, multimedia “Information centers.” The blueprint for the change cited seven areas that each Gannett paper would be required to embrace, such as databases and “Community Conversations.” The News-Press in Fort Myers (see post on Mackenzie Warren and Kate Marymont) was one of the company’s test papers and it was while flying down there that Jennifer Carol picked up a cover story in Wired on ‘crowdsourcing’ “and we said, that’are talking about.”

Main Goal: Last October the changes were implemented across the country and as of May this year - all Gannett’s papers have fully transitioned. The shift to information centers has many layers - including the willingness and capabilities to work with members of the community on investigations. “This is not rearranging furniture - this is a shift in how we do our jobs,” says Carroll.

Notable Achievements: Carroll and Ganett have been encouraged on several fronts since the change. Using crowdsourcing along with database analysis Gannett has broken stories faster and working with communities has drawn conclusions that would have gone otherwise unnoticed, says Carroll. A new tool called “Get Published” let’s anybody upload content and many of Gannett’s papers have between 100-200 hyperlocal sites that are the result of pro-am reporting. “We provide the backbone and the tools and we welcome community involvement,” says Carroll.

The Cincinnati Enquirer recently launched The Data Center, allowing readers to search thousands of databases based on lifestyle and content information linked through home addresses. For example, readers can search records of crime in their neighborhoods, review trends and compare statistics throughout the metro area.

In another example: Florida Today received an email tip by way of the “Blow the whistle” button. It was from an appraiser who said thousands of local homeowners were getting ripped-off by insurance companies that inflate the replacement value of homes on paper and, consequently, overcharge for hurricane insurance. Insurance policies are not public record, and there would be no way to report that story authoritatively without asking as many residents as possible to share private documents. So the paper posted an item to the Brevard Watchlist asking readers to “join the investigation” by doing just that. The countywide investigation yielded a front-page Sunday newspaper story and an online report on how to estimate a home’s replacement cost.

Gannett is reporting traffic increases across the board, from visitors to time spent on sites, frequency in visits and pages viewed per visit.

A Surprising Realization: The biggest surprise is that we didn’t do this earlier, both in the company and in the industry, says Carroll. If journalism at its core is to serve the public, then it has not been taking advantage of all the new tools that can help perform this function, says Carroll. “But if we think about how to use them creatively, we can get back to the things that those of us who grew up in the business in our hearts truly believe in - that we can work with readers to inform and engage and shine light on wrongdoing,” says Carroll.

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: Carroll admits that Gannett underfunded not just research but technology and infrastructure. Many of Ganett’s papers responded to the changes from headquarters not with disdain - they were behind the changes, but didn’t have the technology or infrastructure to make it happen. It requires more than just talk - but capital investment in laptops, video equipment, trios, the ability to transmit digitally, etc.

Money: The editorial changes are working in tandem with revenue teams at Gannet that are exploring new ways to monetize the product. An advance data team is not only exploring content - but also how to engage readers online with mapping software and other areas that traditionally hasn’t been explored in advertising.

“We will only move forward and build on what we have done.” Gannett is very encouraged by the possibility of becoming sustainable, says Carroll. Many of these concepts have been tested at the 12 original Gannett papers to make the shift and they have developed over the past year and Gannett is seeing strong results.

Future Goals: There is no endpoint in Ganett’s transformation. “I see us only building on the research and reaction that we’ve gotten,” says Carroll. There is still an imperative to be nimble and invest in the types of technology that is needed, from social networks and beyond, but right now Gannett is ready to pounce on what is next. “We as an industry have not been as serious as being early adapters — and now I see us positioned in the front row so we can react quickly,” says Carroll.

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

I am very very interested in all the experimenting that is going on across the industry — We need to do more R&D. I spend as much time as I have looking at experiments that people are involved in — That’s what I want to get out it.

Introduction and Narrative: This August WNYC Radio’s “Brian Lehrer Show” in New York experimented in their first crowdsourced investigation. The popular public affairs show asked more of their listeners than the pithy comments, but hard data on how many SUV’s were parked on their New York City block. “It was very organic and a logical progression in that as a call-in show, we already have the structure for our listeners to play a big role. Crowdsourcing was a way to advance our relationship with listeners by asking them in advance and engaging them in the same question over a period of time,” and commit an act of journalism for the station, said Colgan. WNYC was very upfront — the results didn’t represent an academic or scientific experiment — it didn’t have a margin of error — but it was a lot more powerful than anecdotal reporting, said Colgan.

Main Goal: To experiment with crowdsourcing as a new way to report on local stories and trends . The station is taking it one step at a time, starting with a simple question, but eventually wants to apply the model to larger issues. For now, it is still testing the model.

Notable Achievements: The investigation lasted only a week but received 450 comments, far above the average call-in segment. “We took that as the biggest sign of success. A big segment for us usually gets around 100 comments,” said Colgan.

A Surprising Realization: “The level to which people really want to take part. They want to be part of the news,” said Colgan. Not only did listeners participate, their comments showed that the results hit close to home. People were curious about their surroundings and many people wrote in that they felt ashamed that their car was one of the SUV’s they counted. This also surprised Colgan, because it wasn’t just activists or hybrid drivers – people with a particular POV — who were taking part, but SUV owners as well.

The time that was involved was significant : “I had no idea it would take that much time and resources. We had to pull out all the stops at the last minute,” said Colgan. The show’s producers had to do a lot of number crunching and spreadsheets, all while producing a daily show. “We didn’t know we’d get that many responses,” says Colgan.

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: Very early on people began asking for clarification in the investigation. “People asked if they should include minivans mini-SUV’s — they asked ‘what is an SUV,’ I found myself having to comment and clarify along the way,” says Colgan. People began leaving information that WNYC never asked for such as the time of day they did the count, even the temperature outside.

The lesson is specificity. The more specific you can be the more you can preempt people’s questions. “Anticipating the questions someone could ask would cut down no the time involved .- maybe even involve more people in that stage ??

Money: WNYC, the nation’s largest public radio station, is a nonprofit, so while making money is not an issue, resources are. Luckily the show didn’t have to spend a lot of money to institute the experiment. “We just used our comments page,” said Colgan. It was an experiment that only required careful monitoring of the comment thread. With the low overhang WNYC definitely went right back on the air to do another investigation.

Future Goals: Colgan himself initiated the first project, and Brian Lehrer and the show’s other producers were enthusiastic. For the next crowdsourcing project, the Brian Lehrer team asked listeners for ideas. One suggestion – doing a price comparison of specific grocery items across New York City neighborhoods – is currently underway.

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

I would love to see how we can take our crowdsourcing projects to the next level. I’m excited to hear from others – perhaps somebody from another news organization or even individuals or blogs has good ideas but doesn’t have the reach to implement them. I might walk out of the conference with a partner for our next project.

Introduction and Narrative: GroundReport started as a side project for Rachel Sterne after reporting on the United Nations Security Council on events taking place in Darfur. Sterne, who worked for LimeWire at the time, was concerned and agitated by the lack of public awareness about these events. About one year ago GroundReport, a network of over 1,000 citizen journalists from around the world, went from being a side project to Sterne’s full time job.

Main Goal: To democratize the news in three ways.
1. GroundReport allows everyone to participate by posting articles, videos or livestreaming content.
2. The community decides what is on the front page through voting - there is no editorial control.
3. GroundReport shares revenue with all contributors based on traffic to their stories.

Notable Achievements: GroundReport has 1,000 different contributors from all over the world including Zimbabwe, Mali and Pakistan.

Using various tools, GroundReport has media offerings comparable to a large news outlet. GroundReport has its own television channel and will soon be launching GroundReport radio. GR Television allows listeners to become deeply involved in the programming and reporting of content for specific time slots.

A Surprising Realization: “I’m always surprised and happy about how passionate a lot of our users are and how they identify with the mission that we have,” says Sterne.

There is also the surprise of having to strictly define things. Sterne’s original motivation was to create an open forum, but she found a need to be more of an editor than originally intended “because people need to know what you are trying to create and if what they have is appropriate,” says Sterne.
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Introduction and Narrative: When Gannett announced its transformation from traditional newsrooms to information centers (see Jennifer Carroll writeup) The News-Press in Fort Myers, FLA. was one of the first and most successful papers to adopt the changes. The paper regularly engages in experiments to engage and partner with citizens using traditional media resources in pro-am projects.

Its first brush in citizen journalism came in 2004 during Hurricane Charely. Today setting up a forum during a hurricane might seem second nature, but at the time it was an eye opening moment. As people shared information “we realized how much knowledge there was in our community,” says Mackenzie Warren.

Next, Fort Myers took an active approach to citizen journalism, enlisting the public in a investigation into sewer expansion, where hundreds of residents mobilized and scoured through documents. Throughout this investigation the paper relied on experts within its community like accountants, lawyers, engineers, “professions that we don’t have an expertise in,” says Warren. “We found in the community those people exist and they are willing to sift through blue prints and time cards, that’s what distinguished the project.”

The third and current experiment is called “Team Watch Dog.” Relying on retired experts in the community, Fort Myers has built a team of 20 volunteers, who work side by side with the newsroom on dozens of projects.

Main Goal of Fort Myers: To fulfill the same goals that the paper has had since 1884 when it started. “Our fundamental purpose in the community hasn’t changed at all, it’s a new means to the same end,” says Marymont. The hope is that by relying on the wealth of information within the community the paper is able to do deeper and better journalism.

Notable Achievements: Fort Myers has created a network of citizen experts, including a retired FBI agent, a defense intelligence agency analyst, an education worker and more. “We have formed an alliance that our community is coming to recognize,” says Marymont. “It’s the breadth of what we are doing that is notable.” This has also had a positive effect on the papers credibility in the community.

A Surprising Realization: The immediate volume of readers’ willingness to participate. The utilities investigation racked in 6,500 pieces of user-generated content over the lifetime of the project, with a huge flow in the first week.

The paper was inundated by the number of people that wanted to lend a helping hand to monitor their government. The same occurred with the Team Watchdog project, which was originally going to be called News-Press Nine, limited to nine volunteers. But hundreds applied.

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: In their experiment of crowdsourcing in the Cape Coral utilities investigation, Fort Myers originally thought the experiment would take place in forums that they would monitor and eventually use to get quotes from contributors. “That is all fine on paper until you have 6,500 people,” says Warren.

The paper was swamped and was never able to catch up. “We left a lot of leads on the table,” says Warren. “If you strike oil, you better have a pump that can collect it all before it spills out.”

Money: Fort Myers runs on a traditional business model. On the web this means getting as many pageviews and unique visitors as possible. The site did experience an increase in traffic during the Cape Code investigation, including new regular readers. “We make new believers each time,” says Warren.

Future Goals: Fort Myers wants to rework the infrastructure that it uses to perform experiments in network journalism. Having a few under their belt, they are taking a look back to see what tools were clumsy or not right for the job. “In some cases we were using a sledgehammer to bang in a nail, in others a house hammer for a railroad steak,” says Warren. With the Team Watchdog project underway, Fort Myers is looking at new technical solutions, so they won’t be held back from not having the right tools.

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

“We are not short on ideas, we are short on the means to do them. What we want to get out of this is new inspiration and new directions we can push ourselves and persuade our audience to get involved and get motivated. New ways to promote what we are doing, so we can expand our audience and make new believers and readers,” says Warren. “My top hope is to actually come away with progress toward technical tools that are better for supporting networked journalism, we’re ready for the next big experiment in Fort Myers and we hope this conference can help us gain clarity on what that will be.”

Introduction and Narrative: In 2004 Dan Pacheco was hired as part of the new Digital Products team at The Californian. Their job was to “look out in the future 5-10 years and see trends,” says Pacheco.

He came to the position with experience at the Washingtonpost.com and America Online where he worked on community products from the early Web. “At the time we had at least 12 million member profiles and we started to observe that people were changing their persona 3-4 times a day,” says Pacheco. Well before social networking, Pacheco had a “wealth of ideas” that The Californian, an independently owned newspaper company which includes seven print publications and nine websites, was ready to put into action. The Californian has produced:

The Northwest Voice - a newspaper with content created by readers, which began in 2004 by Mary Lou Fulton.

Bakotopia - a social networking site.

Bakomatic - a software platform that handles user-generated content, classifieds and social networking, which transformed Bakersfield.com and other of the Californian’s website properties.

This and other products have pushed the paper into the edge of citizen journalism.

Main Goal: To engage an audience around a brand identity. The Northwest Voice, about 30,000 readers, is penetrating a community that is predominately suburban, neighborhood, and family oriented. People go to the website to submit their story and hope it will get printed in the Northwest Voice for neigbors to read. It becomes their paper. “And that’s what that brand is about,” says Pacheco.

For Bakotopia, a social networking site, it’s all about “me.” says Pacheco. Creating a space where individuals can express themselves, meet people and find interesting local bands.

The Californian has nine different websites and several papers, each with their own brand identity that caters to different audiences, says Pacheco.

Notable Achievements: The Californian had a lot of firsts. They created the first U.S. newspaper-managed Craigslist competitor, Bakotopia, according to Pacheco. The first citizen journalism newspaper product, The Northwest Voice and on Bakersfield.com one of the first newspapers to offer social networking and blogging in the community “so we could compete with Myspace and Facebook as part of our brand. Today Bakersfield.com is about 20-30 percent user-generated content.

A very large achievement was creating “Bakomatic” an in-house content management system that has since been adopted by other newspapers like the Arizona Republic.

Bakomatic was a fortunate byproduct of trying to create social networking features, blogging and classifieds for Californian newspapers. But since completion several newspapers have called wondering if it was for sale — and Pacheco has since

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Introduction and Narrative: Inspired by user-generated sites like Flickr, NowPublic is a citizen journalism news network with contributors from across the world. As other legendary startups, it was founded in a garage by Michael Tippett, Leonard Brody and Michael Meyers in 2005. At the time the group believed there was no space on the net to empower citizen journalists. Today NowPublic is one of the largest networks of participatory news-gathering in North America. In spring of 2006 Merrill Brown was brought on board as a consultant for strategy issues. His relationship with NowPublic grew until he was part of the board and eventually elected chairmen.

Recently NowPublic has gone through significant growth in contributors and financing, raising $10.6 million in venture capital. The crowd-powered media site is looking to expand on its range of tools that allow citizens to upload content to their site, whether it’s photos, videos or even audio reports from their cell phone.

Main Goal of NowPublic: “To become the largest citizen news agency in the world and the foremost home through NowPublic.com of citizen traded content,” says Brown.

In a recent move towards this goal, NowPublic brokered a deal with the Associated Press that allows the wire service to purchase and syndicate content that NowPublic users create. “What we are trying to do is empower members of the public to create news content of all forms and provide them with the capabilities to distribute that content to millions of people,” says Brown.

Notable Achievements: NowPublic has registered over 100,000 members in 140 countries. Today, NowPublic has relationships with various news organizations, including the Associated Press, brokering its citizen journalism content to a wider audience. NowPublic is growing “faster than anyone else and I think we’ve added a lot of visibility to citizen journalism,” says Brown. Despite major success in covering stories and rapid expansion, Brown is quick to point out that NowPublic doesn’t claim to have “figured it out in some ultimate way.” The young organization admits it still has a lot of learning and growing to do.

A Surprising Realization: How people all around the world have surfaced, since the launch of the site in 2005, with some level of interest in contributing. Over 10,000 people have sent in content at one point or another. “The numbers are exciting, surprising and really encouraging — that this obscure little thing was able to get this much traction, not just from financiers and media but from people around the world,” says Brown.

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: The critical component that NowPublic has yet to figure out is how to make the entire process incredibly easy and seamless. The consumer or creative experience is not as easy or intuitive as many other popular user-generated sites like Flickr. “Our site is complicated,” says Brown. But NowPublic is currently working to make the process of contributing as simple as sending an email or posting a photo.

Money: NowPublic just finished a round of venture capital financing that raised $10.6 million. By the end of the year the site will also be selling advertising and sponsorship. Another revenue stream is through business customers for its services and access to content, such as the deal with the Associated Press. NowPublic helps news organizations at a number of geographic locations spot and cover breaking stories. Contributors get compensated and credited for their work.

Future Goals: To be successful in terms of audience and profit growth in addition to becoming a global brand, says Brown. To be part of people’s news diets when they want a citizen’s view of the new news. The venture capital money will be used to hire new people and invest in software development for building better tools and a tighter site experience. “The big focus is on technology and building a world class team,” says Brown.

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

The key thing for me and the company is figuring out how to best utilize citizen contributors. We figured out how to grow a big network and get them to contribute frequently, but how do you engage with people so they will be frequent, satisfied, contributors? I don’t think anybody has figured that out. Brown is also interested in discussing the larger issues of journalism in relation to citizen media, such as: How j-schools should teach journalism in the online world? What is an approach to citizen media that makes sense for different businesses? How is the profession’s job description changing? These are important to the future of traditional news organizations, says Brown. “They need to engage their audience in a way that they haven’t in the past, and if they don’t figure it out, they will suffer.”

Introduction and Narrative: In February of 2005 Lisa Willaims started H2OTown (www.h2otown.info). She had recently left her job and wanted to get to know Watertown Massachusetts better, but decided to do her learning process in public. H2OTown also allowed others in the area to blog, creating a townhall atmosphere. It is what Williams calls a “placeblog,” which focus on the lived experiences in that geographic area. “And if we are lucky, most lived experience is news,” says Williams. A placebloger doesn’t “report” the news, they share news that happens in their lives.

Placeblogger.com is the largest index of placeblogs which can help anyone find local bloggers in their community. It was motivated by a desire to find out just how many placeblogs there really are. At BloggerCon IV a bet between Williams, Dan Gillmor and Jay Rosen broke out about this very topic. Rosen wondered how many placeblogs like H2OTown existed, to which Williams guessed 1,000.

Within the first day after its launch, January 2007, Placebloger.com was indexing placeblogs from 55 different countries. To date Placeblogger.com has indexed 3,500 placeblogs. Williams won the bet three times over.

Main Goal(s):

H2OTown: “To make Watertown a less boring place to live.” The blog network is not journalistic in nature. Civic participation and being a conduit of newsworthy information is a byproduct, not the motivating factor, of H2OTown. The real goal of H2OTown is to highlight the aspects of the community that make it unique but are hidden from people, says Williams.

“Placebloggers have a rock and hammer and are breaking through that and sharing that information in a group activity.”

Placeblogger: To find and index as many placeblogs as possible, so they can connect and learn from each other.

Notable Achievements:

H2OTown: “That the blog is still around,” says Williams. Sixty-six percent of all blogs are abandoned in the first month. Today, people feel a sense of ownership over the site, which has a life of its own, and that’s the hard part for a hyperlocal site.

Placeblogger: Placeblogger has been successful, incorporating a larger global community than expected spanning 55 countries and 3,500 blogs. Recently Placeblogger won a Knight News Challenge grant and will expand from there.

A Surprising Realization: The statistics from Placeblogger.com. There were more placeblogs than Williams expected. Comparing census data alongside that Williams found that almost a third of the U.S. lives in a town with a placeblog.

In terms of placeblogs, Williams is astounded by how complex and different they all are from each other. They haven’t settled on a convention, there is no common theme or vocabulary, “yet the format and overarching idea is pretty much the same — they are going to cover the mayors office, elections, school budgets, etc.,” says Williams. Despite similarities, to date there is no community for placebloggers.

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: The assumption that a community will pop out of thin air instantly because you’ve started a website. One has to be ready to commit six months to a year before they can expect results. “You can’t speed up the process of creating an organic community,” says Williams. If participation is not instant, one shouldn’t feel as if they failed.

“But I don’t think of any experiment as a failure — they all produce data — “this doesn’t work” is a useful piece of data. My strategy has been to experiment a lot and keep the cost low.”

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Introduction and Narrative: Jonathan Weber came to the University of Montana as a visiting professor after the bankruptcy of the Industry Standard where he was editor in chief. While there he became interested in the ongoing story of the Rocky Mountain region’s booming development. Local papers were covering specific stories and towns, but Weber thought they were too close to see the larger narrative. Capturing that missing link was the editorial inspiration for NewWest.Net, which launched in March of 2005. “I was involved with new media and I thought maybe there was a new way to approach this kind of story that might be effective in that context.

NewWest.Net was born as an online publication that would tackle regional issues through a network of local sites. The front page is regional but is supported throughout by a combination of locally focused news organizations. “I think that was a very key innovation,” says Weber.

NewWest.Net has sought to develop a new style of story telling that marries aspects of traditional reporting with blogging and citizen media. The traditional reporting on the site is very open and has a conversational tone that avoids the pyramid style of newspaper reporting. “We care about fairness and accuracy — we care about real reporting — not just opining about this and that — but we are not so caught up in the ‘he said, she said,’ and somewhat un-useful ideas of objectivity that are part of the conventional media conversation,” says Weber.

NewWest.Net writers span the gamete from paid professionals to citizen contributions.

Main Goal of NewWest.Net: To help facilitate a positive and informed conversation about growth and change in the region and provide people with a dynamic source of information and a place they can go to be part of that conversation.

Notable Achievements: Just six months after NewWest.Net launched it won the Online Journalism Award for enterprise journalism for a six-part series “Sex, Money and Meth Addiction: Inside the World of the Dasen Girls.” Beyond the accolades, this series is an example of long form journalism in an effective online format.

NewWest.Net has also been both a source of news on environmental issues including wild life management, wolves, grizzly bears and global warming it has been an active forum of conversation. While Weber admits they can result in shouting matches at times, “they do add up to an interesting and helpful conversation. We have brought in a lot of voices and perspectives, the Pro-Am model has worked well for us and we are proud of our ability to have facilitated that,” says Weber.

A Surprising Realization: There is a gap between what people say they want to do in terms of contributions and the amount of hand holding and management that NewWest.Net editors have to actually do to get that contribution. A part of NewWest.Net is completely unfiltered, where people can blog stories that and it is less utilized than NewWest.Net originally thought it would be. “You can’t just say: ‘Come on in. You should really write something.’ There is an amount of hand holding that you need to engage in to get good contributions from non-professionals. “That is a consistent experience.”

On the flip side, the quality of the photo contributions has been extremely high according to Weber. There is a very active photo community at NewWest.Net. “It doesn’t surprise me that they want to share, but the quality does surprise me.”

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Introduction and Narrative: Mark Potts began sketching the idea for Backfence while working for Washingtonpost.com. Potts was trying to imagine what a local newspaper product would look like on the web. “Newspapers have trouble doing news down to the town level or below that, they are too big, and it is too expensive to staff,” says Potts. Backfence, however, would eventually use citizen journalism to cover that kind of minutia by creating sites for individual towns, where the knowledge from within the community would provide all the journalism. The company was formed in August of 2004 and launched in May of 2005. By October that year Backfence raised around $3 million in capital. Fast-forward to 2006 and there were 13 Backfence communities centered around three metropolitan areas (Chicago, Washington D.C. and San Francisco) and organized into a network. But by January of 2007 internal issues that Potts cannot discuss resulted in a 2/3rds staff layoff followed by an announcement in July of Backfence’s eventual shutdown.

During its run, however, Backfence was poised to form the largest network of hyperlocal news blogs in the United States.

Main Goal of Backfence: To create a national network of sites that would allow people to talk about their towns and learn about what was going around them. The kind of information you see exchanged over the literal backyard fence.

Integral to the operation was to build this network as a business, says Potts. Many hyerplocal sites can cover server costs and a few expenses, but the objective of Backfence was to scale nationally and create a strong business around it.

Notable Achievements: During the height of its operation, Backfence had over 400 advertisers in three metropolitan areas. “It was a real accomplishment, it proved local advertisers were looking for a space in online media,” says Potts. Backfence was able to raise money and establish itself in 13 cities. Its fall was not from a lack of interest or advertisers, but from internal turmoil.

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