Journalism: Its Intersection With Hyperlocal Web Sites.

The article presents a first person account of the workings of Backfence Inc., a series of hyperlocal news Web sites which serve the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. The sites depend on user-generated content and use of local concerns that would never be covered by a major metropolitan newspaper and are covered by community newspapers only on a sporadic basis. The sites do not practice traditional journalism, and their standards for publication concerning such matters as sourcing and objectivity are far less rigid. The sites are not supposed to offer competition to larger news organizations. They are supplements which are too narrowly focused to exist on anything but a small scale. Journalists should consider these sites resources to use rather than as an economic foe.