A former employee of WashingtonPost.com is planning to launch a new local news website for the Washington area in early 2005.

Mark Potts, a former reporter and new media editor for the Post, emailed Jay Rosen, author of the popular pressthink blog, some details about his idea:

Our vision is for extremely local coverage, written almost entirely by the readers, using blogs, wikis and other formats to allow people to share community news and information with their neighbors in a friendly, ad-supported environment distributed via the Web, RSS and other online media.

Potts and his partner Susan DeFife told Rosen they’re planning an early 2005 site launch. Their email was sent in response to a post about the future of journalism on Rosen’s site. Thus far the website, BackFence.com, contains just a logo and email address. Another talked-about organization, Pegasus News, is planning on launching a similar project in Dallas in 2005.