The Washington Post said Tuesday that it will shut down LoudounExtra.com as a separate Internet site. The two-year-old site had been described as a push into hyperlocal journalism.
The newspaper said in a statement that it found that the “experiment with LoudounExtra.com as a separate site was not a sustainable model.”
Part of this is because the site’s creator, Rob Curley, and his team, took off for Las Vegas. And part of this is because at a certain point, the viability of a hyperlocal approach will depend on local rates of technology adoption and population density.
Seattle has tons of successful hyperlocal coverage precisely because of those two factors. It’s always been a hotbed for technological innovation and it is not a giant mass of suburban sprawl. The same models might be used in any of the great Northeastern cities like New York or Boston.
On the flipside, markets like Atlanta, and/or more far flung suburbs like Loudoun County ( one of DC’s ‘burbs) might not have enough density to form the type of community feeling that arises when people are forced to interact on a regular basis due to population density.
