The Washington Post, well known for its detailed coverage of the White House and global affairs, will introduce a Web site today with news and other information for a rarefied group: people who live in Loudoun County, Va., population 272,000.
The site, LoudounExtra.com, is an experiment in hyperlocal news; it will have church schedules, restaurant menus and real-time high school football scores. The county, in northern Virginia, includes Dulles International Airport and the town of Leesburg.
“There will be stories about things that normally would not make it into the pages of The Washington Post, like mailboxes being knocked down,” said Rob Curley, vice president of product development for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. “It has every Rotary meeting, every Bible study group. It is very local.”
Readers will be able to download restaurant guides and other content from the site onto their iPods, phones and even video-game consoles. In late August, a new feature will let readers click on a street address and see all the closest events and news nearby.
If LoudounExtra catches on, The Post may add sites for other counties or towns in the Washington area as it tries to increase online advertising revenue.
“Local retail advertising has not been as successful on the Web as it has been in print,” said Caroline H. Little, chief executive and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. “I think we’ll have a much greater opportunity to reach out to smaller advertisers who are not going on Washingtonpost.com.”
The Post will be treading where others have failed. Recently, Backfence.com, a group of sites focused on communities around Washington, announced that it will be closing in a few days.
Ms. Little said that The Post’s new site should fare better because of its deep newsroom resources and built-in audience in Loudoun County. The paper publishes a section about the county twice a week.
“Most hyperlocal sites are 100 percent community publishing sites,” Mr. Curley said. “This is 1 percent community publishing.”
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