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In Push for Local Readers, Post Unleashes LoudounExtra.com
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Curley's revamping of the Lawrence site gained national attention because of the audience it attracted. In 2000 -- before remaking its site -- the Lawrence paper got 14 million page views, said Ralph Gage, chief operating officer of the World Co., which owns the paper. In 2006, that number had grown to 247 million, and the site booked about $2 million in revenue. The population of Lawrence is about 80,000, and the Journal's circulation is 20,000.
Page views at the Naples Web site are up 17 percent in the first six months of this year compared with 2006, when the site was revamped, said editor Phil Lewis, with unique monthly users up 26 percent. The Web site is responsible for more than 10 percent revenue, Lewis said, which is above the industry average.
The question has always been whether a major metropolitan newspaper can successfully run a hyperlocal site like this, and how both local and national advertisers will react.
Little said she thinks ad space on LoudounExtra will be purchased by smaller advertisers in the county, as well as national and regional advertisers that want to reach a particular Zip code within Loudoun County.
The Database Model
Key to the hyperlocal strategy of The Post and many other papers are searchable databases.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that they attract considerable viewers. In December, Gannett Co.'s Asbury Park (N.J.) Press dumped three huge public-record databases onto its Web site: local property sales and ownership, and state employees' salaries. By May, the paper had added searchable databases for local crime, school test scores, state deaths and public school employees.
In December, the paper's Web site recorded 1.5 million page views. By May, the site was averaging more than 5 million page views per month, according to data from a Newspaper Association of America study, with a high of more than 9 million page views in April.
But the LoudounExtra faces substantial competition. There are five weekly newspapers in the county. The Loudoun Times Mirror-- recently launched its first hyperlocal site in anticipation of The Post's site. In addition, the county has numerous subdivision listservs and non-newspaper Web sites, such as SouthRiding, that provide news and information on a granular level, as LoudounExtra will try to do.
"I am impressed the folks at The Post are taking a stab at our trade," said Peter Arundel, president of Times Community Papers. "But in some sense, they are late to the party. This is our turf, our skill set."
The revamped Times Mirror site will be filled with user photos and the filings of unpaid "citizen journalists" who will be vetted by Times Mirror editors, rather than the extensive databases and video found on the LoudounExtra. The Times papers plan to roll out other expanded hyperlocal Web sites across Northern Virginia in coming months.
Little said The Post Co. is in hyperlocal for the long haul. "If Loudoun totally flops, I would not walk away from this based on that," she added. "We need to try doing this in some different areas."
