We live in a strange world. I work forty miles from where I sleep. The shop­ping gets delivered and the garbage gets taken away. The Atlantic and New Yorker arrive by post. Friends, work and everything else arrive via broad­band. That’s my life.

There’s not much local about it. Strike that. There really is noth­ing local about it.

I’m not alone. Read the Wall Street Journal and you’ll dis­cover that the place the Wash­ing­ton Post chose to launch its much-vaunted hyper-local journ­al­ism exer­cise, Loudoun County, is just

a 520 square-mile area with seven towns whose res­id­ents share little else besides a county government.

Still the WSJ and Loudoun­Ex­tra’s ex-boss blame not get­ting to know ‘the com­munity’ for the fact that it is not a rip-roaring success:

“I was the one who was sup­posed to know we should be talk­ing to Rotary Club meet­ings every day,” Mr. Cur­ley said.

The fic­tion is repeated. If only you could really con­nect with this ‘com­munity’ — that actu­ally has little com­munity about it — the pageview tide would turn.

There are places where geo­graphy forces people to become neigh­bours. You can do local journ­al­ism and do it well. Many do.

But let’s give up pre­tend­ing that every­where with a name on the map is a ‘com­munity.’ Because every­where is not. And being root­less and transna­tional and not really giv­ing a damn about where you actu­ally live as long as it’s ok is also ok.

And, strangely enough, that is the mar­ket and demo­graphic in which a national WSJ will look to prosper.