Local schmokel

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.