Extra's Online Partner To Raise Local Coverage

Whatever your reaction, we'd like to hear from you. Tell us what you think of LoudounExtra.com and what we should consider adding to the site.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Editor's note: This column appears in the print edition of today's Loudoun Extra.

Looking for news about Loudoun County? You’ll find it in these pages, of course. Loudoun Extra has been covering events and issues in the county since the section debuted nearly 10 years ago.

But we hope you’ll also spend some time with our new digital partner, LoudounExtra.com. On this Web site, which The Washington Post launched Monday, the scope, volume and variety of Loudoun news and information far exceed anything available in the print medium. For that matter, they exceed anything The Post has attempted before in its online coverage of local communities.

The best way to discover these new offerings is to type www.loudounextra.com into your Web browser’s address bar. Here are a few examples of what you’ll find on the site, which is devoted to Loudoun events, places and people:

- A restaurant guide that sorts more than 300 eateries by cuisine, location, hours of operation and type of seating.

- Profiles of every public and private school in the county, including photo galleries and interviews with principals.

- Updates from traffic cameras at key intersections.

- The opportunity to submit your videos, photos, essays and announcements — and to see them featured on the site.

- A local events calendar that allows you to choose a time when you want to be reminded, via e-mail or text message, about a particular event.

- Profiles and panoramic interior photos of Loudoun’s houses of worship.

- Two local blogs: Living in LoCo by Tammi Marcoullier (which will continue to run in an excerpted form every Sunday in the print edition of Loudoun Extra) and Linked Up in Loudoun, a look at what other blogs and Web sites are saying about events in the county.

- Starting this fall, extensive coverage of high school sports — including team rosters and statistics, player profiles and views from individual seats in school stadiums.

LoudounExtra.com also will provide breaking local news on a continuing basis. You won’t need to wait until the next day’s paper — or until publication of the Extra on Thursday or Sunday — to read about a major local news development. A story will be posted online on the same day. And LoudounExtra.com will be a convenient place to find any recent Washington Post article about Loudoun County, whether it ran in the daily paper or in the Extra.

Journalists at washingtonpost.com designed the Web site and are producing most of the content. But many of the breaking news stories on the site will be written by reporters in The Post’s Leesburg bureau -- the same reporters whose bylines appear in the daily newspaper and in the Extra. Their names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses are listed in the masthead on Page 2 of today’s Extra -- and if you have a news tip or story idea, they will continue to be your best point of contact.

This new partnership will bring changes to the print edition. Some of the special features developed for the Web site also will appear in our section. In today’s Extra, for example, we’ve published an article by Bill Snead about four elderly sisters who still attend the tiny church started on land donated by their grandfather; a longer version of the story, along with a video report and photo gallery, first appeared Monday on LoudounExtra.com.

And as the Web site adds features in the weeks and months ahead, we’ll use some of our print space to tell you about this additional material in case you haven’t noticed it.

Excited? Unimpressed? A little confused? Whatever your reaction, we’d like to hear from you. Tell us what you think of LoudounExtra.com and what we should consider adding to the site. We’d also welcome your ideas about which online material should be highlighted in the print edition.

Send your comments to extra@washpost.com, the e-mail address for the Leesburg bureau. Or contact the editors of the site at loudounextra@wpni.com.

With the launch of LoudounExtra.com, The Post has embarked on a new direction in online local journalism. So sit back, log on and enjoy the ride.

PAUL BERNSTEIN -- Editor, Loudoun Extra

Your Thoughts...

Are you happy that the school year is over?