editorsweblog.org has a pointer to Mark Glaser’s interview at Online Journalism Review with WPNI’s CEO/publisher and executive editor (Caroline Little and Jim Brady, respectively) on the state of the site and the unique challenges it faces as both a local and national news site (something I’ve touched on previously).

“About 20 percent of our users come from in-market, about 80 percent of them come from national or international,” Little said. “And with the local audience, we have the highest reach of any newspaper Web site in its market — anywhere from 42 to 44 percent depending on the month. That tends to be more of a mass-market audience. And our national and international audience tends to be affluent, business decision-maker, influential audience that we reach during the workday primarily. It’s an interesting mix and presents interesting challenges to us.”

She goes on to suggest that the company might eventually create two separate home pages; one for local users, and one for national/international readers. I don’t know how well this would work in practice, but it’s an interesting concept. Personally, I happen to prefer the current mix of local news and national stories, so I would hope there’d be a way to continue to combine the two even under such an alternative format. The interview touches briefly on mywashingtonpost.com, which has been around for a while but apparently isn’t seeing as much traffic as anticipated.

Both Caroline and Jim (see, I can get away with that, because I work for them) discuss WPNI’s continuing reluctance to charge for online content, even in light of rumors circulating that the New York Times is contemplating a plan along these lines. Caroline points out that with a few exceptions, charging for content hasn’t helped many bottom lines, and could make it difficult for the paper to compete with other free news sources, while Jim makes the very good point that firewalling content behind a pay-per-view structure cuts down on referrals and weblog traffic.

The interview also touches on the Slate integration, human vs. automated aggregation of news content, how to better publicize the site’s video and multimedia content, and the hyperlocal market currently served by groups like backfence.com, as I mentioned back in December. (Their site is now up and running; I’ve added it to the Media links.)