[ghaff]

In general, the online site of a newspaper doubtless does a lot of ad tracking. To the degree that readership is mostly local (as it is for most newspapers with relatively few exceptions), geofencing seems like a pretty rational response to potential compliance headaches. More trouble than it's worth is a wholly rational business justification for a case where a geo is currently unimportant and there's no business plan to expand there in the future.