Do you live in a zip in Washington, and want to know where you can find all the news you need in a day? There is some great news for people looking for everything from a day spa in Hackensack to the latest activities of Osama Bin Laden; you live in a city with one of the best newspapers in the entire country. Fifth in the nation in circulation, the Washington Post is unique in the United States because of its local focus.

That focus - and the attention it receives - is so important because this city is of course the nation's capital. That means big news here is big news not only in the rest of the country, but the world as well. If Congress is passing a new bill approving a research and development tax credit, or any other kind of new measure, it is likely that the Post will break the news first.

National politics is the undoubted driving force behind the Post and its success, something for which the publishers make no apologies. In fact, there has been little attempt by the Post over its more than one hundred years of existence to really cover news elsewhere in the nation. It recently closed its American bureaus outside of the greater DC area because it wanted to focus purely on Washington news, not what vanity cabinets were popular in Chicago and other places.

Despite that fact, the Post has a regular circulation of almost 600,000 readers. It also has bureaus in foreign cities, one of the few newspapers in America to do so. That's because what is happening in other major centers of the world often plays a part in American politics, from the change in gold bullion prices in Tokyo to the ongoing war effort in Afghanistan.

Although national politics is the focus of the paper, there are pieces for other readers as well. The Post typically starts out with national news, but then continues to international, business, and local news as well. In the classifieds, whoever can afford space can advertise, from a person selling real estate in Toronto to a southern factory looking for employees.

Like all newspapers, the Washington Post is seeing a decrease in circulation in the Internet age. And like most major dailies, the Post is combating the loss of revenue by creating an online site for its paper.