A lot of media attention for an isolated incident of rural "vigilante justice"

I found interesting in this Associated Press news item the reporter's attention to the details of the rural setting. The story stops short of indicating how or why the rural setting is relevant to what happened, but the details of the rural locale could be intended to suggest that this sort of vigilante behavior is associated with rural places because of the level of poverty, the limited of law enforcement resources, and the lack of anonymity (as of the target, who was known to have been charged with acquiring child pornography). A quick search found that major newspapers all over the country -- from the Philadelphia Inquirer to the Sacramento Bee -- picked up this story.