ARLnow publisher announces editorial hire, new partnerships and new site

Local News Now, the Arlington-based publisher behind ARLnow, has a trio of announcements to kick off the week.

First, we have a new leader on the news side of things. Brandi Bottalico, who most recently served as an editor of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, has joined LNN in the newly created position of editorial team lead.

Brandi will work across the sites we own and operate in Northern Virginia, helping to lead our team of local journalists while guiding a number of editorial initiatives that we have planned over the next year. She started last week.

LNN now employs 10 full-time employees and two full-time contractors — nine on the news side and three on the business side — plus a number of part-time contributors.

Second, we have a new website. FFXnow will cover all of Fairfax County, with a hyperlocal focus on the Reston and Tysons areas. Our existing Reston Now and Tysons Reporter sites will be folded into FFXnow, though each will maintain their brand and identity as separate social media accounts and daily email newsletters, focused on each respective coverage area.

FFXnow will officially launch in February with three full-time journalists and plans to eventually expand to additional hyperlocal coverage areas within the county.

Finally, we have two new partners: Potomac Local (covering Prince William and Stafford counties) and Lake & McHenry County Scanner (covering part of suburban Chicago).

In addition to publishing our soon-to-be three owned-and-operated sites — ARLnow, ALXnow and FFXnow — LNN assists other local publishers with their web presence, advertising sales and other business services. The goal is to help our partners grow revenue, focus on readers, and do more local journalism.

The partnership with Lake & McHenry County Scanner represents our first expansion outside of the greater D.C. area.

These agreements — which join our existing partnerships with PoPville, Greater Greater Washington and Run Washington — will lead to continued expansion of our business operations, including more advertising sales and sponsored content production capabilities. The additional capabilities will also benefit our owned-and-operated sites, boosting revenue and allowing the sites to do more local reporting.

Local organizations interested in advertising can check out the new-for-2022 sponsored content and banner ad options here. We are also expanding self-serve options, like Community Posts, across our network of sites.