The team behind ARLnow has a mission: to make local news more interesting, engaging and actionable for a new generation of digital-first news consumers in Arlington and in other dynamic, live-work communities.
In support of that mission, we’ve been getting ready to launch a new site for Tysons, McLean and Vienna later this month. But we’ve had a major setback and need to ask for your help to overcome it.
Starting in early 2018, ARLnow plans to create a new position of Morning Editor and Enterprise Reporter. The individual hired for this position will be responsible for executing key editorial strategies around email and memberships for our growing operation.
The job duties include:
TechShop Expected to Reopen — Crystal City’s TechShop location, closed last month as a result of the company’s bankruptcy, is expected to reopen under new ownership. [Washington Business Journal]
RIP Bill Bozman — “He was ‘one of the community’s greats,’ in the words of former state Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple, and while the death of William Bozman was not unexpected, it still created a ripple of emotional outpouring from several generations of Arlington civic leaders who had relied on him for counsel and good humor.” [InsideNova]
ARLnow is rolling out breaking new alerts for our email subscribers.
In this era of social media noise, sometimes it’s hard for important local stories to break through right away. So we’re giving readers an option to make sure breaking stories land in their email inbox ASAP.
Metro to Raise Fares, Reduce Service — In order to plug a budget gap, Metro will be raising rail and bus fares and cutting service starting in July. [WTOP, NBC Washington]
Pupatella Expanding to Richmond — Beloved Bluemont pizzeria Pupatella is expanding via franchising. One of the first places getting new Pupatellas: Richmond, where a local franchisee is opening four new locations. [Richmond Times-Dispatch]
Icy Saturday Morning — Several crashes were reported around Arlington Saturday as freezing rain turned roads and sidewalks into sheets of ice. The slippery conditions lasted for most of the morning, before a warm-up started melting the ice around lunchtime. [Storify]
Wreaths Laid at ANC — Despite the icy weather, tens of thousands of volunteers helped to lay 245,000 wreaths on grave sites at Arlington National Cemetery Saturday morning. Arlington County Police assisted with crowd control for the annual Christmastime event. [WTOP, The Blaze, Twitter]
No need to protest outside of our office, it’s not our fault, but ARLnow.com’s comment system is down.
Disqus, the our third-party comment system provider, is among the companies affected by a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack today, which is mostly affecting internet users on the East Coast.
In June, ARLnow.com was read by about 350,000 unique visitors who accounted for 1.43 million pageviews, a new record for the site.
Across our network of four sites — ARLnow.com, Reston Now, Hill Now and Borderstan — we saw a record 527,000 unique visitors and 1.92 million pageviews. In all, our sites have 94,953 subscribers/followers across email, Twitter and Facebook.
For the 30-day period ending March 24, LNN’s four sites — ARLnow.com, Reston Now, Hill Now and Borderstan — were visited by 435,000 unique visitors, according to Google Analytics. The sites collectively served 1.75 million page views during that time.
That’s a new record for LNN, which last year re-launched Borderstan, a D.C. neighborhood blog founded in 2008 and acquired from its original founders, while at the same time selling its Bethesda Now website to Bethesda Magazine. The record readership was driven by local stories — unlike past readership records, this time there was no spike in traffic from a story that received national attention.
APS Mulls Background Checks for Parents Who Work in Schools — Arlington Public Schools is considering requiring background checks for parents who provide enrichment services in schools. The School Board has sent back a staff proposal, however, which calls for parents who are paid for their time to receive background checks. Parents who volunteer would not get such screening. School Board members said the amount of staff supervision, not money, should determine who should gets background checks. [InsideNova]
Clarendon Eatery Offers 50 Percent Off for Military — Through the Sunday, Brixx Pizza in Clarendon (1119 N. Hundson Street) is offering 50 percent off food for those with a valid military ID. [Facebook]
At a time when chefs are the new rock stars, what does it take to run a successful local restaurant? What makes one restaurant thrive while others down the block struggle? What is it like to run a restaurant in Arlington and how to local government policies help or hinder local establishments?
We will attempt to answer those and other questions you might have about the local restaurant industry at the first of a series of events ARLnow.com is holding in 2016.
