If we’re going to be honest, when ARLnow was founded in 2010, there was no business plan.
Armed with a laptop, a police scanner and a digital camera, we started reporting on local news and then… just kept doing it. Eventually enough of you started reading that local businesses started approaching us about advertising. And for 10 years or so, advertising was our only business model.
That has changed last year, when the pandemic prompted us to ask the Arlington community for some help making it through the tough economic times. You came through, and it made us ponder the future.
While our advertisers have helped us grow into the organization we are today, with eight full-time editorial employees and four local sites, at some point there’s a limit to how much we can grow on advertising alone. And there’s a lot more we want to do.
If you follow the news business, you probably think you know what’s coming: either an announcement that we’re going to erect a paywall and make readers pay to read our content, or some sort of donation campaign that’s basically a souped-up version of our Patreon page.
Don’t worry, we’re not doing either of those things.
Rather, ARLnow is going to stay exactly how it is. Except we’re adding some new stuff.
The ARLnow Press Club will allow us to take almost all of those “wouldn’t it be cool if…” ideas we’ve had and make it a reality. Here’s what we’re offering for now…
Your membership will also support more local journalism — we will be reinvesting most of the proceeds back into our local news team.
Thank you to all of our readers who have made ARLnow the go-to place for local information in Arlington. With your continued support, we’ll be able to serve the community with even more local journalism in the months and years to come.