ARLnow reports on news that happens any hour of the day, any day of the year. But generally, barring breaking news, we only publish articles during waking hours on weekdays.
This schedule means that readers can check out over the weekend and not have to worry about falling behind on the latest Arlington local news. And it means that our staff can take a couple of well-deserved days off at the end of the week.
That said, we’ve had more local news than ever to report over the past few months, and it has us considering expanding our publishing schedule — specifically, by publishing on Saturday.
Staffing up for news coverage on Saturday would allow us to better cover breaking news over the weekend and report on Saturday Arlington County Board meetings in real time. It would also mean that we won’t have to skip some smaller stories that don’t make the weekly cut, while providing more flexibility for publishing feature articles funded by our Patreon community.
The downside is that some readers clearly prefer to tune out over the weekend. Even when we’ve tried to publish a full slate of articles on a Saturday, readership is roughly half of a typical weekday. And… well, even those of us most passionate about local news reporting are a little less enthusiastic about spending most of their Saturday at a County Board meeting.
All things considered, what do you think about ARLnow publishing on Saturdays?