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Throughout the media world, a trend is emerging: more and more news outlets are asking readers to subscribe.

For the New York Times, turning readers into paid subscribers has helped the company buck industry trends and grow its revenue in the face of steep print advertising declines and an environment in which Google and Facebook capture the lion’s share of new digital advertising.

Here in Arlington, we are fortunate to have a great base of advertisers. Thanks to our advertisers, the ARLnow you see today is sustainable and here to stay.

However, we often hear from readers who want more. More long-form stories, more profiles of local community members doing good works, more investigations into neighborhood issues, more accountability and public-service journalism, etc. We do some of that now, but this kind of reporting takes a lot of time to produce and we are stretched thin as it is.

To do more is not possible for us as an exclusively advertising-supported business. It could be possible, however, if just a percent or two of our current readers are willing to subscribe to read it.

Here’s the idea we’re currently batting around:

• Invest in increased long-form, enterprise and public-service reporting, but make most of it exclusively for subscribers.
• Offer subscriptions for $8/mo or $80/year.
• Beyond more news, include other goodies for subscribers like: a new weekly “insider” email newsletter, access to a private Facebook group with ARLnow staff, a quarterly subscriber happy hour, etc.

So what do you think? Would you be willing to pay a small monthly fee for more news about Arlington?

We have a bit of a problem.

Not a big problem, but one that’s been fairly persistent over the past half dozen years we’ve operated our Arlington event calendar. It’s a two-fold issue that no amount of boldface type on our event submission page seems to solve.

First, even though the event calendar is clearly labeled as being for events in Arlington, we get loads of submissions for events in D.C., Alexandria, Falls Church and elsewhere. We do our best to screen those out and reject any events not in Arlington.

Second, event details have a way of changing after they’re submitted. Whether it’s a submission error or a case of the event being moved to a new time or venue, we regularly get requests to make changes to events (there is no way for those submitting events to edit them later).

Our official policy is that events with incorrect information are removed but the event organizer may re-submit the event afterward. A downside of that is that any links to the original event page would be broken, and it is a bit of extra work for the event submitter.

On the other hand, having our staff make changes upon request would be a drain on our resources and would serve to reward lackadaisical submitters who do not double check their information. Ideally, event information should never change, as the act of putting it on an event calendar means you’re telling our readers they should show up at that day and time and expect the event to take place as described. If such information frequently changes, it would discourage people from using and relying on the event calendar.

We’ve been mulling over changes to both policies for awhile, but wanted to ask you — our readers — about it first. Should we start allowing events outside of Arlington that may be of interest to ARLnow readers, and should we be more accommodating with event information change requests?

There has not been much breaking news in Arlington lately. For those who like to comment on stories with “Slow news day?” — yes, that has been accurate for a good portion of the past month.

But inevitably, breaking news does happen in Arlington. We are a county with some 230,000 residents, a major airport, rail lines, Metro tunnels, highways, bridges, a river, government offices and one of the world’s largest office buildings — things happen here.

We know that one thing readers like about us is that we are often the first to report breaking news. But our email subscribers are often slow to see that breaking news, since by design they only get an update once a day.

Also, those who like our Facebook page are subject to the whims of the Facebook algorithm, and might not be seeing breaking stories.

Today we’re wondering: should we offer an alternative? Should we start sending out breaking news alerts to email subscribers?

Autumn might have officially arrived on September 22, but weather in the 80s and 90s since then has had some people still stuck in summer mode. Despite the weather roller coaster, some people are going full steam ahead into fall and embracing fall activities.

A number of events in Arlington over the coming weeks are fall-themed, such as Columbia Pike Fall Fest on Saturday or the Howl O’ Ween Walk to the Rescue on Sunday. But there are plenty of traditional fall activities you might enjoy that aren’t necessarily an organized event, such as looking at the changing colors of fall foliage or picking apples and pumpkins. Or maybe you’re a sports buff and at this time of year you most enjoy watching playoff baseball.

This morning we want to know: What is your favorite fall activity? Let us know in the comments about other fall activities you enjoy that we may not have listed.

ARLnow is going to start experimenting with a slightly different approach to our local news coverage later this week, one that is intended increase the depth of some of our coverage while broadening the scope of the rest of our coverage.

As this approach should result in more articles being published each day — if all goes well — we have the opportunity to cover a wider variety of topics.

Which of the following, in your opinion, should we do more of?

Have other ideas? Let us know in the comments section.