Publisher’s Post: Restaurant Week; Hairy weather; Event for your Tuesday

Welcome to the new Publisher’s Post, a feature new for 2024 that will allow me to connect directly with you, our members.

I’ll use this space to write directly to you, giving you insight into the stories of the day, the new stories our team is working on, local events pulled from our robust local events calendar, and information about how you can help us in our mission to cover our communities.

I’ll email this post directly to you on some days. That email will replace an email with members-only content I’ve been sending weekdays at 11 a.m. I’ll also continue to send our popular weekday email at about 4 p.m. with the day’s wrap-up of news posted to our website.

Restaurant Week: Just posted to our site is a story about Fredericksburg’s Winter Restaurant Week. Reporter Mike Salmon dives into the menus and speaks with the local restaurant owners who say this week is a needed boost in an otherwise slow time of year.

Power problems: As I reported yesterday, power outages in Manassas were up 20 percent in 2023 — an unusual statistic in a city known for generating reliable power for its residents. I’m working on a follow-up story from the city council meeting last night, Monday, January 8, 2024, where the city’s utilities director updated the city council.

Weather watch: A strong storm is moving into our area today, causing school schedule disruptions, heavy rain, and expected strong winds. We’ll post new storm-related information to our Weather Blog, sponsored by Water’s End Brewery.

Here’s one event for your rainy Tuesday at the Prince William County Public Library (you’ll want to check and see if they’re still holding the event before you go due to the weather): “Art Night – Very Sketchy Ink Blots: Play with inks and pen and paper to make lovely graphic drawings for cards, bookmarks, and more. Registration required.”

You may submit your events to our free events calendar.

Don’t miss our sticky story: Reporter Kelly Sienkowski looks at a new effort from the Stafford County Tourism Office folks to help glue some of the area’s most prominent landmarks into visitors’ minds.

Local Spotlight: If you are a small business or nonprofit organization, I’m excited to tell you that we’ve launched Local Spotlight, a responsive, affordable advertising solution to put your organization in front of our 1.5 million viewers a year in multiple places on our website. See my announcement about Local Spotlight from Monday, Jan. 8, 2024.

Please become a member today: Go ahead and use that extra Christmas cash you have sitting around and become a Potomac Local News member today, and enjoy the benefits of reading 100% of the content on our website, including all of our original local news reporting. Your membership goes to pay our freelance reporters who cover public meetings, small businesses, and other local news.

Have a great day,

Uriah Kiser