We’re always posting news to our website, PotomacLocalNews.com where, throughout the day, you can check for the latest news post. You can click the bell icon on the bottom left corner of the site and sign up for free push notifications. You’ll know when we post something new.

If you’re a paid subscriber for just $65 a year, or $6 a month (works out to $72 for the year for monthly subscribers), you’ll get 100% access to the content on our site. You should really consider becoming a paid subscriber today, as your support goes a long way to support the kind of journalism you’ve come to expect from us.

Our news email (the one you’re reading right now) is FREE to everyone. I’ve found this to be the most effective and convenient way to push our news to 15,000 news email subscribers.

From now on, I’m going to send the news email on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. This small change will give us more time to produce more journalism that matters to you.

I hope you enjoy our new news email features, like our Agenda section, which shows you the meetings we’re covering, and the stories we’ll be writing. In our new Coronavirus hospitalizations section, I’ve got my eye on the number of hospitalizations reported in our region, and the number continues to be surprisingly low.

These past few months, I’ve been sending the news email on weekdays at 7 p.m. However, I’ve found that more people read the email when it’s sent in the mornings.

Of course, when something big happens, I’ll send a breaking news email so you’ll always be in the know.

I want to take an opportunity to welcome Germanna Community College as an advertiser on Potomac Local News.

I’ve been working closely with the college during the coronavirus pandemic to help get out the word on many of the things it is doing to help students in our communities continue to advance their education despite the challenges of remote learning.

It’s no secret that many of us are hurting right now because we lost our jobs or have been furloughed due to the coronavirus pandemic. This has all happened at no fault of our own.

Germanna knows this, and that’s why is offering an amazing new program called Re-Employing Virginians for residents who need to brush up on their skills to get new jobs in some of the hottest career fields today, including nursing, cybersecurity, public safety, arc welding, asphalt field techs, and more.

Qualifying residents can get up to $3,000 in FREE tuition for educational programs in these fields, and all you have to do is visit Germanna’s website for more details. Don’t wait because this FREE money won’t last long.

If you’re hoping to win friends and influence people, standing before a group of politicians — Democrats and Republicans — who spent more than a year of their life, and tens of thousands of dollars to campaign and then be elected to serve the people, please take note: This is not the way to do it.

When it comes to the art of persuasion, this comment, too, can be written off as a failed tactic that won’t be remembered in the halls of great public speech.

Public comment time during the Prince William Board of County Supervisors meetings, which has been pushed later and later in recent months, preventing would-be speakers from being heard before critical votes are taken, has gotten more interesting, if not, sadly, more entertaining.

It’s been a place for young adults to come and act like children, exploding and cursing at elected officials telling them to “f_” off, to demean minorities — including Yesli Vega, the first Latina to be elected to the county’s Board of Supervisors — and to hurl faceless accusations of abuse of power at a police department that not only enjoys but had earned a 95% citizen satisfaction rating.

The vocal attacks on the county police continued this week, as school resource officers — those who protect children at school — the types of officers our community demanded after a string of mass school shootings two years ago — are now, apparently, frowned upon as part of the “prison industrial complex.”

And efforts to train officers on how to work with troubled youth, apparently, aren’t good enough either, as progressives continue to attack the Democrats who hold a majority on the Board of County Supervisors.

No police department or sheriff’s office is perfect. After covering public safety for nearly 15 years, I know officers are continually trained on new methods and best practices for keeping our community safe.

The response to riots in our community this past summer put a spotlight on the importance of police of having properly trained police officers, and we congratulate the Manassas City Police Department on its reaccreditation.

The majority of people like their police department. It’s what they call when their rights are being threatened.

It’s a comfort to know the police are there to protect our rights, as it would be left up to us to use any means necessary to defend them if a police officer could not be dispatched to help us.

That’s why we applaud Supervisor Peter Candland’s call to remove any mention of defunding or reallocating funding to the Prince William County Police Department, in the county’s upcoming strategic plan.

We hope his fellow Supervisors will heed this call and show support for a department that is, unquestionably respected, and very much needed in a growing, diverse community.

We’re now able to post content from our website to Facebook for the first time since August.

For a reason unknown to us, we had to adjust a setting on our server in order for Facebook to accept our content once again. We’re glad to have our content back on the social media platform where it can be viewed and shared.

I’m grateful for the help I received from the Center For Cooperative Media, as well as the assistance from our web management firm, Web Publisher Pro, to help us solve this issue.

Prior to our hiatus, posts appeared on our Facebook page automatically.  As we move forward, we’ll begin posting new content to Facebook slowly and gauge what type of content is performing best.

In other news, I’ve reduced the number of links that appear in our weekday evening news email. This was an effort to reduce redundancy, as any of the articles are repeats from previous days.

Our news emails are one of the most popular ways for our readers to access our content, so it’s very important to me that our news emails provide a convenient, effective, and informative user experience.

Our news email subscription list has grown 300% since April, now reaching more than 14,000 users who have signed up to receive our news.

And finally, as we approach the end of the year, many businesses are approaching and asking for advertising information as they plan their advertising budgets for 2021. We’re putting the finishing touches on our new media kit, which hasn’t been updated since 2019, and we expect it will include a larger focus on reaching our audience via email.

Thank you to our advertisers and paid subscribers who support our work. If you haven’t already subscribed, click this link and subscribe today. As always, feel free to comment below or sent me an email to let me know what you think of our service.

With just one link posted to our Community Bulletin Board section, we sent OmniRide nearly 200 clicks in 24 hours.

We posted this link: OmniRide service change Monday, November 2 to the bulletin board, which appears in our weekday evening newsletter, detailing an upcoming service change OmniRide passengers need to know about.

The link took readers from our email newsletter right to OmniRide’s website — to the source —  where they can get the important information they need.

These are numbers that beat many social media advertising campaigns that are run over the course of multiple weeks — and we do it for a fraction of the price the social media platforms charge.

For a limited time, you, too, can post to the Community Bulletin Board for just $49, a $250 savings. Use this link to post: potomaclocal.com/submit-a-press-release

It’s great to use if you’re selling an item, or use it to list restaurant specials. You can use it for company announcements, or to sell tickets for an event, post a coupon, or for any other piece of content you can think of to grow your business.

I just finished watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix.

It’s worth a watch, and it was one of two final programs I wanted to watch before my subscription to the service goes dark on October 1. Our family decided to cancel the service following its marketing campaign for Cuties, which debuted earlier this month.

After watching the documentary, I find myself in a social media dilemma.

• Pageviews on our site, potomaclocalnews.com, over the past 30 days, is up 30%.
  
• We have not been able to post anything to our company’s Facebook page since August 21.
  
• Facebook says we’re not registered as a news organization.
  
• Facebook rejected my first attempt to register our site. It says it cannot verify our business telephone number.
  
• I tried again and I’ve yet to receive a response.
  
• This is despite the great help I’ve received on this issue from the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.
  
• Following our reporting on the Black Lives Matter protests at the Prince William Board of County Supervisors meetings, some took to Facebook to call for defunding us.
• I don’t know, and may never know what effect this had on the way Facebook views my business.
• I credit our page view growth to our growing list of 14,000 email newsletter subscribers, which has increased 300% since April 1.

I know Facebook is an avenue for people to find our news. Hell, I relied on it to practically build my business — especially 10 years ago, in the early days.

However, now I’m wondering what its worth to keep badgering Facebook to allow us to once again post content. Essentially, begging Facebook to let it sell ads off of our hard work.

Increasingly — and we’ve known this for years — on the internet, if you’re not paying for the service, you’re the product. Your data is being used and sold to advertisers so they can target the right ad to you at the right time.

We’ve never done this. We don’t offer “geo-targeting,” or any other type of targeting. Our content is local news, so by definition, our news is already targeted to local residents.

At Potomac Local News, you’re not the product. The news is, and that’s one reason why the number of paid subscribers to our site continues to grow.

Meanwhile, in recent months when we could post to Facebook, many of our sponsored posts for our advertising clients — none of which were political ads— were rejected. The majority of them were for community events.

Among our audience on Facebook, interaction has been declining. And, surprisingly, comments on our site — which, for years, had been nearly non-existent — are increasing in numbers.

I’m at a crossroads, and the decision I make could have a lasting effect on my business.

During a visit to my barber this week, I learned that many small business owners and their employees are still hurting financially. Many in shops across our region are longing to see their customers’ faces.

Box-box stores and drive-through restaurants appear to be fine. Now — when they’re struggling the most — we must provide small business owners the tools necessary to help them and their employees win back customers and rebuild their businesses.

That’s why, starting today, we’re going to help small businesses get Back on Top!

You can submit a link/post in the Community Bulletin Board section that appears at the TOP of our email newsletter (a section formerly called “A Word From Our Sponsors”) for only $49 per link/post.

• When clicked, the reader is taken to a press release or short blurb, and photo you’ve submitted.
• We will provide you a full content analytics report for your post at NO extra charge.
• I regularly charge $299 per link/post.
• SAVE $250, and put that money back into your business.

The Community Bulletin Board is the first thing readers see at the TOP of our weekday email newsletter

• Our newsletter reaches more than 13,500 0pt-in registered users — absolutely no spam here.
• You can post to the Community Bulletin Board using this link.
• Click this link to see a copy of yesterday’s email newsletter.
• Our email newsletter is the biggest thing we do every weekday!
• The link/post will show in the section for at least three to five days (display time will vary depending upon the number of submissions). I want it to show for as long as possible.

If you have questions, please email me at [email protected].

Thank you for the continued support of small businesses in our community.

Independent news website grows to 110,000 monthly users, 3 million page views annually

As Potomac Local News turned 10 years old on June 10, 2020, the independent local news website has achieved multiple milestones.

Potomac Local News welcomed more than 70 new paid subscribers during June, bringing the total number of paid subscribers to nearly 600. June’s new subscription count represents the highest number of new subscribers to join the Potomac Local News community since the launch of our subscription program in January 2018.

The majority of the new subscribers chose the $65 annual plan over a $6 monthly plan, which provides subscribers with a savings of $13 annually. While everyone is permitted three free views per month on PotomacLocalNews.com, paid subscribers enjoy 100% access to content on the website.

Over the past three months, Potomac Local News has seen an increase in the number of paid subscribers in key neighborhoods in our coverage area, including Woodbridge, Manassas, Stafford, Dumfries, and Fredericksburg.

This growth is a clear indicator of a healthy, growing community of people who want trusted reporting, delivered to them in an easy-to-read format. We are humbled by the fact people are willing to pay to support local news in our community.

Potomac Local News remains committed to providing branding services to local businesses and non-profit organizations by helping them capture a coveted piece of the local market share. Advertisements on the site continue to be shown to both casual readers and paid subscribers.

To date, Potomac Local News has helped more than 400 local businesses develop branding plans that work to educate our community on the helpful products and services they offer.

Our key strategic branding partners include:

• The Fauquier Bank
• Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center
• Mary Washington Healthcare
• Chick-fil-A Bristow
• JTC, Inc.

Not only has Potomac Local News seen an increase in subscribers, but the company has seen a surge in its number of email newsletter subscribers. Between April 1 and today, our company added more than 8,200 opt-in subscribers to our free email newsletter, bringing the total distribution to more than 11,700 subscribers.

The newsletter is a free product distributed each weekday morning, containing links to the most recent news and information posted to PotomacLocalNews.com. The newsletter also serves a leading success driver for our strategic branding partners, as Potomac Local News readers continually respond to advertisements seen inside of the newsletter.

In the coming months, be on the lookout for more targeted email newsletters that deliver timely community information on topics such as business, restaurants, recreation, healthcare, and neighborhood news.

The overall audience reach for Potomac Local News continues to show impressive growth.

• Pageviews  per month: 237,000, up from 130,000 a year ago
• Pageviews Annual 2.9 million, up from 1.6 million a year ago
• Users per month: 109,000… up from 67,000 a year ago

The increases come as Potomac Local News invested $5,000 in an improved website that allows for more content discovery, as well as new options for users to log in to post community events, and job postings.

I founded Potomac Local News in June 2010 to serve the community where I grew up, and to provide a much-needed local news resource, two years before the Potomac News and Manassas Journal Messenger (known in 2010 as News & Messenger) closed for business. Those newspapers — where I worked in both the newsroom and advertising department before its closure — served our communities for a combined 157 years.

We work hard every day to earn your trust, and your business, so that Potomac Local News may continue to provide the local news and information that is important to you and your family.

In one month, Potomac Local News will celebrate 10 years of publishing local news in our community.

That’s a huge milestone — one that we’re exceptionally proud of.

Earlier this year, we had planned to throw a bash. Now, in the era of social distancing, throwing a big party in June is no longer an option.

But that doesn’t mean we still won’t be there for our community. In fact, we’ve been there for 10 years, reporting the stories that matter most.

In 2012, we were there in Triangle when Basim Mansour, owner of Michael and Sons Services, presented a deserving 15-year-old with a football helmet from his favorite team.

Or, how about that time when Shining Sol Candle Company, the Manassas Business of the Year 2018, was slapped with a no-trespassing order from the city while trying to bring wax into their store?

There was a cold January night in 2013 we were there to tell the story of the eight homeless families displaced from the ACTS shelter in Dumfries after a water pipe burst.

Later that year, we were there when community residents gathered early on a Saturday morning in Brentsville to chart the future of what would be Dove’s Landing Park, a place where the community gathers today.

In 2010, when people were beginning to fight for the right access Featherstone Wildlife Refuge in Woodbridge, we were there to tell the story.

When Stafford County named Access Eye its 2016 Business of the Year, the ceremony served as a grand opening for the recently-opened Jeff Rouse Swim Center. You guessed it. We were there.

In 2011, hundreds of Woodbridge residents were displaced after flooding rain from Tropical Storm Lee fell on the region. Again, we were there.

In late 2018, we investigated what led to the closing of the Flory Small Business Center in Prince William County — a place that helped so many small businesses in our community.

We walked on the Interstate 95 E-ZPass Express Lanes and took pictures, and spoke with construction crews while they were working to build the lanes so you would know what to expect when they eventually opened in 2014.

We’ve been there for the ribbon cuttings.

And Hylton’s big win over Osbourn in 2015.

And through it all, it’s you who have trusted us to bring you your local news. You’ve stuck by us, whether through good news and bad.

You’ve supported our advertisers — those locally-owned shops that need us now more than ever.

Thank you for all you’ve done.

If you value this kind of community journalism, and you have not done so already, please step up and support it today by becoming a Subscriber.

It’s only $6 a month, or you can SAVE $13 and subscribe for a year for only $65. Your support means we will be around for another 10 years to continue telling the story of our community.