Editorial

We were surprised at the level of positive reaction coming from throughout Washington, D.C., region to our announcement last week of a circulation increase in the wake of the departure of the Northern Virginia Journal newspaper. Our circulation has topped 30,000 for the first time since our founding in 1991 with a circulation of 7,400, and we have plans for more in the coming months.

In a measured way, we are determined to continually expand our ability to provide the news coverage that our corner of the burgeoning Northern Virginia region deserves. We have always considered our newspaper an asset not only to our readers from the standpoint of news coverage and discourse through opinion pieces and letters to the editor, but also to our advertisers as an effective medium for the growth of their businesses. We are proud of our ability to help businesses in Northern Virginia succeed, doing our part to create more jobs and provide for more families by so doing.

As our circulation expands, our ability to serve our advertisers is clearly enhanced, and by the same token more readers can benefit from the products and services that our advertisers provide.

Sometimes the invaluable role of a newspaper, even one that is unpopular or poorly regarded, is not fully appreciated until it is gone. In the case of the Journal newspaper, for better or worse it helped provide Northern Virginia with a sense of identity and cohesion for almost 70 years. Something like that does not suddenly disappear without it making a difference. Among other things, one of the residual strengths of the Journal was its coverage of high school sports.

Frankly, we're puzzled by the decision of the Denver-based new Journal ownership to abandon the booming Northern Virginia economy, population and job growth, and one of the nation's freshest and fastest growing urban centers at Tysons Corner in favor of a risky stab at competing head to head against one of the country’s most respected and best established newspapers in Washington, D.C. One could argue that both he and our region would have faired better had he invested the resources he's put into morphing the Journal into the Washington Examiner into a first-rate Northern Virginia newspaper instead. But apparently he has a national agenda, buying rights to the Examiner name in cities across the U.S., and a conservative social agenda to go with it.

So, in the wake of the national agendas of moguls, it falls to independent and locally-owned newspapers like ours to remain loyal to our primary readership base, which we shall continue to be, even as that base gradually expands. We welcome this special opportunity to deepen our partnership with our readers, our advertisers and the overall communities we serve to bring a better product to this region.