A note from the publisher
This was a hard Labor Day weekend in our region.
In a few days, we reported:
- The fatal shooting of an innocent 16-year-old bystander during First Friday in Old Town Manassas
- The death of a baby in Woodbridge after the child — and the child’s mother — were struck by a car
- A crash on Interstate 66 on Saturday that killed three people
Those stories landed one after another. They made it difficult to treat this last weekend of summer as anything other than what it was: a stretch of grief for families, and a test for the communities around them.
Potomac Local News was with you through it. When people needed what police had confirmed, what they had not, who was in custody, and what happened next, they came to us. That trust is not something we take lightly.
From Friday, September 4, through Monday, September 7, here is how many of you turned to Potomac Local News across our platforms:
- Website: 22,874 page views from 18,349 devices, most of them on phones
- Email: two breaking alerts to more than 17,300 subscribers each; about 5,000 opens and more than 750 people clicking through to the stories
- Facebook, Instagram, and X combined: more than 1.6 million views and impressions, including 1.5 million views on Facebook alone — all of it organic
- Social growth over the weekend: hundreds of new followers, including 349 on Facebook
Numbers are not the point of a weekend like this. A 16-year-old should have gone home from First Friday. A baby should have lived. Three people should have finished their trip on I-66.
We publish these figures only to say this plainly: when it mattered, a great many of you trusted Potomac Local News to tell you what was known and to update you as the record changed.
We will stay on these stories in the days and weeks ahead — on what investigators find, on what the court record shows, and on how residents and local leaders try to chart a path forward.
If you have information to share or need the latest on any of these cases, we are here.
Thank you for reading, for forwarding, and for putting your trust in independent local news when the news was the last thing anyone wanted.
— Uriah Kiser
Founder and Publisher
Potomac Local News
