FFXnow readers now have online access to archives of the GazetteLeader community newspaper from 2023 through 2024.
Local News Now, which acquired the GazetteLeader in September 2024, has merged the newspaper’s coverage into its own websites, with Fairfax-specific articles found at FFXnow and Arlington-related articles on its sister site, ARLnow.
Fairfax coverage includes articles by longtime local journalists Brian Trompeter and Dave Facinoli, among others. Coverage focuses in part on countywide issues, but with a particular emphasis on the communities of McLean, Great Falls, Vienna, Tysons and Oakton.
Searching the archives turns up articles ranging from leadership changes at the Great Falls Citizens Association to Vienna business leaders getting health/wellness tips.
The integration of the archives was contemplated since the acquisition, but technology advances in recent months helped streamline the process of transferring about 1,300 news articles covering a wide range of local topics to ARLnow and FFXnow.
The GazetteLeader was established in February 2023 by Arizona-based O’Rourke Media Group. While having the same editorial and advertising staff as the Sun Gazette chain that closed at the same time, it was not directly related to the former outlet.
O’Rourke Media saw an opportunity in the Northern Virginia media market, which in the past 20 years has seen a major decline in local news coverage from daily and weekly print publications.
Starting out as separate Arlington and Fairfax editions, the GazetteLeader faced many of the same economic headwinds impacting all media, but particularly print media. In January 2024, the editions were combined, and eight months later, O’Rourke Media opted to leave Northern Virginia to focus on other areas of the country.
A number of newsroom staff members joined Local News Now as part of the asset sale, including regular FFXnow and ARLnow reporter Scott McCaffrey.
The closure of the Sun Gazettes in 2023 and, indirectly, the GazetteLeader in 2024 ended nearly 90 years of local coverage that had started with creation of the Northern Virginia Sun newspaper in December 1935.
Starting as a weekly, the Sun grew through mergers and acquisitions into a six-day-a-week daily paper and from the 1950s to the 1980s was a dominant force in Northern Virginia journalism. Large portions of its archives from that era can be found on Virginia Chronicle, an online media compendium run by the Library of Virginia.
