We're #1! We're #1! (Depending on How You Do the Rankings)

Regular readers know I have pooh-poohed, to a degree, the county government's recently released “resident satisfaction survey” of local residents.

Despite that skepticism, it is still my solemn duty as Arlington's “most trusted name in Northern Virginia media” (that's sad!), to mention that the Sun Gazette again has been ranked at the top when it comes to local media that the Arlington community relies on for county news.

Nearly 37 percent of respondents to the survey ranked us as one of their main sources for local news. That compares to 14 percent for the Arlington Connection, 5.4 percent for the Examiner and 3.1 percent, collectively, for Spanish-language newspapers.

(The Washington Times wasn't included in the survey, ouch! Nor was the Falls Church News-Press, even though I, for one, religiously read Richard Barton's "Our Man in Arlington" column each week.)

Of course, The Washington Post still leads the pack, at 61.7 percent in the 2008 survey. But hey, we'll take #1 among all the rest. And don't forget: since this information comes from the government, it has to be accurate!

The Summer Real Estate Guide

This week's papers include our summer real estate guides, which will keep you up to date on the local real estate scene.

It's been a rough two years for the local real estate market . . . not to mention (cough) for newspapers that derive much of their revenue from real estate advertising. And, based on our reporting, views among top real estate professionals are mixed on whether the local area is out of the woods just yet.

We have posted some of the coverage on the Web site already; the rest will be up shortly. I'll try to include a link to it all in a day or two.

Thanks to Laura Mansilla

We've had the opportunity to have Yorktown High School student Laura Mansilla as an intern for the past month, and it's been a pleasure. (And, with Kristen Armstrong on vacation in Puerto Rico this week, we even had a desk for Laura to use!)

She has written both for the Arlington paper and our Middleburg paper, and, having edited some of her stuff, I can say that she writes more coherently than some pro reporters I've worked with through the years. We'll have more stories from her coming up in the near future.

Ah, Headlines!

Yesterday's “headline of the day” came from the WAMU-FM Web site (where I was searching for its report on the Arlington accessory-dwelling debate).

The headline read: "Police Search[ing] For Sexual Deviant."

Hey, aren't we all?