Arlington Mercury Gains Tax-Exempt Status, Goes on Hiatus

The Arlington Mercury, a nonprofit online news site, has been granted tax-exempt status by the IRS after nearly a two-year wait.

Editor Steve Thurston said the website will largely take a hiatus for the rest of the year in order to regroup and finally go after funding sources.

"We're just pausing while we start talking to people," Thurston told Patch on Monday. "We know we have enough examples of what it is we're trying to do at the Mercury to hopefully convince people to support us in a serious way."

The Arlington Mercury was founded in the summer of 2011 and its website launched in the months soon after. Thurston, who has taught journalism for 15 years at Montgomery College in Maryland, has been running the site with a rotating staff of volunteers ever since.

From backyard hens to the Columbia Pike streetcar, the Merc, as it is affectionately known, prides itself on covering issues at the neighborhood level.

"I always say we look at where the policy meets the pavement," Thurston said. "How can we look at some of those issues at the neighborhood level, or if we get told something at a neighborhood level, how do we look at that in terms of county policy?"

So now, serious fundraising can begin. The Mercury is one of what seemed to be an expanding list of nonprofit news ventures over the past several years to have its tax-exempt status delayed by the IRS as the agency attempted to rewrite the rules governing such organizations.

For himself, Thurston is considering teaching part-time and supplementing his income with work at the Mercury. He told Patch that the amount of money the site can raise through the end of the year will tell him if that's feasible.

Montgomery College has been supportive of the venture, he said, as it allows him to keep his skills sharp as a journalist and use the site in the classroom. Anyone at a major public meeting in Arlington in the past year has probably seen Thurston with his iPad and his microphone preparing a podcast and exploring a new way of telling stories with technology.

The Mercury website will remain live for now.

"We're probably not going to post much until we're sure what the future holds — or as sure as anybody can be," Thurston said. "I don't want to come back off of hiatus without enough money to move forward."

He added: "I think we can do it, but I'm going to give us to the first of the year."

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Click here to watch Thurston and Arlington Patch Editor Jason Spencer discuss community journalism as part of Arlington Independent Media's "In Conversation" series.