In its fiftieth year of circulating newspapers in Northwest, Georgetown, Foggy Bottom, and Dupont, the Current has finally given in and joined the ranks of digital journalism. Readers can now find content from the four community newspapers on a clean, modern website.

“There is a new sort of direction that the papers are taking—not in terms of editorial, but moving forward and looking into the 21st century instead of staying the course,” says David Ferrara, who came on as the president and chief operating officer about a year ago. “We think this is a real opportunity for us to rev things up a bit and get some more horsepower behind our marketing and obviously our presence in the Washington, D.C. market.”

Until now, anyone interested in the Current’s reporting had two options: the dead tree version or a static PDF of the dead tree version. And they had to wait until the Wednesday publication date.

As of last week, though, stories are now largely uploaded to the website as they are written.

“We may not be hitting that goal one hundred percent of the time for the first couple of weeks, but our goal is to be a fully 24/7 website,” Ferrara says. “There will always be as much breaking news as we can put on there, and features also, that develop during the week.”

The site’s design certainly isn’t breaking any of the templates for online local journalism, but it is uncluttered, with an emphasis on visuals, and easy to use. Readers can now easily share the Current’s reporting on real estate deals, ANC meetings, and other hyperlocal concerns.

“[The site] will be a fixture that will hopefully grow alongside the newspapers in terms of editorial content, in terms of relevancy to our readership, and hopefully grow our readership—the idea being to expand circulation of the newspapers along with it,” Ferrara says. “We hope it’s a value add for our readers and a value add, literally, to the company.”

Still, the company has taken heed of the cautionary tales of Borderstan, TBD, and a slew of other local sites that couldn’t be sustained by digital advertising. They plan to focus on their existing client base rather than the mercurial world of online advertising.

Advertisers can opt in to banner ads on the website, but currently only as a companion to print advertising packages. “The papers and the website together will be a team, and the advertising on one will probably be seen on the other, though there may be exceptions,” Ferrara says. “We’re prioritizing the revenue and health of the newspapers.”

He describes the website as a “premium companion” to the papers. The latter will remain the priority for the editorial staff, which hasn’t been expanded.

“We don’t see [the site] as being a rocket to the moon by any stretch of the imagination,” Ferrara says, “but we think, in 2017, it’s good to have a vibrant and robust online presence.”