On our 23rd birthday, a vision

Hi reader,

Today is the Henrico Citizen’s 23rd birthday. Suffice it to say, a lot has changed in the world, in local journalism and with my hairline since that day our first print edition published in 2001, but our commitment to being your trusted, nonpartisan source of Henrico news has not.

What follows is a longer email than I’d like, but an important one – about where we are and where we hope to go – that I hope you’ll read.

Our progress

In the past year, we’ve worked hard to make progress toward sustainability in our still-newish fully digital daily weekday format that we adopted out of necessity during the onset of COVID-19 more than four years ago:

• We’ve partnered with the Henrico Economic Development Authority to create the Henrico Small Business Boost program, which will return for its second year shortly (applications will open soon – stay tuned!).

• We earned a grant from the Chronicle of Philanthropy to produce a package of coverage related to refugees, immigrants and nonprofits in Henrico, which is in the works and will launch soon.

• We hired a full-time director of revenue to help expand our advertising, corporate and nonprofit partnerships and increase our visibility throughout the region.

• More 775 of you have contributed financially to help support our work in the past 12 months, helping us to expand our coverage and to support the position of our full-time Report for America corps member, education reporter Liana Hardy, who has produced consistently thorough and informative coverage.

• Thanks to a new law that I had a hand in crafting, Virginia became the first state in the nation to allow digital publications like the Citizen to carry public notice advertisements, which we hope to begin running this fall.

• And we’re investing in a new, more user-friendly website, which we’re excited to launch in the coming weeks.

So what’s next?

Here’s my vision for the future of the Citizen:

• More full-time reporters. Quite simply, there are far more important topics that demand our coverage than we have the resources TO cover. Based upon input we’ve received from you during the past few years, we are determined to raise the money we need to fund full-time positions for a general assignment/government reporter and for a community vitality reporter to cover housing, health and transportation issues. The community requires more in-depth, robust coverage of these critical topics, and we want to deliver it.

• More freelance reporters. We also want to cover the community stories that matter to you. Henrico is a beautifully diverse place with a wide range of accomplished and interesting people, notable organizations and incredible community efforts. We want to shine a brighter light on these people, groups and their stories to help connect our community more thoroughly, and a network of freelance journalists will help.

• More partnerships. We want to connect with corporate and nonprofit partners to help enhance the community we call home however we can.

• More events. We’d like to host quarterly (or more frequent) community events to foster discussion about some of the key issues facing our county.

• More diverse revenue streams. We aim to grow to at least 1,000 small individual donors, foster a group of larger individual donors who are able to help us implement some of our goals, partner with more local business advertising and branded content partners, acquire more grant funding and be creative in developing other sustainable sources of funding to allow us to do this important work.

How you can help

If you believe in and value the work we do and our role in helping to inform our community:

• read and share our coverage within your communities;

• consider making a contribution of any amount to support our work (give $23 or more today and I’ll send you a $25 gift card to Les Crepes restaurant in the West End);

• encourage your business to consider a branded content or display, email or video advertising campaign with us;

• encourage local foundations to support our work with philanthropic contributions.

Thank you, as always, for your readership and support (and for making it to the end of this email!).

Yours in community,
Tom Lappas, publisher

P.S. – If you’d rather send a check, please mail it to: Henrico Citizen, 6924 Lakeside Avenue, Suite 307, Henrico VA 23228.

If you’d rather donate via PayPal, please visit this link.