Our big announcements

Dear Citizen Reader,

We made some big announcements recently: the Henrico Citizen earned six Virginia Press Association awards for news coverage – including our first-ever Best in Show Award. That news came just weeks after we learned that Citizen Managing Editor Patty Kruszewski earned six awards for writing in the Virginia Professional Communicators’ annual contest – and also earned the VPC’s 2021 Communicator of Achievement Award, its highest annual honor.

These 13 awards aren’t why we work so hard to bring you the best, most fair and most trustworthy news from Henrico County every day. But they are representative of the caliber of meaningful work we do – and we believe they illustrate our importance in our community.

In the past year, we’ve transitioned from a print-plus-digital outlet to a fully digital daily weekday publication across a host of platforms – online, email, podcast, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, app, text alerts and desktop alerts, among others.

We were one of only three Virginia news outlets to earn a Facebook Journalism Project COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund Grant Program grant and among a handful to earn money from Google, as well.

We were the only Virginia news outlet selected as a new host newsroom by Report for America, a national program that helps place full-time journalists on beats nationally and in Puerto Rico. Our new education reporter, Anna Bryson, will join us June 1.

We are thankful to the VPA and VPC for their acknowledgement of our work in 2020. And we are thankful to you – our readers – for your continued support as we work to build a sustainable future for local journalism here in Henrico.

(Watch our Virginia Press Association Best In Show Non-Daily Digital award-winning video above)

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We can’t do this without your help. Together, we’re making important local journalism widely available in our community right now free of charge to all readers. With your continued support, we will be able to sustain and expand our impact.

Please consider supporting our work with a contribution today. You can make a one-time gift of support, or a sustaining monthly gift for as little as several dollars per month. Is our news coverage worth what you’d pay for one gallon of gas each month? If so, we’d value your support.

You may also help by following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and sharing our stories with others, or by encouraging your business or organization to consider the Citizen as an effective and affordable source of local marketing.

Thank you again for being a loyal Henrico Citizen reader!

All the best,
Tom Lappas, publisher