Tom Lappas, Henrico Citizen’s founder and publisher, holds up the last print issue from April 2020 before the publication went fully digital. (Photo by Jay Paul)
The past year has demonstrated the crucial role of local journalism as an essential public service. At the same time, many smaller news outlets have suffered as a result of the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. The 18-year-old Henrico Citizen stopped printing its free newspaper last April to go entirely digital and began soliciting donations from its readers for the first time.
“We did it because we needed to,” says Tom Lappas, the Henrico Citizen’s founder and publisher. “We pretty much lost almost all of our advertisers [to] the pandemic.”
In December, the Henrico Citizen became the first news outlet in Virginia to receive a grant from Report for America (RFA), a nonprofit advocacy group focused on revitalizing local journalism. The grant will allow the community publication to hire its first full-time reporter.
“We’ve always been small. I mean, I’ve never had more than probably five employees, and never more than two full-timers, including myself,” Lappas says. In addition to its small staff, the Henrico Citizen also relies on the work of freelancers and interns.
The new full-time reporter, Florida native Anna Bryson, will focus on education in Henrico County.
“Over the last however many months since the pandemic, we really focused hard on education,” Lappas says. “I guess it occurred to me: Here’s a beat that we could do a lot with if we had a dedicated reporter just for education.”
K-12 education has become a mainstay of the Citizen’s coverage. Many of the education stories published over the past year involved issues that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, such as vaccinations for teachers and debates on the efficacy of virtual learning. “The person who’s going to cover education is not just covering school board meetings,” Lappas says. “It’s really looking at education through the lens of equity, and diversity, and economy and geography in Henrico, because all of those factors have stories to be told.”
Lappas says he was “pleasantly surprised” to see donations from readers reach about $10,500 last year. “That really sustained us for a few months.”
Though the publication enjoys support from the citizens of Henrico County, Lappas hopes the grant will remind readers that supporting local media benefits the community by ensuring sustainable news coverage. “That’s kind of a goal of RFA as a program, and I think it’s an important one,” he says.
