The Henrico Citizen is the nonpartisan journalistic voice of Henrico County. We’re a team of three full-time and three part-time employees working to bring you comprehensive coverage of Henrico every weekday. Our four journalists have more than 80 combined years of experience covering Henrico.
Learn more about our each of our team members here.
We’re local.
Citizen publisher and Henrico citizen Tom Lappas founded the company in 2001 at the age of 24 and continues to own and operate it today. Our sole focus is Henrico County and the people, issues and events that make it unique.
We’re trusted.
More than 27,000 readers are subscribed to our daily weekday Henrico Newsflash email update. More than 85,000 people visit HenricoCitizen.com each month. More than 20,000 follow us on social media. More than 775 support us annually with voluntary financial contributions.
We’re fair.
We don’t take sides – we just tell it like it is and provide proper perspective so that readers have the knowledge they need to make their own decisions. We don’t publish political endorsements and never have.
We’re thorough.
Our original coverage of education, government, development, business, community in insightful and thorough. Our years of experience covering the county help us offer complete perspective that other outlets can’t.
We’re accessible to all.
We believe access to trustworthy local journalism is a fundamental human right, so we’ve never charged for our coverage. Our website has no paywalls. Our email newsletter is free. We publish our coverage online, through email, through social media, through a daily weekday podcast and through text-messaging.
We’re respected industry leaders.
We’ve earned more than 260 awards for excellence in journalism. We’ve earned financial support from Facebook, Google, The Chronicle of Philanthropy and LION Publishers. We’ve been recognized as a leader in the local journalism field by the American Journalism Project, the UNC Knight Foundation Table Stakes program and regional and national organizations.
We’re trendsetters.
We became one of the first print publications in Virginia to switch to a fully digital format (in March 2020) and have expanded our weekly coverage by more than 400% as a result. We became just the second publication in Virginia to be accepted into the Report for America program (in 2021) and added a full-time education reporter through the partnership. In 2024, Citizen Publisher Tom Lappas became the first digital-only publisher ever named to the Virginia Press Association Board of Directors.
What we believe.
The Citizen believes that local journalism:
• ought to reflect the needs of the communities it serves;
• ought to be guided by the aim of fairness above all else;
• ought to be freely available in a variety of formats to all members of the communities it serves as a fundamental human right.
Therefore, the Citizen:
• maintains a 15-member Citizen Advisory Board, composed of three citizens from each of the county's five magisterial districts who serve as liaisons between the Citizen and their individual communities and spheres of influence;
• employs a nonpartisan, perspective-rich, fact-based approach to all of its coverage;
• provides its daily weekday coverage online, through email, through four social media channels, through a podcast and through an app;
• has never charged any reader for access to any of its coverage.
Our correction policy.
The Henrico Citizen is committed to accuracy and fairness in its reporting. All coverage and articles go through an internal editing, fact-checking and review process prior to publication. Occasionally, errors may occur. When they do, we strive to correct them as soon as possible. We add a notation to the beginning of any article for which a correction has been necessary so that readers understand what the error was and how we have corrected it.
If you believe something you read on the Citizen contains an error, please email us at citizen@henricocitizen.com to let us know and we will review it as soon as possible.