From the publisher: A call for reader input

Dear Citizen Reader,

As you may have read when we announced it earlier this month, we recently received a grant from the Facebook Journalism Project COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund Grant Program. We were one of just three Virginia news organizations to earn a grant through the program and are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to use it to enhance and expand our coverage of the pandemic’s impact on Henrico County and its citizens.

This grant is significant to us for several reasons.

First, it will help us continue to exist. We’ve had to halt our print edition – our primary source of revenue – as the result of the pandemic, because several of our largest advertisers could no longer afford to advertise. That stoppage also has cost us additional advertising revenue in the weeks since. During the past two months, new advertising revenue has been nearly non-existent. Without this grant, we may not have been able to financially justify continuing our work.

Second, it is confirmation that we are on the right path. Facebook sought grant proposals that could assist with a newsroom’s long-term viability, enhance coverage of underserved or economically disadvantaged communities, assist with the creation of new journalism products or services or have an impact upon others in the community, among a number of other options. That ours was selected as one of 144 for this program from among several thousand applications is humbling, and we are appreciative.

Third, and most important to those we serve, it will allow us to cover Henrico County in a number of new ways:

• with more in-depth, with data-driven reports, about the pandemic and the response of Henrico officials to it;

• through additional feature stories about people and organizations affected by the outbreak and how their work and lives have changed;

• through the introduction of video reports, to provide another platform through which we can tell the stories of our community;

• through an increased commitment to photographic reports, to supplement our writing coverage and telling Henrico’s stories in a visual format;

• through an increased focus on podcasting and audio reports, so that we can deliver thoughts and information to you in spoken word form, direct from the sources;

• with a diverse group of freelance journalists, photographers, videographers and interns, each of whom will bring different levels of experience and different areas of expertise to our coverage.

• through a new smartphone app we are developing, which will allow more immediate access to our coverage to a wide range of Henricoans – and will allow even easier access from you to us, whenever you have news to share;

• and possibly through other forms and methods we’ve yet to consider – maybe even some recommended by you.

Fourth, as part of a unique element of the grant proposal we wrote, we will use some of the funds to supplement digital advertising campaigns for 10 Henrico-based small businesses (of 25 employees or fewer). Soon, we will open an application process through which interested businesses will be invited to explain how they would use this exposure across six of our digital platforms and why it would be beneficial to them.

As part of the process, each applicant will commit to performing or providing in-kind services totaling at least $1,000 dollars to a Henrico-based nonprofit, if selected. We will select the 10 recipients and then write about the 10 outcomes of those business-nonprofit partnerships.

In this way, our grant will benefit not only our small company and the 71,000+ readers who have visited us online during each of the past two months, or the 12,000+ who receive our daily weekday email news update or the 10,000 who have downloaded our daily weekday podcast to date or the 13,000 who follow us on social media – it will benefit 20 other Henrico businesses and organizations and, in turn, the employees, customers and clients they employ or serve.

* * *

Since I founded the Citizen in 2001, our mission has been to connect this community. It’s something we take seriously, and it’s why we exist. This grant will allow us the opportunity to do so in new ways.

Importantly, there are no conditions upon this grant aside from those that we ourselves set in our application, which we must adhere to as closely as we’re able. Facebook does not have any oversight upon the type of coverage we provide and is requiring nothing of us except for an account of how the money is spent and an update after 90 days outlining what we’ve been able to accomplish at that point.

We are and always have been an independent news source, and it is important to me and to my staff that we remain so. It is equally important that when we accept a grant like this one, we explain to you, our readers, how we intend to use it and the parameters involved, if any exist.

There are plenty of topics we are considering. I’ve been keeping a list of possible stories and coverage areas that now stretches close to 100.

But we want to hear from you. What topics are important? What do you want to read about? What other formats or platforms would you like to see us use to deliver news to you? Would you like more podcasts? More video? More photos? More social media? Something else entirely?

Please click here to complete a very brief reader survey and let us know what matters to you. We appreciate your readership and value your input!