We need your help to continue keeping you informed

Dear Henrico Citizen Reader,

We need your help to continue keeping you informed.

If the coronavirus has taught us anything, it is that community matters. Neighbors are coming together, albeit apart, to support our first-responders, local businesses, families having to home school, our older citizens, and those who have lost jobs. And it’s this community – the Henrico County community – that is the sole focus of the Henrico Citizen, and our staff has been at the heart of it since 2001.

The Citizen is the epitome of a small business. It is locally and independently owned, and three of our four staff members have been working together for more than 22 years.

Like many small businesses, we don’t allow our size to dictate the quality of our product. We are steadfast in our commitment to bring you in-depth, honest and fair reports on the issues that matter most to Henricoans.

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We have published more than 100 articles covering the COVID-19 pandemic in the past month alone. We also have reported on the Henrico Schools redistricting effort, the new indoor arena and convocation center being built in Glen Allen, the 2020 General Assembly session, elections involving Henrico candidates, and published our annual Henrico’s Top Teachers issues, among many others.

We provide readers with daily email news updates, a daily weekday podcast, and posts on our social media channels.

During non-pandemic times, our extensive online community calendar is updated daily, and our Weekend Top 10 list on Thursdays highlights the events taking place that weekend. From fall festivals and summer concerts to holiday celebrations and community fundraisers – if it’s happening in Henrico County, we’ll let you know about it.

We prepare several weekly columns including business briefs with news from the local business community; Henrico Health Department restaurant inspections to keep you safe; Milestones listing personal achievements from Henrico residents; a crime report detailing recent Henrico Division of Police incidents and arrests; and local property transactions to keep you apprised of what homes near you are fetching on the open market. We also post recent obituaries.

Thanks to our local advertisers and generous donations from readers, we are able to offer all of this for free. We have never charged for our print editions and while many other local and regional news outlets are putting up paywalls on their sites, we want to keep our stories and information free for everyone.

But we've lost more than 50% of our advertising revenue because of the pandemic. Though we halted our print edition, we've produced even more original coverage through all of our online platforms.

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The Citizen believes in keeping the community informed and involved, but we can’t do it alone.

If you value the work we do and feel able to contribute to it, you may now make tax-deductible contributions to the Henrico Citizen's COVID-19 coverage through our partnership with the Local Media Association. Learn more and make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen here.

To those who already have given, we say a heartfelt "thank you." With your help, we will continue to be the independent news source of Henrico County – and your contribution will donate advertising space to the nonprofit of your choice. (Just email us at citizen@henricocitizen.com to let us know which one.)

If the tax-deductible element isn’t important to you, you may still donate directly to us here. One-hundred percent of your contribution will be used for our local journalism efforts.

Thank you for your readership and support.

All the best,