The Apopka Chief’s new free distribution model is designed to promote readership and value for advertisers.

We’ve been pleased to hear from members of the community who have discovered—or rediscovered—the Chief in recent months. We believe everyone in the community deserves access to trustworthy, unbiased local reporting, regardless of their ability to pay for it.

This approach is in keeping with the philosophy of longtime Chief publisher J.R. Ricketson, who always said that this news outlet belongs to the community, not to any one owner.

As such, the Chief needs to have reader support to be sustainable for its next 100 years. With that in mind, I’m thrilled to announce that The Apopka Chief has launched a brand-new membership program to help fulfill our mission in the community.

You may be wondering: What’s a membership program?

I’ll start with what it’s not: a newspaper subscription. When the Chief converted to a free newspaper in February, we began delivering our weekly print edition to some 8,000 homes in Apopka.

We continue to deliver another 2,000 newspapers to more than 70 businesses and other public locations around town.

This amounted to a 150% increase in circulation for the Chief. For those who live outside the delivery area, we offer the option to pay to have the paper mailed—but that’s simply a service designed to cover costs. We prefer for people to pick it up for free.

The new membership program is an invitation to partner in the work of local journalism and earn some cool perks along the way. Those benefits include:

1. An exclusive monthly member newsletter featuring stats, insights, sneak peaks, surveys and more. We want to build a community of people who care about local journalism and its role in promoting a healthy city.
2. Fun meetups. We’ll begin organizing occasional events featuring Apopka Chief staff and other members.
3. Special event access. This includes giveaways in each member newsletter—ranging from tickets to athletic events and theme parks to restaurant gift cards.
4. Supporting your community. Membership comes with the satisfaction that you are helping The Apopka Chief build a stronger, more prosperous community.

All of the perks are great, but the last one is unquestionably the most important. All over the nation, communities like Apopka have seen longtime local newspapers close their doors—more than 3,300 since 2005, according to the latest findings from Northwestern University.

Working together, Apopka can write a different story, one of hope, inspiration, and a more unified community through fact-based local news. We hope you will join us by becoming a member today. Just click here.