About The New Tropic

The New Tropic

The New Tropic was a local journalism and events brand serving Miami's "curious locals," launched on January 15, 2015, by the Miami-based media company WhereBy.Us. Created with $250,000 in support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The New Tropic combined a daily email newsletter curating local news and events with original stories and journalism — plus a wide range of creative events, from social gatherings and art projects to field trips and community workshops. Led by WhereBy.Us co-founder and CEO Christopher Sopher, the publication set out to help Miamians, both new and old, make sense of their rapidly evolving city: "Our goal is to help people be better locals and feel more connected in their city." As one of a new generation of metro-news startups reimagining local journalism, The New Tropic became a case study in how to serve younger, mobile-first urban audiences.

Launch: Knight Foundation Backing

On January 15, 2015, WhereBy.Us officially launched The New Tropic with $250,000 from the Knight Foundation. The launch announcement framed the brand as a new model for civic engagement in Miami: local journalism and creative events joining forces to get people involved in shaping their city. As part of the launch, The New Tropic began publishing a daily email newsletter curating local news and events and sharing original stories and journalism work. Knight funding also supported scaling and testing the WhereBy.Us model — combining journalism, mobile news delivery, and creative events — for local civic engagement. The foundation's bet was that Miami's curious locals would support a publication designed around their experience of the city.

The Newsletter: Miami in Your Inbox

The New Tropic's main editorial product was a daily email newsletter that grew to about 25,000 subscribers. Each edition curated the local news and events Miamians needed to know, alongside original stories and journalism from the site's team. The newsletter's content ranged from evergreen neighborhood guides to stories on local politics and art installations — practical, engaging, and rooted in the experience of living in Miami. For a generation of readers who got their news on phones rather than doorsteps, the newsletter was the front page: a daily briefing on the city, delivered with personality.

WhereBy.Us: The Parent Company

The New Tropic was the flagship product of WhereBy.Us, a Miami-based media company co-founded by CEO Christopher Sopher. WhereBy.Us was one of several companies attempting to create new models for metro news in the mid-2010s — alongside Jim Brady's Spirited Media (Billy Penn in Philadelphia) and the Charlotte Agenda. The company's business model was distinctive: about 80 percent of revenue came from creative agency work leveraging its data, research, and local-market expertise; another 10 percent from events; and 10 percent from membership and other sources. The company made no money from display advertising — a deliberate rejection of the banner-ad economics that had failed local news.

Events: Journalism as Community Building

Beyond the newsletter, The New Tropic produced a wide range of events: social gatherings, art projects, field trips, and community workshops around health, education, transportation, affordable housing, and the environment. Miami residents were invited to learn about local issues from journalists, public officials, and experts — and to collaborate on ideas to improve the city. This events strategy embodied the brand's philosophy: journalism not just as information delivery but as community infrastructure. "Live like you live here," the company's tagline ran — and the events gave curious locals ways to do exactly that, meeting neighbors and engaging with the city's challenges.

Serving the "Curious Local"

The New Tropic defined its audience as Miami's "curious locals" — people interested in exploring what the growing city had to offer, learning about and engaging on local issues, and connecting with other residents. This was a deliberate alternative to both the legacy newspaper's mass audience and the tourist industry's visitor focus: journalism for people who lived in Miami and wanted to live it well. "Miami is growing and changing in incredible ways," Sopher said at launch. "People sense that and want to be a part of it, but it can be hard to plug in. The New Tropic is designed to make that easier and help locals have the most awesome possible experience living here."

Expansion: The Evergrey in Seattle

In October 2016, WhereBy.Us expanded beyond Miami, launching The Evergrey — a daily email newsletter for Seattle, led by Monica Guzman and Anika Anand. "Seattle, like Miami, is in a moment of transition," Sopher explained. "There's a huge amount of investment, a huge growth in population, a huge amount of change for people who live there, but there's a core and a soul to the city that people want to preserve even as it evolves." The expansion tested whether the WhereBy.Us model — newsletter-first local journalism plus events plus agency revenue — could travel to other rapidly growing cities. It was a vote of confidence in the model's replicability.

A New Model for Civic Engagement

The Knight Foundation's $250,000 investment in The New Tropic wasn't just funding a Miami newsletter — it was testing a model: joining journalism, mobile delivery, and creative community events into a new kind of local civic engagement. WhereBy.Us, the parent company founded by Christopher Sopher, Rebekah Monson, and Bruce Pinchbeck, built on the New Tropic's lessons to launch similar publications in other cities — including The Evergrey in Seattle. The model treated readers as participants rather than consumers: events that turned subscribers into neighbors, newsletters that made civic information delightful. For foundations seeking to rebuild local news, the New Tropic was a laboratory — and its lessons shaped a generation of civic media experiments.

Miami in Flux

The New Tropic launched into a Miami in extraordinary flux: more than 500,000 people moved to South Florida in the five years before its founding, with 65 percent arriving from outside the United States. This churn — newcomers without local knowledge, immigrants building new lives — created both the need and the opportunity for the New Tropic's "curious local" journalism. The publication's mission was to make Miami legible to the people living in it: the new arrivals, the young professionals, the globally minded residents who loved the city but didn't understand it. In a transient metropolis, the New Tropic offered rootedness.

Why the New Tropic Mattered

The New Tropic mattered because it proved that local news could be delightful — and that delight could be a civic strategy. Its newsletter-first model, Knight Foundation backing, and WhereBy.Us expansion influenced civic media far beyond Miami. Though the publication itself has faded, its model lives on in the dozens of local newsletters that followed its playbook. For a field desperate for new ideas, the New Tropic was one of the decade's most important experiments.

Legacy: A Model for Metro News

The New Tropic's significance extends beyond its own publication run: it was a pioneering experiment in the newsletter-first, events-driven, advertising-free model of local news. Its approach — serving curious locals with personality, building community through events, and funding journalism through agency services rather than banner ads — influenced a generation of local-news startups. In a city in flux, where nearly 500,000 people moved to South Florida in five years and most came from outside the U.S., The New Tropic offered newcomers and natives alike a way to belong. Its official website was https://thenewtropic.com.