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Gold Coast Wave launched in October 2026: a free local news and lifestyle publication for Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade, from Jupiter to Homestead. It is the sister publication of Long Island Wave, our regional title in New York, and it arrived on the web and as an app on iPhone and Android in the same month.
It starts from the idea that has always driven the Wave titles. Most coverage of South Florida is written from somewhere else, about somewhere else. Gold Coast Wave covers the Gold Coast the way locals actually live it: where to eat this week, what is opening and what is closing, who is building what, and how to spend a Saturday. Every story has to pass one test before it runs. If it would not matter to someone who lives here, it does not run.
Three counties, every day
The archive already holds more than 560 local stories, and Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade are the entire beat. A single day this week brought PORT 32 coming back to the old PGA marina in Palm Beach Gardens, Golf Envy opening its first Florida club in Boca Raton, a black cake festival with bakers from 23 Caribbean countries and territories coming to Wilton Drive, six Italian kitchens under one roof in Coral Gables, and Miami Beach’s Veterans Day parade on Ocean Drive.
The news sits in seven sections: News, Business, Food & Drink, Health, Beauty, Lifestyle and Events, with the full archive searchable. All of it is free. There is no paywall and no subscription, now or later.
Town by town
South Florida is a run of very different towns, so each one gets its own page. Twenty-seven towns, from Jupiter and Delray Beach to Fort Lauderdale, Coral Gables and Key Biscayne, carry their latest stories, what is coming up there, and the weather right now. Readers with a free account can follow the towns they live in and love, and those stories and events lead their front page.
Places goes a step further: more than 38,000 places to eat, drink, play and get outside across the three counties, organized by town and by what you are looking for, from restaurants and museums to gyms, parks, beaches and marinas. The listings come from public sources, and the ones we have checked ourselves are marked as checked.
Today, and the weekend
Two pages answer the questions people actually ask. Today shows what is on right now, later and tonight: events from the calendar, plus the trivia, music and happy hours that run every week at places we have checked, with filters for live music, food and drink, family, free and outdoors.
Your Weekend does the same for Friday to Sunday. Pick the counties you are happy to drive to, add the events you want, and put the whole plan in your own calendar. Behind both is the events calendar, which anyone can submit an event to.
For readers who would rather have the week come to them, The Weekly Wave lands every Friday: new openings, the events worth the weekend, and the stories neighbors are talking about, in one free email. There is also a directory of local businesses, a marketplace of offers from local makers, and a community for member conversations.
The app, on iPhone and Android
Gold Coast Wave is also a native app, free on the App Store and on Google Play. On the home screen it goes by GC Wave.
It is the whole publication built to be read on a phone. The News feed opens on the day’s stories with a filter for the section you came for. The events calendar is laid out by the day, and a weekly event shows once with the dates it runs, not as the same listing eight times. Stories are typeset in the publication’s own type, at the text size you choose, in light or dark. Saved stories stay on the phone, so they open on the Brightline, at the beach, or anywhere the signal gives up. The whole archive is searchable by any word in it.
No account is needed to read. Signing in takes a six-digit code sent to an email or a cell number, with no password to invent, and it lets saved stories follow you to your next phone, lets you follow towns, and turns on the Listen player for stories. Alerts are kept to a handful of stories worth interrupting a day for, chosen by an editor rather than sent as a stream of pings.
The same platform as Long Island Wave
Gold Coast Wave runs on Wave Publisher, the same platform behind Long Island Wave: the website, the apps, the calendar, the newsletter and the tools our editors work in every day. That is the point of building a platform rather than a site. When a feature lands for one title, it is ready for the others, and a new publication starts from everything the first one already learned.
It is also why we can say plainly what it takes to run a local publication well, because we run several ourselves. If you live on the Gold Coast, start with today’s front page or get The Weekly Wave. If you run a business in South Florida and want to reach the people who live there, Gold Coast Wave would be glad to hear from you.
