The JOLT's 2025 Annual Campaign - boosted by NewsMatch

The JOLT – The Journal of Olympia, Lacey & Tumwater -- is Thurston County’s independent, community-owned, non-partisan and nonprofit news service.

More than 10,000 people every weekday see The JOLT on their phones or computers.

Every weekday The JOLT gives you – free of charge – approximately nine original local news and feature stories, plus the Police Blotter and hundreds of full-length event listings in our Community Calendar.

The JOLT started in 2020 as an experiment to see whether Thurston County residents would become interested in receiving better coverage of local news again.

So, what's new?

It’s working. 2025 has been a pivotal year for your local news organization:

• Press Forward, the national initiative to strengthen communities by reinvigorating local news, included The JOLT News Organization in its first group of grant recipients, selecting us and 203 other local news organizations (out of a pool of 930 applicants). To support our growth and development, this program not only provided us with $50,000 in 2024 and 2025, but also training services and research that help us to do even better reporting.
• That Press Forward grant enabled us to hire our first full-time managing editor last December. Wyatt Haupt, Jr. had edited The JOLT every day this year. He's been a newspaper reporter and editor for 30 years and relocated back to Washington from Hawaii last November to join us.
• Wyatt has increased our daily news coverage by 80 percent -- from an average of five stories in 2024 to nine stories in 2025.

That Press Forward grant is a challenge: While it will cover about HALF of the cost of our new editor, we need to raise THE OTHER HALF of the funds here, locally, from individuals and businesses.

What you'll find in The JOLT

You can find more than 5,600 local news and feature stories we’ve published, all of which are both searchable and available at no charge on our website: www.theJOLTnews.com

And if you’re not already receiving The Daily JOLT, our weekday newsletter that shows you the day’s local headlines, you’re invited to subscribe – for FREE!  Just click here and we'll send it each weekday at 6 p.m.

This is reporting you won’t find anywhere else (certainly not in the national news!) because it covers the issues that most impact your day-to-day life — local government activity, school board meetings, building development, etc. 

In addition to covering the hard news, we also feature local columnists who write about gardening, local birds, local history and the local arts scene. Plus, an increasing number of reader letters, full-length obituaries (which we publish at no charge) and more. And the police blotter, too. 

Our Community Calendar is the most complete in our area. It offers all kinds of local and online events, usually more than 200 per month. 

Do you need more info? Here are some FAQs:

Why is local news important?

Local news, different from national media, supports local democracy. It helps keep public officials accountable. It stimulates more talented people to run for public office. Across the country, opinion polls say that local news is better trusted than national news. We provide information that helps to create a shared public understanding of local issues and, as you’ll see below, helps people become better informed and more involved in local issues, events and activities.

What’s The JOLT’s mission statement?

The JOLT -- The Journal of Olympia, Lacey & Tumwater -- nourishes the civic lives of Thurston County residents and grows community capacity by publishing accurate, relevant and entertaining stories  that help people become better informed and more involved in local issues, events and activities.

Is my donation tax-deductible?

Yes – If you itemize your tax deductions, please note that the IRS determined The JOLT News Organization to be a tax-exempt public charity under IRC Section 501(c)(3) on March 15, 2023. Our EIN is 87-2868827.  

Why can’t The JOLT be supported from advertising revenues?

While ad revenues are important to The JOLT, they represent only about 20% of our budget. (We’re working to increase that – if you need to advertise in Thurston County, please call 360-357-1000 or email publisher@theJOLTnews.com.)

The news ecosystem across America is broken. 

As much as 80 percent of ad revenues that used to flow to newspapers have moved online – primarily to search, social media and classified ad sites. Some 3,200 print newspapers across the United States have shut down since 2004. Two more  are going away each week. Some 1,800 served communities that no longer have a daily or weekly news service. The old business model for local news is never coming back.

In response to these trends, some 700 local independent online news organizations have formed around the United States. Of these, approximately 300 are nonprofit news media, including The JOLT News Organization. 

As a nonprofit, we depend on the support of local community members like you to keep this critical work going. 

Didn't you guys just get a big grant? Why do you need more money?

Yes! In the fall of 2024, The JOLT became one of 205 grantees from Press Forward. The grant is in the amount of $50,000 for 2024 and 2025.  We pledged to Press Forward that we’d use these funds to hire a full-time managing editor. Guess how much a full-time managing editor costs? About double that amount. 

So we need to raise another $45,000 to $50,000 each year to fulfill our pledge. 

Where do The JOLT's staff live?

Most of our people live in Thurston County. We employ one associate editor and six reporters who live in The Philippines – and eight reporters, columnists and editors who live in Thurston County. 

Our overseas reporters are all trained and experienced journalists. They do a great job for us. They cover the same beats week after week. And, candidly, while we believe we pay them well for their economy, they cost our organization a small fraction of what U.S.-based reporters would cost. That makes the very best use of our donors’ contributions. 

We collaborate with these reporters daily. We often share the work with them, doing “hybrid reporting.” If you want to learn more, please see the editorial we published way back in 2023, titled “Who is producing The JOLT, anyway?”

How will you use my donation?

Your contribution will be used almost entirely to pay our reporters, photographers and that new editor.

We publish daily, producing from three to seven original local news and feature stories each weekday.

Your contribution will help ensure that we can continue to:

• Cover more than 60 public meetings each month so we can report what our government agencies are considering or implementing.
• Create the award-winning photojournalism we've published about our local unhoused neighbors and solutions being proposed for them and our cities.
• Support the work of our eight columnists, who provide entertaining and informative local columns and feature stories about people here doing wonderful things, local medical topics, gardening, wild birds, nonprofit organizations, recipes, the local literary scene and, of course, our pets. 
• Produce the best events calendar in Thurston County, which lately includes more than 200 events each month, nearly all free and open to the public.

 Thank you for supporting The JOLT News Organization.