(Re-)Introducing The JOLT News Organization

New local nonprofit news organization formed to continue our public-service journalism mission

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Almost 18 months ago, I launched The Journal of Olympia, Lacey & Tumwater – The JOLT – with the goal of restoring local reporting to our cities and county.

I’ll admit that I’d been tinkering with the idea of producing daily, hyper-local news here since 2011 and had even written a business plan back then. It took a pandemic, which instantly killed our previous business (publishing the franchised feel-good Coffee News weekly), to give me the time it took to think it through and get it started.

We launched with a small bundle of funds in May 2020 with high expectations and no crew.  Since then we’ve added and said good-bye to various staff and contributors, and now we operate with approximately 2.6 full-time-equivalent people.

Tonight we’re announcing the end of The JOLT as it was formed and introducing Version 2.0 – The JOLT News Organization, a Washington-state nonprofit organization.

During these past 75 or so weeks I’ve discovered some truths about our local communities, the news business and, frankly, the economics of this new kind of enterprise. These truths convinced me that people in Thurston County would be better off if The JOLT survives, and the chances of its survival are greatly increased when we can diversify our sources of income and support. And our purpose has always been more aligned with those of a charitable organization than of a private business.

What’s the purpose of The JOLT?

Glad you asked!  Our new board of directors only slightly modified the language we’ve been using since the start. Here’s the full script:

The JOLT 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.

Those 38 words are a mouthful, to be sure. Note that there’s nothing in there about persuading people to agree with us or be part of a specific group of people other than Thurston County residents.

Have you noticed what’s not been going on in local news reporting over the past few years?  Most public meetings have not been written or spoken about in any local news medium. Notices of public meetings, whether of councils, commissions, committees or boards were typically available only to the most highly motivated. Most stories have gone unreported. There have been fewer investigative stories each year.

And that’s no one’s fault locally; the problems in reporting local news started in the 1980s with leveraged buyouts, continued in 2000 as Craigslist alone drew away as much as a third of newspapers’ revenues and accelerated as online technologies drew away display advertising revenues and readers’ attention.

The JOLT is one of many

Across the U.S. there are some 900 local, independent, nonpartisan news organizations, of which we are one.  Unfortunately, there are also some 1,200 to 2,000 fake local news sites, most of which are produced by one company whose revenues come from politically inspired donors, the names of which are not made public by the privately held operator.

And there are some 300 nonprofit news organizations around the U.S., ranging from such famous -- and large – publishers such as Philadelphia Inquirer, Salt Lake City Tribune, Texas Tribune and, in Seattle, Crosscut.  Most of the rest are little known outside of their beats. Of these 300, about 140 operate as nonprofit organizations, for the public good.  Now we’re one of those, too. 

Why convert to nonprofit? 

We’d considered other ownership structures for The JOLT, but none make as much sense as becoming a community-owned resource.

Operating as a nonprofit offers more transparency about our work and results, so more local people, organizations and businesses will feel good about supporting our work. We’ll also qualify for some grants from foundations and institutions.

More about this in the coming days and weeks.

Does that mean there won’t be advertising?

In the future, our board might decide we should publish without advertising. Maybe in a few years. But it’s not a goal and not likely soon.  In fact, we think ads are an essential tool that supports local economic development.  But only a third of our 2022 proposed budget will come from advertising.

We’re committed to running ads only for businesses operating in Thurston County (no national advertisers, thanks) and for local organizations and events. These ads, like all we’ve published, are specifically designed for The JOLT.

There will be NO programmatic ads for readers inside Washington state, those creepy things that follow you around the internet after you’ve searched for something. 

Will the same people continue with The JOLT?

Yes. 

All of our staff and columnists seem pleased with our recent actions.

I’m planning to stick around for as long as the board will have me.

Expect to see some new names and faces:  Soom we plan to recruit a new managing editor, to be followed – when we raise enough money – by another reporter.  We’re looking for more columnists, stringers and cartoonists, too.

Do you know anyone we should talk with?  Please point them to us.  Just forward this news-itorial to them, please!  You, or they, can reply to this newsletter and it goes straight to me.  (Unless they’re using Yahoo or AOL email, unfortunately. Those services have been blocking millions of legitimate messages for the past 11 days, including 13% of our subscribers.)

How you might support our work? 

Stick around, please, until next week, when we’ll seek local community support.  In other words, please don’t send us any money until November 1.  That’s when we’ll introduce our participation in a fund-raising program that will double any dollars you might care to give us (up to our matching limit) and offer those who itemize their charitable contributions to deduct them from their incomes.

Thank you for caring enough about our Thurston County communities – and our cities, our schools and organizations and neighbors – to read The JOLT.  

Danny Stusser – danny@theJOLTnews.com or 360-357-1000 – is the  Publisher and interim editor of The Journal of Olympia, Lacey & Tumwater and has been appointed the Executive Director of The JOLT News Organization

Comments

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  • margaret

    thanks. Looking forward to continuing JOLT.

    Saturday, October 30, 2021 Report this

  • JanJacobs

    Thank you for this alternative source for local news!

    Saturday, October 30, 2021 Report this

  • Deskandchairs

    Thanks for explaining why the JOLT no longer appears in my email (Yahoo). I've tried to form the habit of accessing your site directly

    Monday, November 1, 2021 Report this

  • Callie

    This is great. Thanks for the level of detail. I LIKE local ads. Always liked that about the Coffee News, too. I'm behind you!

    Monday, November 1, 2021 Report this