The JOLT News Organization

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 read The JOLT on their smartphones, tablets, laptops 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. Now more than six years in operation, The JOLT has become Thurston County's most prolific news organization. 

We depend on local charitable support to fund our operations -- we have no parent organization or outside owner. 

So, what's new?

It’s working. 2026 was been a pivotal year for your local news organization:

• Two-year grant concluded.  In 2024, Press Forward, the national initiative to strengthen communities by reinvigorating local news, selected The JOLT News Organization in its first group of grant recipients, choosing 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 in December 2024. Wyatt Haupt, Jr. edited The JOLT every day this year. He's been a newspaper reporter and editor for 30 years before joining us.
• Wyatt has increased our daily news coverage by 80 percent -- from an average of five stories in 2024 to nine stories more recently.

That two-year Press Forward grant was a challenge: While it covered about HALF of the cost of our new editor, we needed to raise THE OTHER HALF of the funds here for 2025 and 2026, locally, from individuals and businesses.  For 2027, we're on our own to raise all of these funds. 

What you'll find in The JOLT

You can find more than 7,300 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?

Please click the Qs & As tab for answers to these questions:

1. Why is local news important?
2. What’s The JOLT’s mission statement?
3. Is my donation tax-deductible?
4. Why can’t The JOLT be supported from advertising revenues?
5. Didn't you guys just get a big grant? Why do you need more money?
6. Where do The JOLT's staff live?
7. How will you use my donation?

And if you have more questions, please click to email publisher@theJOLTnews.com – right now! 

Your contribution would be a big deal for a small, independent news organization like us. It will help us deliver the kind of in-depth journalism you’ve come to expect, every day. It’s the kind of reporting that can make a real difference in our community. And, we hope you agree that it’s worthy of your support.

Thank you.