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 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?

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.