Readers support Lincoln Chronicle’s end-of-the-year campaign by donating $30,000 for 2026 operations

To the readers of and contributors to Lincoln Chronicle — thank you.

The Lincoln Chronicle’s end-of-the-year fundraising campaign in December raised just over $30,000 to help with our 2026 monthly operating expenses. This total represents an almost doubling of support from readers compared with December 2024 donations.

This is a significant investment by readers in our planned work for 2026 and a show of trust to help us deliver professionally reported news for Lincoln County.

Thank you.

The Lincoln Chronicle’s budget for 2025 was $160,000 and is expected to increase to at least $180,000 in 2026. Much of that is for employee salaries and fully-paid health insurance – all increasing this year — but also for dozens of other small- to-medium monthly expenses that any small business or nonprofit experiences.

In addition to checks in the mail and one-time donations through PayPal, 10 more readers joined the 130 who make small ($5-25) monthly donations to support our work. The donations from these 140 readers total $1,600 a month and along with similarly sized advertising revenue provides a stable base for our monthly operations.

We rely on these local fundraising campaigns each December and June to help us offset those expenses. In the past, some 62 percent of our budget came from readers, 24 percent from grants, 12 percent from advertising, and the rest from miscellaneous income.

You – our thousands of readers – provide the bulk of our support and that is vital to our success.

Here are some other numbers from 2025 and plans for 2026:

• The popularity of news sites is measured in “page views” – the number of times a reader goes to a site and clicks on a story. In 2025, the Chronicle had 2.5 million page views, generally ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 a day and through the spring and summer averaging 200,000 page views over a 30-day period. Because of our coverage since October of events in Newport (the Coast Guard rescue helicopter, the potential for Oregon’s first immigration detention center, and a few other wildly popular stories) our page views are currently 350,000 to 400,000 over a sliding 30-day period. That’s a big number for a full-time staff of two, a volunteer editor, three freelancers and half a dozen news collaborators from around Oregon.
• More than 3,000 of you have signed up to receive our twice-weekly emails of story summaries from the previous three days. You can do that here. But remember, the Chronicle is a 24/7 news site, we post stories 5-6 days a week and you can go to the site anytime on your own to see what, if anything, is new.
• After six years under the YachatsNews name, in 2025 we changed the website’s title to Lincoln Chronicle to better reflect our broader coverage, brought on a second reporter based in Newport to expand that coverage, and then in October completely revamped our website to make it easier to read and better highlight our work. We also added new content – an events calendar from Oregon Coast Today and residential real estate sales from throughout Lincoln County.
• Later this week, we will also announce our collaboration (along with others) with the University of Oregon’s journalism school to study how Lincoln County residents receive and use information about their communities. This will involve online and printed surveys, conversations with students and two community meetings. Stay tuned for more information.

So, in addition to a last thank you for your readership and financial support, I will end with a reminder of the Lincoln Chronicle’s mission statement:

“Provide local, professionally-reported, fair, unbiased straightforward news of Lincoln County and the central Oregon coast, its governments, people, community organizations, businesses and the natural environment with an emphasis on good government, transparency, community involvement, civic participation and engagement. Independent, non-profit news. Free to all, funded by readers.”

Quinton Smith

Editor & board chair

Lincoln Chronicle