By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
YachatsNews has some of its own news to announce.
After six years of calling ourselves YachatsNews, we are changing our name effective March 28 to Lincoln Chronicle to better reflect our current and expanding news coverage.
The name change after six years of operation comes as YachatsNews/Lincoln Chronicle has hired Shayla Escudero to be our second, full-time reporter to be based in Newport to cover Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services.
Escudero comes to YachatsNews/Lincoln Chronicle from the Albany Democrat-Herald, where for 2½ years she covered a variety of local government beats and social services. She has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California and numerous reporting awards from her stint in Albany.
The addition of a second reporter will not affect our coverage of Yachats, Waldport, Seal Rock, Tidewater, south county, natural resources and breaking news – communities and subjects ably covered the past two years by Garret Jaros, a reporter with extensive experience in Oregon and Colorado, with the assistance of freelance writer Cheryl Romano of Yachats.
The name change is just a more obvious signal that YachatsNews is not as geographically limited as its name implies to some readers and our plans to cover more Newport-area and countywide issues as other local media pull back. It was our 2024 fundraising goal and previously stated plan to add a second reporter to fulfill our goal “To do more and better.”
YachatsNews has published more than 6,500 stories since it was founded in 2019 and more than 1,000 stories in 2024. It now has between 175,000 and 200,000 page views (the standard online metric) a month. It had more than 2 million page views in 2024 — the most of any local news site in Lincoln County.
More than 2,500 people are signed up to receive our twice-weekly emails of story summaries. If you want those Wednesday and Friday morning reminders – although we post or update stories 5-6 days a week – you can sign up here.
The name change and expansion of our coverage to more of Lincoln County, its people and issues will be accompanied by a re-branding and marketing campaign in April to make more people aware of our work.
Also, by the end of May, we plan to redesign and upgrade our website to handle and better display our increased news content, to improve readability and strengthen the site’s reliability.
The addition of a second reporter and expansion of our news coverage represents a significant investment for YachatsNews/Lincoln Chronicle. We pay a competitive, living wage, offer health insurance benefits at no cost to the employee, and other fringe benefits.
What do we expect from the name change and additional reporting power? More readers, more advertisers, and more donors. We also hope this added coverage will encourage more Newport-area readers to support this endeavor with donations – 64 percent of our yearly budget is supplied by reader contributions – and for Newport-area businesses to advertise with us.
Our online news site is free to all and available 24/7 and our intention as a 501c3 nonprofit is to keep it that way. In return, YachatsNews/Lincoln Chronicle provides readers professionally reported local news on important subjects and issues.
So, if you want to support us financially, you can do that any time. Here are some ways:
- Write a check and drop it into the mail to YachatsNews, P.O Box 284, Yachats, Ore., 97498;
- Use the “Donate” button on the website to become a monthly donor or make a one-time contribution through PayPal;
- Advertise your business or organization on the site. Not only will you gain the additional exposure that 200,000 page views a month can bring, but you will be helping sustain this operation. Here is a link to rates and how to get that process started.
I will end with a reminder of our mission statement: “To provide locally reported, fair, unbiased straightforward news of Lincoln County, its communities, governments, people, community organizations, businesses, and the natural environment with an emphasis on good government, transparency, community involvement, civic participation and engagement. We are an independent, non-profit news service. Free to all, funded by readers.”
If you have questions or concerns, please email me at YachatsNews@gmail.com.
Thank you for reading and for your support.
— Quinton Smith/editor & board chair
Congratulations! The Yachats News has served our community well. This expansion and new name will benefit us all. Looking forward to the new, “Lincoln Chronicle.”
What will the site address change to? (Assuming it does)
Sorry, we should have been clear (and we will) but it will be http://www.LincolnChronicle.org on March 28 … but our hosting service will direct everything from YachatsNews to the new site.
Great, thanks! I hope that each story link will redirect to its equivalent with the new domain name and not just blanket redirect to the main page because that would preserve any legacy incoming links from other sites, search engine results, etc.
Welcome Shayla and thank you Quinton for your tireless work on informing the community!
Hooray and bravo. Thank you Lincoln Chronicle, you are my top local news source. Shayla Escudero has already made wonderful contributions, and I’m very glad she is here in Lincoln County!
Thank you for your work and for keeping all of us informed. It is really a great service and we greatly value your work.
Bravo!
Excellent! You all do great reporting.