Welcome to The Tyee’s 2022 Impact Report

The Tyee’s 2022 Impact Report is hot off the presses and we’re delighted to share it with you.

The Tyee is non-profit and, as you may have noticed, we don’t have a paywall or charge to read our articles. The only reason we’re pulling this off is because we have the support of thousands of readers who we call Tyee Builders who contribute an amount that works for them, at the frequency they choose.

Since we’ve asked for your support for our journalism, we think it’s only fair to give you a peek behind the scenes to help understand how we operate, how we spend money and what we’re able to achieve with your support.

Last year, we hit a major milestone with our Tyee Builders program — our method of enabling reader financial support going back over a decade. For the first time, we brought in a little over a million dollars in revenue from Tyee Builders. Wow! This came from around 9,880 members of our community making contributions ranging from $2 to several thousand. Total Builder contributions currently make up the single largest revenue source in our budget, about half.

We think that’s a major accomplishment at a time when news outlets are closing down or laying off reporters and everyone is searching for ways to make no-junk journalism a sustainable enterprise.

This consistent support from our readers means we get to train our attention on a simple goal — producing top-notch coverage that you can’t read anywhere else. And it means we can make our stories available for free to anyone who wants to read them, regardless of their ability to pay.

In short, The Tyee is a conscious collaboration with our readers. Together we are making history by showing a new model for independent journalism that just might work.

So if you are a Tyee Builder, take a bow.

Gauging impact

It can be hard to measure the success of journalism if your primary goal isn’t necessarily to maximize page views or sell subscriptions. We choose to track impact. By that we mean some tangible forward motion on an issue or public dialogue, aided by our investigative or solutions-focused journalism. Throughout the year we note these “impact moments” so that we can share them with you.

We encourage you to read the full report. Here are just a few highlights:

• After extensive reporting by Jen St. Denis, BC Housing said it is engaged in an independent ethics commission to assess and provide advice on the specific allegations in a Tyee article about conflict of interest allegations in the organization’s decisions.
• Following reporting by Christopher Cheung, a rezoning effort in Vancouver that would displace a cluster of Filipino businesses has been halted and reconsidered.
• A petition to review B.C.’s child palliative care system was launched following Katie Hyslop’s heartbreaking story about Darwyn Danesh.

We had a great year for recognition, as well. At B.C.’s top journalism awards given out by the Jack Webster Foundation, The Tyee took home more prizes than any other news outlet.

We also made strides in adding to our team reporters — established and emerging — at a time when many newsrooms in Canada are shrinking.

Our Builders make us possible

The Tyee’s annual impact reports like this one underscore our commitment to transparency, journalism in the public interest and high ethical standards. And that’s all made possible by our Tyee Builders who gave last year and continue to support us this year. We salute you! We truly would not exist without you.

And if you aren’t a Tyee Builder? Well, if you’d like to make sure that our region has quality, in-depth public service journalism, now is a wonderful time to join. You choose the amount to give, the frequency and you can cancel any time.

Onward!