The Journal 425 | J425
“411 for the 425”
The Journal 425 (J425) is a not-for-profit community-supported local journalism publication and multimedia platform/studio launched by the former managing editor of a regional legacy paper that served this region for over 85 years.
J425 subscribers receive timely, high-level reporting from credentialed editors and reporters who attack each story with applied local knowledge, proven chops and a track record of journalistic excellence.
Professional, Award-Winning Local Journalism
The Journal 425 was founded by Kevin Thomas Hulten, a 22-time Washington Newspaper Publishers Association awardee and the 2007 WNPA Investigative Reporter of the Year.
Kevin is the former Managing Editor of the Lake Stevens Journal, a former Senate staffer and the founder of K10 Strategic Consulting, a Bay Area-based applied data consultancy. Kevin is a Lake Stevens Viking alumnus and a former Editor of the Valhalla.
Credentials
The J425 is a credentialed member publication of the following national and international professional journalistic societies:
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ),
Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) &
Local Independent Online Newspapers (LION).
The J425 is locally credentialed via the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association (WNPA) and the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA).
Publisher Kevin Thomas Hulten is a graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and a credentialed professional member of the SPJ, IRE & WNPA.
Awards & Recognition
Hulten’s original journalism has earned 22 WNPA state awards for general excellence including:
2007 WNPA Best Investigative Reporter and
2008 WNPA Best Sports Editing.
These are peer reviewed awards. In addition, J425 sports journalism has earned the following:
First Place, National Friday Night Lights High School Football journalism competition.
Recognized as best high school football reporting in the nation in 2010.
10 WNPA statewide awards are for coverage of Lake Stevens Vikings athletics including photography by KTH and Rob Carlson, writing by KTH and Mike Anderton, and for the pioneering use of video and multimedia in sports coverage.
$10,000 FNF AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE donated to LS & Snohomish athletic charities.
KTH is a 3x former Valhalla editor and a Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University grad.
Reporter Mike Anderton is a member of the Lake Stevens High School Hall of Fame for his 30+ years of journalism.
Also…
In addition to his work in journalism, Kevin spent nearly a decade in state and local politics, serving as the aide to a Senate Committee Chairman and as a County-level Government Relations Lead. Kevin is also a FEMA-trained Emergency Management specialist in the area of Public Information.
Kevin is the Founder of K15n LLC, a Silicon Valley-based consultancy specializing in the nexus of business, government and data. Clients included major early-stage venture-backed cryptocurrency, applied data and social polling startups as well as established public companies including Zillow, Yelp and Socrata.
Note from Publisher Kevin Thomas Hulten
To the J425 Community:
You’re going to notice some changes around here. First of which, we’re looking for a partner not a customer. Yes, I mean you. We’ll break the fourth wall to land this point with you if necessary. We can do that because J425 is new media, we aren’t beholden to old ways that no longer work.
That’s why we don’t talk down to our readers or say “defecate” when we mean “shit”. We’re real and we want to meet you where you are. Join us and we’ll interact across multiple platforms, through multiple mediums, reappraising methods as we (you and I) deem necessary.
Here are a few mission critical points you can count on.
Our Mission
We do things different because we’re attempting to solve a difficult problem: building a self-supporting, sustainable business model for local journalism to grow again from the desecated sands of the news desert.
Our Product
We won’t get confused about why we’re here: to produce timely, accurate and insightful local journalism that our readers will find value in. Roughly, we publish this into three buckets of content.
Local News that Matters: Insightful, timely and fact-based reporting produced by professional local editors, photographers and journalists. We cover city hall, the school district, crime, local politics and the civic beat so our readers get the info they need to navigate life in the 425. We constantly readjust our aim by surveying our readership
Fearless and Resourceful Investigative Reporting: J425 is known for fearless independent investigative journalism with an emphasis on confronting predators, systemic predation, abuse of the vulnerable, and those who allow and/or facilitate these evils.
The Best Prep Sports Coverage Around: J425 is your home for coverage of 2-time state champion Lake Stevens Vikings football, as well as Western Conference 4A and 3A prep athletics across classifications.
The Only Newspaper Focused on the 425
After 75-plus years of serving the community, the Lake Stevens Journal closed its doors in 2018, marking the end of a publisher that provided a print circulation of 25k and employed a staff of 20+.
Sadly, the business model of community-supported journalism was targeted for liquidation by private equity raiders who capitalized on a market inefficiency that basically resulted in legacy publications selling at a price significantly lower than its intrinsic components. Meaning, there was a quick buck to be made by purchasing publishers and selling their component parts off peace meal while extracting all the came out of the legacy business. This process leveraged the three or four generations of trust earned by legacy community mastheads into keeping loyal subscribers subscribed well past the point the paper had fired all its journalists and long since stopped producing meaningful journalism. This phenomenon is refereed to as the news desert crisis,
Some 2,500 legacy American newspapers were acquired and run into bankruptcy by raiders since 2008, destroying the American fourth estate and contributing to the misinformation era. J425 — a founding member at LION — is one of a select cohort of entrepreneurial media startups aiming to pioneer a new method of providing high quality local journalism on top of the ashes of our industry.
Since the Journal closed, our community has more than doubled in size with a population now in excess of 105,000 in a five mike radius centered on Frontier Village — parallel to this growth, sources of dependable information have virtually disappeared.
The need for news is more pressing than ever. And the best way for J425 to make an impact is by providing best in class local journalism to our subscriber ship, in order to rebuild a community and restablish the local newspaper as a dependable source for local subject matter expertise.
J425 paid subscribers receive all of our reporting, delivered direct to inbox, the minute it’s published. Free subscribers receive full access to all of our work within 48 hours of publication. Paid subscribers get our full news archives, as well as full access to our merged Purple and Gold Pigskin archives, which include local sports reporting dating back to 2002. They also receive access to J425 Chat (receive breaking news, ask us direct questions or suggest timely story ideas) daily updates, live game threads, video highlights and the full catalogue of Lake Stevens Hall of Fame reporter Mike Anderton.
The Journal 425 also features the writing of Lake Stevens High School Hall of Fame inductee Mike Anderton, whose sports reporting has won numerous awards.
Our Commitment to Sustainable and Innovative Local Journalism
A LION publication, J425 is dedicated to developing a sustainable, easy-to-deploy, low initial cost template for deployment across the news desert by entrepreneurial local journalists.
In short, we’re looking to rebuild our business on top of the ruined foundations of multi-generational legacy papers, killed off by private equity vampires. We’re here to reshape an industry and rebuild a profession — not to locate a quick private equity exit.
Thanks for checking out J425. Please take a free week on me to see if you support our mission and find value in our reporting. If not, please text me or give me a shout and let me know where I fell short.
Cheers,
Kev - 425. 789.7703
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