No more paywall. Here's the honest reason why.

Sixteen months ago, I published The Stillwegian's first story. Since then, I've published 373 more, covering city hall, local businesses, community events, and the people who make Stillwater what it is. More than 62,000 unique visitors have found their way to this publication. You're one of 1,650 people who chose to sign up.

tl;dr I'm opening up all content on the website, launching a weekend newsletter, new membership tiers, and asking Stillwater to help me hit a goal that makes this publication sustainable for the long term.

Before I get into the numbers and the changes, I want to say thank you to every reader who signed up, shared a story, or chose to pay for a subscription — you made this possible. To every advertiser who bet on a brand-new publication with no track record — you gave me the runway to build it.

Building a digital-first community newspaper from scratch is not a small thing, and none of what follows would exist without the people who decided early on that Stillwater deserved one.

What we've built together

The numbers are worth sharing. Over the past 16 months, The Stillwegian has brought in just over $20,000 in total revenue, split roughly 60 percent from readers like you through paid memberships and 40 percent from local advertisers.

Reader revenue has been the backbone: present every single month without exception, and growing fast. In the first quarter of 2026, my monthly reader revenue nearly doubled compared to the fourth quarter of 2025.

On Facebook, the page has grown to 5,300+ followers, reaching 5.4 million views since January 2025. The website has logged over 107,000 page views from 62,000 unique visitors. These aren't vanity numbers. They're evidence that Stillwater has an appetite for local news when someone shows up to cover it.

Where we need to go

My goal has always been to build something larger than one person, a publication that outlasts me and continues to serve Stillwater long after I'm gone. But the honest challenge of a startup is making it work for one person first. That's where I am.

The path to a sustainable publication runs through $50,000 in annual revenue, a combination of reader support and advertising. At the current trajectory, that's 12 to 18 months away. I want to get there faster, and the way to do that is straightforward: more free readers discovering this publication, and more of those readers choosing to support it with a paid subscription.

I want to hit $50,000 within a year. That's an ambitious goal, and I'm stating it publicly because I think you deserve to know what I'm working toward. Reaching it means I can support myself and my family doing this work. It also means The Stillwegian becomes a sustainable, long-term service to this community rather than something that depends entirely on my willingness to keep grinding through the uncertainty of a startup.

What's changing, and why

Starting today, all reporting on The Stillwegian is free* to read.

No paywall. No "you've reached your limit." Every story, every archive entry, open to anyone who wants it.

This is a deliberate shift. Local journalism doesn't serve its community if most of the community can't access it. The reader who most needs to know what happened at the city council meeting shouldn't have to pay to find out. Making the journalism free is the right thing to do. Asking readers who value it to voluntarily support it is a more honest model than locking the door and hoping people pay to get in.

*Free to read, but your email is the key

There is one thing I'm keeping: a registration wall. Reading stories on The Stillwegian requires an email address. No payment, no subscription — just an email.

I want to be clear about why, because I think it matters.

First, I don't want the most readers. I want the best readers. An email address is still the most direct relationship a journalist can have with an audience in a digital world, and I'd rather have 1,000 engaged readers who chose to be here than 10,000 who stumbled through and never came back.

Second, it keeps you in control. You choose which newsletters you subscribe to, including none at all. Your email address is simply the key that unlocks access to everything on the site. You decide what lands in your inbox.

Third, it keeps content-scraping bots out. I think it's important for AI systems to have access to accurate, trusted local reporting. But I think it's more important for humans to access that content first. A registration wall isn't a barrier to readers. It's a filter that puts people ahead of machines.

Three newsletters, one exclusive to subscribers

The Stillwegian will now publish three newsletters. The Community Record deliveries local news in the smart summary format with a upcoming events, civic club news and death notices. The Sports Section delivers area athletics updates and upcoming home games. Both are free to all readers.

The third is new: Weekend Briefing.

Every Saturday morning, paid subscribers receive Weekend Briefing, a newsletter I write specifically for the people who support this publication. It's part behind-the-scenes commentary on how stories come together, part preview of the meetings, events, and stories on my radar for the week ahead, and part curated reading list of articles and stories I think are worth your time.

It's the newsletter I'd want to receive if I were a reader who cared deeply about what's happening in Stillwater and why.

Check your account to make sure your signed up to receive Weekend Briefing. Exclusive to all paid tiers: Subscriber, Subscriber Plus, and Subscriber Pro.

Four ways to support

Free Reader: full access to all stories and reporting, the Community Record, the Sports Section, and the full story archive. Always free.

Subscriber, $5/month or $50/year: everything above, plus Weekend Briefing every Saturday and subscriber-only commenting.

Subscriber Plus, $7/month or $70/year: everything above, plus a Stillwegian sticker pack mailed within 40 days of your first confirmed payment and invitations to reader events and meetups in Stillwater. Details on upcoming events are coming soon.

Subscriber Pro, $10/month or $100/year: everything above, plus a free Subscriber Plus membership (a $70-84 value) to gift to someone you choose, and an optional shout-out in the Weekend Briefing when you join.

Every paid tier supports the same thing: the reporting, the time, and the work that makes this publication possible.

What I'm asking

If you're already a paid subscriber, nothing is changing for you. Your tier has simply been renamed Subscriber Plus, your price stays exactly the same, and you now also have access to reader events and meetups. You can move to a different tier any time you'd like.

I also want to acknowledge that economic pressures are real, unpredictable, and budgets change. If your circumstances have shifted and $7 a month feels like too much right now, the Subscriber tier at $5 a month or $50 a year exists for exactly that reason. Please don't feel bad about moving down. Keeping you as a reader matters more to me than the difference in price.

At the same time, if you're in a position to step up, I hope you'll consider Subscriber Pro at $10 a month or $100 a year. It's the best value in the lineup.

After your payment is processed, I'll reach out personally to ask for the name and email of the person you'd like to gift a Subscriber Plus membership to. That person gets full Subscriber Plus access — sticker pack, event invites, Weekend Briefing and all — at no cost to them, and if they ever want to continue on their own, they can upgrade to their own paid plan at any time.

One thing to know: the gift subscription is tied to your Pro membership. If you cancel, whether monthly or annual, the gift subscription ends at the same time and both accounts move to the free reader tier. Your $100 a year effectively covers two people, and it's the clearest way to show your commitment to the kind of truly local journalism that Stillwater doesn't get anywhere else.

If you've been a free reader, this is a direct ask: choose a tier. Even $50 a year, less than $1 a week, makes a meaningful difference to a publication this size.

And if you know someone in Stillwater who should be reading The Stillwegian, now is the perfect time to share it. 🙏

— Chris Peters Founder, The Stillwegian