The Olympian | Olympia WA News

Review by eFreeware

The most distinctive thing about The Olympian is how tightly it is tied to one place. This is not a general news reader that happens to include Washington state; it is built around Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater, the three cities that make up the South Sound end of the Puget Sound region, and it treats their city councils, school boards, crime reports and high school teams as the main event rather than an afterthought.

That focus is the reason to install it. Anyone living in or near Thurston County who wants to follow what their local government is doing, what is happening in their neighborhoods and how the area's teams are performing will find the app organized around exactly those concerns. The developer, McClatchy, also folds in national headline news and investigative reporting, so the app is not purely hyperlocal, but the center of gravity stays in the South Sound.

It is free to download, supported by ads, and offers in-app purchases. The app has been on Google Play since late 2011 and was updated in August 2026, so it is a long-running product rather than a new experiment. The install base sits at more than 10,000, and the average rating is 2.9 from 128 ratings, a figure worth keeping in mind as you weigh what the app promises against what readers have made of it.

Following the South Sound day by day

The core of the app is daily local coverage. The newsroom reports on issues affecting residents across the Olympia area, including crime, local business, sports and regional developments, and the app presents that reporting by category so you can move between sections rather than scrolling one undifferentiated feed. There is also opinion, editorials and columns, which matters if you read the paper as much for its voice on local issues as for its reporting.

State politics gets its own attention. The app covers the Washington state legislature and local government, which is a useful pairing in a state capital: the decisions made in Olympia affect the surrounding communities directly, and having legislative and municipal coverage in the same place saves jumping between sources.

Sports coverage extends beyond the local high schools. The developer describes full reporting on local, professional and college teams, along with a way to stay connected to your favorite teams and the writers who cover them. For readers who follow a specific beat writer or a specific team, that personal connection is often what keeps a news app installed rather than bookmarked.

The developer also notes that articles carry AI-generated summaries reviewed by the newsroom. Whether you use them to decide what to read or skip past them entirely, they sit alongside the full articles rather than replacing them.

Edition, video and the rest of the package

The feature that stands out most for longtime subscribers is Edition, described as a digital destination compiled by editors overnight and meant to give readers the full day's news, much like the printed newspaper. If your habit is to read a paper front to back with breakfast rather than chase individual stories through the day, Edition is the part of the app built for you. The app also lets you access and download previous issues, which is useful when you want to catch up on a stretch you missed or look back at how a story developed.

Video and photography are treated as first-class content. You can watch live video of local stories and national coverage, and browse photos and videos from local news and community events. For anything visual, such as a storm, a protest or a championship game, that is likely to be more immediate than reading a write-up the next morning.

Around the edges there is a fair amount of everyday utility. You can search for articles, videos and games, bookmark pieces to read later, and comment on stories. Sharing to Facebook, X or by email is built in, and the app supports both dark and light modes so you can read comfortably depending on the time of day. Puzzles and games are included as well, which gives the app a reason to be opened on a quiet evening rather than only when something breaks.

Recent updates have touched blockquote formatting in articles, playback of the top video in the Featured Videos section, and a banner ad overlap on Edition articles, along with general bug fixes and performance work. Those are maintenance notes rather than new features, but they suggest the Edition reading experience and video playback are being actively tended to.

Setting it up and shaping your own feed

Getting started is a matter of installing the app and choosing what you want to see. Personalization works through favoriting topics, which produces personalized feeds, so the more precisely you mark the subjects you care about, the less you have to sift through material you do not. If you follow local government, a college team and crime coverage and nothing else, favoriting those topics is the way to make the app reflect that.

The app is organized around browsing by category, searching, bookmarking and reading. Ads are present, and there are in-app purchases.

If you are coming from the print paper or the website, the sensible first move is to set up your favorite topics and then look at Edition, since those two features do the most to make the app feel like your paper rather than a generic feed. From there, bookmarks and dark mode are small settings you can adjust as you go.

Where it fits into a reading routine

The app suits readers with a real stake in the Olympia area. If you live in Lacey or Tumwater, work in the state capital, own a business in the South Sound or have children in local schools and sports, the coverage is aimed at decisions and events that touch your day. It is also a reasonable choice for people who have moved away from the region but still want to know what is happening back home, since the local reporting and Edition replica travel with you.

It is less obviously a fit for readers whose interest is national or international news in general. The app includes national headlines and investigative reporting, but it is assembled around a local newsroom's priorities, and the local material is the reason it exists. Someone who wants a broad general-purpose news feed will find the South Sound focus narrow.

The rating of 2.9 from 128 ratings is worth weighing honestly. That is a middling average, and it suggests a meaningful share of readers have found something to complain about, whether that is ads, performance or the reading experience. It is not low enough to rule the app out, particularly for a free download, but it does mean you should approach it as a work in progress rather than a polished flagship product.

The free, ad-supported model with in-app purchases is also a consideration. Ads are part of the deal, so anyone who dislikes advertising in a news app should factor that in before making it part of their daily routine.

A local paper for people who live the coverage

My recommendation is straightforward: install The Olympian if the South Sound is your community and you want a single app for its news, sports, opinion and video. The combination of daily local reporting, state legislature coverage, live video and the Edition replica covers the main ways people read a local paper, and the personalization tools let you shape the feed around your own interests rather than the editor's front page.

The strongest case for it is habit. Favoriting a handful of topics, bookmarking longer pieces and reading Edition in the morning is a routine the app is clearly designed to support, and it rewards readers who come back daily rather than dipping in occasionally. The puzzles and games give it a second, lighter use that a pure news feed would not.

Weigh that against the 2.9 average rating and the ad-supported, purchase-containing model. This is not the app to choose if you have no connection to Thurston County. For residents of Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater, though, it is a free and reasonably complete way to keep up with the place you live.

What's new in version 11.1.16

• Support for blockquotes on articles • Fixes playback issue with top video in Featured Videos section • Fixes banner ad overlap on Edition section articles • Other minor bug fixes and performance improvements