Launching a Cleaner, Better Reading Experience for Our Supporters

Hello, loyal readers. I come bearing good news!

We’ve been working on something exciting — an upgraded reading experience for Tyee Builders, the wonderful folks who support our publication.

We’re pleased to roll out a new feature — an account login for Tyee Builder members that is linked to our main website.

This means you can now enjoy an ad-free reading experience with far fewer asks for support.

One thing we've heard a lot is that once you've made the decision to support The Tyee financially, it would be nice if you had a more tailored reading experience when you come to our website.

“I said yes, Tyee. Quit asking me to sign up for Tyee Builders or join your newsletter — I already have!”

Totally fair. So now we’ve designed things so Tyee Builders have the option to log in to their accounts and get the benefit of a cleaner, more user-friendly reading experience with fewer reading interruptions.

Also, now, when you click on the “Account” icon after you’re logged in, you can increase or change your contribution level or select which newsletters you’d like to receive. We’ll add more features in the future.

Here are instructions on how to log in:

• Go to our home page and click on “Log in” in the top right corner or directly visit account.thetyee.ca.
• Enter your email address — the email you used to become a Tyee Builder — in the box. You’ll receive an email with a link allowing you to log in immediately.
• Return to our home page as a signed-in Builder and you’ll see a darkened “Account” icon in the top right corner.

You need to be an active Builder in order to log in — which means you’ve contributed to The Tyee in the last 365 days.

A note about the ‘ad-free’ experience

Our website is already pretty light on advertising, and sometimes we advertise things like giveaways, contests and cultural events that we really think you’ll want to hear about. So we’ve split the difference. The “ad-free” experience for Tyee Builders means we’ve removed the display ads and pop-up ads that appear in the middle of the article page.

But you’ll still be able to learn about contests and events from our promotional partners on our home page.

We appreciate you

We consider ourselves lucky here at The Tyee. While so many journalism organizations are going through a tough financial time, it’s not lost on us how our supporters help us stay afloat in this challenging media landscape.

Many years ago, we decided to commit to a model that seemed risky at the time — don’t put up a paywall, don’t stuff our pages full of ads sold to the highest bidder.

Instead, we’d ask our readers to consider contributing an amount of their choosing towards our budget.

And that has paid off! In our 21st year, our news team is bigger than ever and our membership is growing.

Contributions from our readers, whom we call Tyee Builders, now make up around half of our overall budget and support a staff of over 20 people. They help us immensely in keeping independent media alive and swimming, and that is no small feat.

It allows us to focus on creating a paywall-free independent news magazine.

And our reporters are able to produce impactful stories and do in-depth coverage of issues and communities that are often overlooked.

As a Tyee Builder, know you are critical to our growth and that we value hearing from you.

We hope you enjoy this new enhanced reading experience. If you have any feedback as a user, please drop us a line.

Want to become a Tyee Builder? Support us today!