Laramie Reporter marks 5 years with trivia fundraiser dinner

The Laramie Reporter is turning five with a fundraiser that is also a plea for staying power. On Friday, June 26, founder, owner and editor Jeff Victor will host a trivia night dinner at Lincoln Community Center, asking for a suggested $45 donation to help build capacity for the newsroom’s next five years.

The event is set for 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at 365 W. Grand Ave. on Laramie’s West Side, in a building that began life as Lincoln School before it closed in 1978. The former school was later renovated and expanded in 2012, and it now serves as a civic gathering place that has hosted fundraisers, meetings, classes, markets and other cultural events. That setting fits the purpose of the night: a community gathering built around the question of how Albany County pays for the local reporting it relies on.

The trivia itself will mix questions about life in Laramie with journalism history, tying the fundraiser to the work the outlet says it does every day. The Laramie Reporter describes itself as a free online news source focused on in-depth and investigative coverage of local events and trends, with reporting centered on government, politics, health, housing and culture. Victor is also a part-time reporter for Wyoming Public Media, and the outlet says it has thousands of subscribers through its Substack publication.

For Albany County, the financial stakes are not abstract. The county had 37,066 residents in the 2020 census and an estimated 38,558 as of July 1, 2025, a small population spread across Laramie, Rock River, Centennial and rural stretches in between. In a place that size, one newsroom can become a primary record of public meetings, school decisions and local development, especially when public attention is already stretched across issues like county government, housing and education.

That makes the fundraiser more than a birthday celebration. It arrives after Albany County voters approved renewal of the county’s sixth-penny sales tax in May 2026, and as local readers have been following debates over AI deepfakes in Albany County School District No. 1 and a workforce-housing deal involving old school grounds. The Reporter’s anniversary dinner is a reminder that independent coverage in Albany County still depends on local backing, and that the cost of losing it would be felt in the decisions that shape daily life here.