Answering Email Questions Already Answered in the Email
I keep answering questions whose answers are already in the email. Somewhere between the bullet points and the reply, I still hope to be understood.
Notes, all of them.
Essays on local news, publishing and building things. 24 notes, newest first.
Railway Security Attack: Changing Every Key and Leaving
Railway lost control of the place where its customers' keys are kept, then told me it would be prudent to change everything. I spent Friday afternoon doing it. Then I left.
My AI Offered to Build Something We Already Had
At the end of August, my AI offered to build me something we already had. It was one of six times that day it told me something didn't exist. The fix wasn't a smarter AI.
Charlotte City Council Meeting: Seven Stories From Six Hours
Charlotte's council met for six hours on September 28. The curfew got the headlines. We wrote seven stories from the whole meeting, and found a vote that was never announced.
Redesigning Our Newsroom Tool: Colors Weren't the Problem
I asked for a new look for the tool I run sixteen publications from. I got two, hated both, and it turned out the colors were never the problem.
Patch's AI Reads the News. We Taught Ours to Read the Town.
Patch's AI newsletter reaches nearly a million subscribers, and its chief executive has said no person touches it before it sends. We pointed our AI at the town's own records instead, starting with an arrest log the town doesn't keep.
Mercury Local at Six Months: One Person, 16 Publications
In April I said Mercury Local was a platform. Six months on: sixteen publications, a paper launched in a day, local businesses who wanted it too, and an arrest log that would have vanished.
Farmington Police Blotter: The Cleanest Test of Local News
A year building editorial machinery, and this week's most important piece is about a police blotter. The least glamorous beat in local news is the cleanest test of who's doing the work.
Mercury Local AI Governance: The Prompt Is the Policy
The rules that govern Mercury Local weren't designed. They were decided one failure at a time, the way the common law was. Eleven rules, eleven mistakes, one person who signs the corrections.
The Case Against Paywalls on Local Newspapers
A turnpike charged tolls on a road people already used. A paywall on a local paper charges a toll on a road nobody's driving yet. Independence requires readers.
What Agentic Control Actually Means
Most people hear "AI-generated news" and picture a machine with no editor. James Watt tackled this problem in 1788 with two spinning iron balls. Control isn't supervision. It's a governor.
Mercury Local Is a Publishing Platform, Not a Publication
Eli Whitney got the credit for interchangeable parts. The idea still holds: make the part once and it fits every gun. That's what Mercury Local does for local news.
Benjamin Franklin's Model for Local News: Share the Press
Every panel asks where the money comes from. The better question is where it goes. Benjamin Franklin worked out the answer in the 1730s: share the press.
Local News Crisis Is a Design Problem, Not a Funding One
A foundation funds a reporter, the beat lights up, the grant ends, the beat goes dark, the foundation publishes an impact report. Local news was never a funding problem. It was a design problem.
Why Charlotte Needs Better News Coverage
Charlotte makes decisions like a big city and gets covered like a small town. "Agenda" is Latin for things to be done. Nothing in it about telling anybody.
Why the Next Great Media Company Will Be in a Tier-2 City
"Tier 2" is what you call a metro of nearly 3 million people when you're calling from New York. It's also where the next great media company is going to be built.
Peter Cellino: What Law Taught Me About Publishing
A resolution typically opens with a stack of "whereas" clauses. The part that does something comes after "be it resolved." Law taught me to skip to it, and that habit built a newsroom.
Multi-Agent Newsrooms: What the Architecture Looks Like
A transit tax explainer with thirty-four factual claims, checked before I read a word. What a newsroom of specialized AI agents actually looks like, and why it needs a devil's advocate.
The Charlotte Mercury's Most Important File Is Markdown
The most important file at The Charlotte Mercury has the same format as a grocery list. The model is a commodity. What you write down for it is not.
AI Newsrooms: One Article Is Easy, the Operation Is Work
Anybody can get an AI to write an article. The work is the operation around it, and like Neurath's sailors, you rebuild it at sea while it runs.
Saving Local News: Build the System First
Most plans to save local news start by hiring the old newsroom back. Newspapers have been here before, and nobody saved them by going back to hot lead.
News Deserts Don't Need Saving. They Need Infrastructure.
212 counties have no local news, and the industry named the problem after the weather. The deserts were made by people. What they need back is the plumbing.
AI Costs: How a Newsroom Keeps Token Spending Down
AI isn't magic. It's metered, and agents run the meter around the clock. Tokens are payroll now, and here's how we keep ours from becoming the biggest line in the budget.
Charlotte Mercury's First Six Months: Back to the Sources
The Renaissance humanists had a cure for institutions that lose the plot: go back to the sources. Local news could use the treatment. A year-end ledger from The Charlotte Mercury's first six months.
Written for the publications
These open on Mercury Local and the papers
Why The Charlotte Mercury Changed Its Type
The Charlotte Mercury got new type on October 9, chosen for reading rather than looks. The research says no font fits everyone, so the size is now the reader's to set.
Mercury Local Government Pages Now Fill Themselves In
If somebody has to remember to update a page, it's going to go stale. So we stopped typing the page.
Mercury Local Moves 203 Stories With No Broken Links
We renamed a section "Town Hall" and readers landed on a federal sentencing. Fixing it meant moving 203 stories without breaking a link.
Mercury Local Makes 133 Plain-Language Fixes in One Pass
133 plain-language fixes across three sites, made once, from one place.
Why We Built Our Own Publishing Platform
A publication as a source, not a destination.
What AI Built for Mercury Local, and What It Got Wrong
What I decided, what the machine built, what it got wrong.
One Codebase Runs Sixteen Publications
A new publication is a row in a table and a DNS record.
One Database for Every Mercury Local Publication
Every article, page, person, transcript and image, in one place.
Mercury Local Database Rules That Refuse Duplicates
Rules that fire whether or not anyone remembers.
Mercury Local Off-Site Backups and a Restore Drill
11,357 objects mirrored off-site, and a restore drill that matched every hash.
Nightly Health Checks for Mercury Local Sites
Dozens of watchdogs. The first run found six problems nobody knew about.
Mercury Local Page Speed: 542 Milliseconds to 208
542 milliseconds to 208. Measure before you optimize.
Mercury Local's Knowledge Graph of Local Profiles
Thousands of public profiles, built from the coverage.
Sourced Claims Behind Every Mercury Local Article
Thousands of sourced claims, one per sentence that needs one.
Self-Hosted Analytics Took Our Sites Down
We self-hosted our own. Ten days later it took every site down.
Atlas Command, Our Newsroom Desk
Version two, seven blocks, one day.
One Email Send Path for Every Mercury Local Domain
One send path for every domain. No tracking sold to anyone.
Why We Deleted Our Media Server
1,006 images repointed in one sitting, and why permissions won.
Mercury Local's WordPress Migration in Two Weeks
813 articles, 7,124 images, one platform. Built by one publisher and an AI.
Leaving Three WordPress Blogs Behind
Where Mercury Local started, and why it could not stay there.
Patch and The Farmington Mercury: Same Arrest Log, Two Ways
Patch and The Farmington Mercury covered the same arrest log last week. The difference is the difference between the two outlets: a business built on programmatic ads and reader tracking, and one built to keep costs low so the reader, not the auction, is the customer. A note from the publisher.
Farmington Arrest Log, Two Versions: Weekly vs. Daily
Two publications cover the same Farmington, Connecticut police arrest log. One publishes weekly with five data fields and a wall of ads. The other publishes daily with ten fields, editorial context, and no tracking. The difference is what happens after the AI extracts the data.
How Local News Got the Attention Business Wrong
The local news industry got both halves of the attention equation wrong. Mercury Local is built to get them right.
Why Local News Coverage Matters More Than Content
A single article attracts attention. Coverage accumulates it. The difference is the distance between a reader who found you once and a reader who comes back.
Why Your Local News Site Needs a Voice, Not Just a Template
Every local news site looks the same — and sounds the same. The real competitive advantage isn't your CMS template. It's a documented editorial voice enforced at the production level.
Publishers Losing Facebook and Google Traffic
Facebook traffic went to zero. Google is next. AI doesn't even click through. The entire model of "we publish, someone else sends us readers" is ending as a category — and the publishers who built direct trust will be the ones that survive.
Mercury Local and WordPress VIP Face the Same Problems
WordPress VIP's CTO runs a 200-person enterprise division serving News Corp, NASA, and the White House. Mercury Local runs three publications with one publisher. The problems they solve — brand governance, editorial drift, production speed — are identical. The difference is how.
We Won't Publish Guilt-by-Proximity Headlines
When an unaccepted invitation becomes a headline, journalism slips into insinuation. Here's why The Charlotte Mercury won't publish proximity stories without evidence.
Why Voters Should Read Before They Vote
In the so-called Information Age, citizens are swimming in data and drowning in ignorance, and that has consequences at the ballot box. A city that won't read shouldn't trust its own opinions.
Why a Texas Pizza Bankruptcy Isn't Charlotte Business News
A Texas pizza franchise's bankruptcy just ran as "Charlotte business news." Here is why that old attention-merchant model is breaking down and what The Charlotte Mercury is doing instead.
Charlotte Spent $25,000 on Corruption Claims Found Baseless
Councilmember Watlington's corruption allegations have cost Charlotte $ 25,000. Investigation found nothing. She has no regrets. That's the problem.
How Transit Leaders Botched Blue Line Crisis Response
Charlotte's transit leaders turned a tragedy into a communications disaster. Here's the crisis management playbook they ignored, and what they should have said instead.
Panda Fest Charlotte Reopened After Fire Marshal Closed It
The fire marshal closed the gates Friday night, and the festival had reopened by Saturday morning.
Charlotte Early Voting Turnout: Less Than 2 Percent
Nearly three-quarters of the ballots came in the last five days, led by University City Library with 2,965.
Mercury Local Wrap-Up: Transit Taxes, Ballantyne, Farmington
Coffee, Cursor, Chaos — It's 10:30 on the Friday before Labor Day.
Why We Cover Public Forums: Democracy Starts at the Mic
Public testimony is short by design, and the best speakers arrive with one point, one example and a clear ask.
Why Our Political Coverage Looks The Way It Does
We believe informed voters are the point. We publish political coverage because elections are where public life becomes real.
Mercury Local vs QC News: Why Our Election Hub Is Different
What Sets Our Election Hub Apart — Charlotte voters heading into the 2025 municipal races have no shortage of election coverage.
Showing Up vs. Spinning Out: Mercury Local and Good Daily
Mercury Local uses AI to transcribe council debates, flag budget anomalies and archive public records, never to impersonate reporting.
Charlotte's Privacy Gap: Why We Refuse Surveillance Ads
Local news should feel like a front porch, not a data auction.
Inside The Charlotte Mercury's 2025 Election Coverage
Premium isn't paywalled — it's verifiable reporting, a calm page, and a clear route from curiosity to casting a ballot.
Charlotte & Farmington Wrap: Transit Tax Vote, Review Board
This Week at Mercury Local: What We Published and Why It Matters. We build for trust, not clicks.
The Attention Economy Is Collapsing. Good.
Why click-driven media failed—and what we're building instead.
How Mercury Local Covers Elections Differently From Local TV
Charlotte Voter Guides: Listing Names vs Explaining Power.
Charlotte Election Coverage Leads the Week of August 3
The Week We Earned the Tagline. Some weeks, you publish news. This week, we published news that matters.
What Happens When Digital Advertising Collapses?
Note from the Publisher — The Attention Economy Is a Lemon. Here's Why We're Not Selling It.
Local News Revenue Fix: AEO, SEO & LEO
The Money Hole — Google and Facebook now take 63 percent of U.S. digital ad spend.
Charlotte Mercury Launches Today, Building News in Public
We Open the Doors Today. Charlotte Mercury hits send this morning. No paywall, no tracking pixels.
Understanding Web Cookies and Why Mercury Local Avoids Them
Friction Everywhere—Except Here. Every hour I hop between half a dozen news sites—and each one makes me agree to cookies before I see a headline.
How the Attention-Merchant Ad Model Bankrupted Local Papers
A Penny Bought Attention, Not News. Benjamin Day launched the New York Sun in 1833 at one cent.
How Private Equity Gutted Local Newspapers: A Data Autopsy
The Deal Playbook — Private-equity firms do not buy newspapers for journalism. They buy distressed cash flow.
Ghost Papers: How Hedge Funds Hollowed Out Local Newsrooms
The Lights Are On, but Nobody's Home. Walk into the Hartford Courant newsroom and you'll hear more echoes than phone rings.
How The Farmington Mercury Plans to Help Local News Survive
Local News Can Survive: Here’s How We’re Making It Happen Why Hyper-Local Journalism and Community Engagement Are Our Answers to the Media Crisis Hello Mercury readers, This past week, Charlotte Klein from New York Magazine posed a question that should make all of us in this industry pause: Can the media survive? I’ve been thinking…
Why The Farmington Mercury Is Last to Breaking News
Breaking news burnout? 📉 See why The Farmington Mercury is choosing depth over speed and redefining local journalism. Sometimes last place is exactly where you want to be.
Supreme Court Allows Virginia's Last-Minute Voter Purge
SCOTUS backs Virginia’s purge of nearly 1,800 voters days before Election Day, despite NVRA’s 90-day rule. Here’s what this means for voting rights nationwide.
Indiana's Bloody Eighth: How a 1984 Recount Shaped Politics
The 1984 Indiana Bloody Eighth recount changed American politics, inspiring Newt Gingrich’s combative GOP tactics and shaping election battles today.
Why The Farmington Mercury Is Always Last to Breaking News
Tired of clickbait? So are we. Discover why The Farmington Mercury is “Always Last… to Breaking News” and how we’re giving slow journalism a caffeine-fueled makeover ☕️.
Why Students Deserve Full Books, Not CliffsNotes
📚 Cutting classics into bite-sized pieces? Our schools are starving students of the full story. Let’s end the shortcut culture and get back to real reading—books and brains deserve better!