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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.