Let's be direct about something. Local news is already dead in most of the country. That's not a prediction or a warning — it's a fact. More than 1,700 communities have lost their local newspaper since 2005, and the ones that survived are often running on fumes with skeleton staffs covering territory that used to employ dozens of reporters. The internet made it impossible for local papers to sustain themselves on advertising revenue, and one by one they closed up shop. The information that residents used to take for granted — who voted for what, where the tax dollars are going, what's being built on the empty lot down the street — just stopped being reported.
We think it's worth being honest about the elephant in the room whenever AI and journalism come up in the same sentence. People worry about artificial intelligence taking jobs from reporters. We understand that concern, and we take it seriously. But here's the thing: there's nobody left to take a job from in most of these towns. The reporters are already gone. The press table at selectboard meetings is empty. The newsroom that used to cover the school committee closed its doors years ago. We're not automating anyone out of work — we're trying to fill a silence that's been growing for two decades.
That's where we believe AI can make a real difference. The same technology that people worry about disrupting media can be pointed at the problem the internet created in the first place. An AI platform can monitor every public meeting, every posted agenda, every set of minutes across dozens of towns simultaneously. It doesn't get tired, it doesn't miss a Tuesday night zoning hearing because it had to cover a selectboard meeting in the next town over, and it can turn a three-hour recorded session into a clear news article by the next morning. That's not science fiction — that's what we're building right now.
But the goal was never just to produce articles. The goal is to make it easier for residents to stay informed and stay involved. Local government works better when people know what's going on. Voter turnout at town meetings goes up when residents actually understand what's on the warrant. Budget debates get more productive when taxpayers have read a clear summary before they walk into the room. The real promise of AI in local news isn't the technology itself — it's what happens when communities have access to reliable information again.
We're not under any illusion that a platform can fully replace what a veteran local reporter brought to a community. But we also know that waiting for the old model to come back isn't a strategy. The gap exists now, it's getting wider, and real consequences follow when residents don't know what their local government is doing. AI gives us a chance to do something about that at a scale and speed that wasn't possible before. That's a chance worth taking.