Papers are closing. Newsrooms are shrinking. Towns are losing the reporters, editors, and storytellers who kept them informed. Local journalism should be a living. We're building the place where covering a town is a viable business again: your town's own newspaper, written by the people who live there, on the web, iPhone, and Android. You can print it. You can listen to it in the car. You can find the journalists you trust and back them directly, and most of every dollar goes to them.
AI is how two people build tools this capable. It doesn't replace the reporter at the council meeting. The journalist decides what's worth covering and stands behind what they publish.
Who we are
Two founders, Ryan and Adam: a programmer and an investor. No board and no venture money, on the same economics a small-town newsroom faces, which is the point. A platform that can't sustain itself is no help to the towns that need it. Donors who want to help the mission along are welcome; board seats and strings are not.
Our principles
Inspired by Eugene Meyer's 1935 principles for the conduct of a newspaper.
- Report the truth. Verify before publishing. Correct errors promptly.
- Serve the community first. Your duty is to the public.
- Treat people with dignity. Welcome disagreement, seek out other perspectives, and give people the chance to respond.
- Vouch for one another. Journalists earn respect through their work. Readers show it by standing behind them.
- Be honest about AI. It can help you write. You stand behind what you publish, and AI-made media stays truthful.
- No story is too small. The school play, the fundraiser, the kitten up the tree: that's your town's history.
- Respect over agreement. What gets promoted here is the craft the community respects, not what it agrees with. How respect works.
Editorial standards
Every story carries a byline, and the person or publication behind it is accountable for it. My Local Press is the platform; the journalism belongs to the people who make it.
Trust here is earned by vouching: real people putting their own reputation behind someone. Every story gets a story integrity check after it goes live, six things we look for on the page. It never blocks a story, and readers never see the result.
Dates mean what they say. Every story shows when it was published, a revision carries its own modification date, and archival work republished here keeps its original date. Authors correct their own work, and the correction updates the story where it lives. If something looks wrong, flag it through the feedback form and we route it to the author.
From across My Local Press
My Local Press opened to the public in early 2026, and we're growing town by town. Some places have people covering them every day. Others are just getting started, and their stories are still on their way. While a town's own coverage builds, we bring in the best stories from communities across the platform, each one marked with the town it comes from. Local stories move to the top the moment they publish. As a town's own reporting grows, its page becomes its own.
Anyone can add to it. Write a story, or start something bigger with a publication.
Why not on your own?
A journalist could run their own site and newsletter. On your own, your ceiling is your town: the pizza parlor, the car dealership, your aunt. That support is real, and in a big market it might be enough. In a small town it usually isn't. What no journalist can do alone is walk into a national advertiser's office with numbers. A network can, one step at a time, and the first step is underway: journalists and publications here building their own readerships through subscriptions, direct support, and local advertising. Alone, your support ends at the edge of town. Here, it doesn't have to.
Existing outlets keep their identity. A newspaper, a radio station, or a TV desk can bring its masthead here and publish under its own brand, on its own domain. If you arrived from a publication's own site, the "My Local Press" link in its menu and the "Part of the My Local Press Network" credit at the bottom bring you here through a one-time welcome page that names the publication you came from.
What's still moving
This is a beta. We ship constantly, and these are the parts changing fastest.
- Advertising. Tiers, targeting, and how ads appear in the feed. The advertiser guide has the current shape.
- The writing assistant. The pencil on any create form. It structures and fills in; you decide what publishes.
- Reader subscriptions. The gate, the subscriber page, and how a price change reaches existing subscribers.
- Publications and editorial review. Invites, submit-and-send-back, and how roles show up across web, iOS, and Android.
- Narration in your own voice. Capture quality, and bringing it to the phones. Voice & Biometric Data covers what we keep.
- Getting paid. We're working directly with the first creators on registration, the tax steps, and how the money moves.
- Print editions (members). A designed edition of your feed or your local front page, ready for a real press.
- Market beyond your town. Listing near you is free. The far side, for people who make things for publications anywhere, is part of Premium, and commissions paid and delivered here are next.
Come build with us
Every community deserves someone covering it, and the business model is built in: start free, add a flat monthly membership when you need more, and see how payments work.
- Journalists, working or retired, citizen or credentialed: your byline, your business, on your terms.
- A group starting a paper: publish under one masthead, invite your team, assign beats. We handle hosting, subscriptions, ads, and print-ready pages.
- Schools and journalism programs: students publish to a real community audience and learn the business side. Your staff runs the roster and the rules.
- Existing newsrooms: bring your masthead, your advertisers, and your print edition. Keep your brand and your independence, on your own domain if you want it.
- Businesses and organizations: your own page and feed, and a direct way to back the people covering your community.
Ready? Get vouched for and start publishing, or talk to us about a newsroom, a program, or a partnership.
What inspired us
Reviving Rural News made the case that community journalism can pay for itself, and showed how. Judy Woodruff's visit to Canadian, Texas, after the town's paper stopped printing, showed what's lost when it doesn't. A rancher there, asked whether he always agreed with the paper's editor: "No. No. But she always made me think."