Three machines work alongside you here, and one key protects the account they work in. None of them publishes, pays, or deletes anything on its own.
Narration
Every story you publish is read aloud in one of our standard voices, at no cost, so readers can listen on the feed or in the car. A story in a language we can't narrate yet, or one that's unusually long, publishes without audio, and the create form says so.
Prefer your own voice? Record a short sample once from narration settings, and each story then offers a choice before you publish: My voice or Default voice. Your own voice is part of Premium on the membership page. It belongs to you: review or delete it anytime, and when you delete it, we delete the data behind it. The Voice & Biometric Data notice has the details.
Wherever a story can be heard, a headphones Listen control sits on its feed card and at the top of the story. If the audio exists it plays at once; if not, one tap makes it, and playback follows you as you keep browsing.
When it says a word wrong
Synthetic voices get local names wrong: Tesuque, Pojoaque, a surname everyone in town says one particular way. Teach it from the same form you write in. Open Options near the bottom of the create or edit form, choose Fix a pronunciation, and pick the word. We suggest two or three ways to say it, each written as a plain spelling like "teh-SOO-kay" and playable on the real voice, so you choose by ear. Or write your own, with capitals on the stressed syllable, the respelling key AP, NPR, and Wikipedia use; there's a box for the phonetic alphabet if you know it.
Saving fixes the word everywhere: we re-record the published stories that use it, which takes a few minutes, and later stories are read correctly from the start. For a piece that belongs to a publication, the correction covers the whole publication by default; "Just for my stories" keeps it to your own work. Your text never changes. Your list lives on narration settings; a publication's is in its settings, where anyone on the team can edit it.
Working from Claude or ChatGPT
The My Local Press connector lets you work through notes, interviews, and voice memos in Claude or ChatGPT and have the result land in your account as a draft.
In Claude, open Settings, go to Connectors, find My Local Press, click Connect, and
sign in with your My Local Press account. In ChatGPT, open Settings, then Security,
then Advanced, and turn on Developer mode; under Plugins choose New Plugin, name it My
Local Press, paste https://mcp.mylocalpress.com/mcp as the server address, and sign
in. Developer mode is on paid ChatGPT plans; once our listing in the ChatGPT app
directory is approved, it's a single Connect click on every plan. A free account is all
it takes. A connector in Claude can't be edited after it's added; to change a setting,
remove it and add it again.
The connector does six things: creates a draft of any content type, revises a draft, reports a draft's status, lists your open drafts, attaches a photo, video, or audio file, and publishes a draft after you confirm that exact piece, through the same checks publishing in the app runs. Drafting is free on every plan. Publishing from the assistant is a Premium benefit.
It reads and writes your own drafts and reaches nothing else: it can't read the feed, search, open anyone else's content, delete anything, change settings, or touch payments or advertising, and it never has more permission than you do in the app. Remove it from Claude's or ChatGPT's settings and its access stops; the drafts it made stay in My Content, like any other draft.
The Desk
The search bar at the top of My Local Press is also the Desk, a newsroom's city desk, the place you walk up to with a question. Ask it anything in plain words and it answers about the platform, walks you through a task, opens the right screen as it goes, and searches local content, people, and publications. It never acts for you: it won't publish, pay, delete, or change anything, and it won't invent features. If something doesn't exist, it says so and offers the feedback form.
The Desk runs on Anthropic's Claude models, a fast one for most answers and more capable ones for the deepest conversations, and we move it up as smarter models ship. Ask which model answered you and it will say. Like every AI, it can get things wrong; when an answer feels off, trust your eyes and tell us through the feedback form. The Desk is available to members who have been vouched for.
Passkeys
A password is a secret you have to remember, type, and hope nobody steals. A passkey is a key that lives on your phone or computer, locked behind your face, fingerprint, or screen code. You never type it, so there's nothing to steal, and it only works on the real My Local Press; a look-alike site can't even ask for it.
It lives with your saved passwords, in Apple's iCloud Keychain or Google's Password Manager, and follows you to your other devices, so a lost phone doesn't lose the key; your password keeps working as a backup. Face ID and fingerprints only unlock the key, on your device; we never see them. If you signed up with Google, Apple, or Facebook, your sign-in is already protected the same way, by them. Create one in Settings → Passkeys; after that, the sign-in page offers it automatically.
If you use the Android app, that same list also shows a Restore key · Android. It isn't a passkey you pick at sign-in; it's what lets your phone sign back in on its own after a backup or a transfer to a new phone. Leave it alone and it takes care of itself. Remove it from any device and that phone stays signed in for now but won't come back on its own after a restore; it makes a new one the next time you sign in there.