Open the app and your town has a newspaper: stories, events, classifieds, notices, newest first, free to read. Reading needs nothing. Posting takes an account, and publishing takes a vouch, which is someone putting their name behind yours. There are no comment sections here. You answer a story with a private message to the writer, or with a public letter that runs under your own name. Instead of likes there are four reactions, one of them respect for the craft even when you disagree with every word of it.
Finding local news
The community feed is the front door: everything happening in the area you're viewing. Journalism leads it, and what leads it is written down and dated. Content that exists to sell something isn't removed or hidden. It runs at the pace ads run at, and paid placements carry an Ad label. That pacing is being rolled out now. Quieter towns also get reporting from other communities, and every one of those cards says From Across MLP, with the place it came from when we know it. If something in your feed looks wrong, send it through the feedback form with a link to the piece and a person will look.
The weather sits under the masthead the way it does on a front page: tonight and tomorrow on one line, or the National Weather Service's active warning for where you are. It covers the United States, so outside it the box isn't there. Tap it for the full forecast in the Weather Service's own words, and when there's a warning, "Read the full alert" opens the whole thing right here rather than sending you off to weather.gov. On a publication's feed the box shows that paper's own town, and the paper's owner decides whether it's there at all.
Search lives at the top of every page. Search for content, people, or publications, or ask a question in plain words ("events this weekend", "who covers the school board?").
Listen if you'd rather not read: content here can carry spoken narration, in the narration section of the AI, voice, and your account page. On your phone, there are real iPhone and Android apps, same feed, same account: get the app.
Following and alerts
Following is one tap: Read, on any publication's or person's page. It builds your own local paper, the people you trust in one reading list, and following a publication also joins its email list if it sends a newsletter. Their feeds show only their own work, so following is how your reading becomes yours.
Publish alerts are a separate choice on top: the bell, next to Read on the website, which appears once you follow a publication that offers them. Each newly published piece then reaches you as a notification in the app and a short email, one per piece, never re-sent for an edit. Alerts are a publication feature; following an individual journalist adds their work to your list without alerts for now. Tune each publication's alerts, or turn them off, in Settings, under Notifications; the unsubscribe link in any alert email opts you out of that publication's email altogether, newsletter included. The bell appears on publications whose owner is on a Premium membership, so a followed publication with no bell hasn't opened that door yet. Two easy mix-ups: this is not the Alert content type (the timely weather, traffic, and safety posts anyone can read), and it is not a paid subscription to a creator's gated work. Publish alerts are free.
Respect, not likes
Under a story you'll find four icons instead of a thumbs up. Agree and Disagree are a pair: hold one or the other, or neither. Agree means "I see it the same way," a stance, not a vote on whether it's true. Respect, the hat, means "I respect the craft that went into this," whatever you think of the message. Made me think, the thought bubble, means the piece stayed with you. The last two stack with either stance or with silence.
Disagreement is counted alongside respect, not against it. Disagree plus Respect is the combination we value most, because earning respect from someone who doesn't share your view is the hardest thing a writer can do. Next to each reaction you see a percentage, not a tally: a count mostly measures how big a town is, a percentage measures how the people who read it responded, and it stays hidden until enough people have. Your feed is your own; respect is what shapes what we surface across the network. These reactions are new, and if the set doesn't fit how you want to respond, tell us through the feedback form.
Answering a story
There are no public comment sections here. That's deliberate. There are two ways to answer a story, and they are different things.
A message is private: it goes to the writer and nobody else. Use it to pass along a correction, offer a source, ask a question, or say something you'd rather not say in public. Message someone from their profile, or from the Write to the editor control at the foot of one of their stories; your conversations live in Messages. Messaging requires being vouched for, the same trust bar as publishing, because words directed at a person deserve a real person behind them. When someone messages you, we email you a preview and a link, at most once per conversation every thirty minutes, with a switch in Settings.
A letter to the editor is public. Open a story and tap Write to the editor (or Write to the journalist, if the story ran under a person's own name) at the foot of the piece, then choose A public letter. The same control is where you'd pick A private message instead, and each choice says in a line what it does before you commit to either. You land on the story form with the headline filled in and a note saying which story you're answering. Your letter publishes as a piece of your own, on your own feed, under your name. Anyone with an account can draft one; publishing requires being vouched for, because a letter runs under your name. The writer of the original story sees it waiting under their piece and can print it there in a Letters section, respond with a letter of their own, report it, or quietly decline. Declining changes nothing about your letter. Say the thing you came to say, say who you are, and argue with the piece rather than the person.
A tip is for news, not a response. Every newspaper has a tip line and this is ours: a road closed for a month, a meeting nobody covered, a business about to leave town. Reach it from the line above your local feed, a publication's page, a journalist's profile, or the menu on a story. Say what's going on, where, and when, and add up to three photos. Tips come from a signed-in account, so a journalist can tell you when somebody picks yours up. Flip Keep my name out of it and the newsroom sees "A reader in Los Lunas" instead of your name; we still know who sent it, so the switch is not a shield for abuse.
If you see something harmful, false, or hateful, report it from the content itself. Reported content is reviewed and taken down. If someone messages you hatefully, block them, from the conversation or from your blocked users. Accounts that abuse the platform's trust are removed. Our content standards meet what Apple and Google require of apps in their stores, and we apply the same bar on the web.
Posting something
Pick by intent. Reporting or telling something in writing is a story, and a video or audio episode is long-form; both are publisher content, yours to own, in the journalist guide. The rest is community content, always free to read: an event for a happening with a date and place, a classified to sell or rent something, or offer your services near you or beyond your town, a resource for a business, nonprofit, or public place people should know how to reach, a coupon for a local deal, a public notice for an official or legal notice, and an obituary. Alerts, initiatives, and spotlight requests are limited availability; ask us. A poll or survey is a Premium feature, covered in the journalist guide. Promoting to someone else's audience is an advertisement, in the businesses guide. Still unsure? Open Create and pick.
Events. Open the event form, describe it, and set the date, time, and location; the date is what makes it an event. It appears in your community's feed, and lives in My Content if details change.
Classifieds. Open the classified form, choose the category (for sale, housing, jobs, services), describe the listing, set a price if there is one, add photos. When it sells or fills, edit it from My Content. Every classified also lands in Market, the back pages of the paper, with chips across the top for one kind at a time. Market has two sides: Near you is everything posted around here, and From across My Local Press is for people who make things to order and can work with anyone. Artists, illustrators, photographers, musicians, writers, and designers list under Services, the same category the trades use; beyond the usual fields, the Services form asks for the Kind of service (pick Creative), What you make, a Portfolio link people can follow to see your work, and Commissions from, the price your commissions start at. All four are optional. The Reach field decides the side: Sell local keeps the listing in your own area, and Sell beyond puts it on the far side too. Selling beyond comes with a Premium membership; listing near you is free. A classified is a listing in the commons, not an advertisement.
Obituaries. Open the obituary form. The title is the full name of the person who died; the description is the remembrance, in the family's words. Below that are the fields the family gave you: Date of Birth and Date of Death, Survived By as the family wants it printed, and Service Date, Service Time, and Service Location. Only the date of death is required, because a family often doesn't have every detail and an obituary should never wait on one. A photo is optional. We do not charge families to post an obituary, and we do not take a cut.