About our stories
Why AI?
We use AI to cover local government meetings that usually don't have a reporter at them. Think of it less like traditional journalism, and more like a transparency layer for your local government.
Too many meetings, not enough reporters
A typical county holds dozens of public meetings a month, between the board of supervisors, city councils, the planning commission, school boards and special districts for water, fire and sewer. These boards set water rates, approve local budgets and decide what gets built.
Local newspapers used to cover many of these meetings, but thousands of papers have closed or cut staff over the last 20 years, and many towns no longer have a local reporter. A reporter can usually cover only a few meetings a week, since each one takes an evening to attend plus time to read the agenda packet and write the story, so most meetings don't get covered.
Why the small meetings get skipped
With only one or two reporters, a newsroom has to choose which meetings to cover, and it usually picks the ones that look most important. Routine meetings still include real decisions, such as fee increases approved on a consent calendar, and those often go unreported.
No traditional newsroom could afford to send someone to every meeting we follow. AI lets us cover them, and our stories are free to read.
How a story gets made
- We pull agendas, minutes, staff reports and meeting recordings from government websites and other public sources.
- If a meeting was posted as video or audio, we transcribe it.
- Our AI reads that material, picks out what's worth knowing, and writes a draft from it.
About the images
The pictures on our stories are illustrations made by AI, not photos, and they don't show what a place or meeting actually looked like. We include them because many people find information easier to take in with a picture, and we want those readers to stay informed too.
What AI gets wrong
AI can misread a document or miss context that someone at the meeting would have caught. It doesn't interview anyone and only knows what's in the documents it reads.
Our stories link to the records they're based on so you can check them, and every story and image made with AI is labeled.
If you see any mistakes, let us know at news@sidekick.news.