Newspapers used to keep a reporter in every city that mattered. NickO Bureau puts one back: an AI reporter that reads everything a city publishes and files sourced, publish-ready stories to your newsroom, day and night.
A bureau was how a paper owned a place: someone at every meeting, a call into every office, the city’s name on the dateline. Many papers gave them up. Between 2003 and 2014, American newspapers cut more than a third of their statehouse reporters, and 71 percent had none left.
Councils still vote, boards still rezone, contracts still get signed. A NickO bureau is there for all of it.
Statehouse figures: Pew Research Center, “America’s Shifting Statehouse Press,” 2014.
| A traditional bureau | A NickO bureau | |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | The meetings its reporters can attend | Every agenda, packet and set of minutes it’s pointed at |
| Hours | The working day, plus whoever is on call | Around the clock, weekends included |
| Reading | The agenda and the items that look promising | The whole packet, down to page 114 of 169 |
| Evidence | A reporter’s notes | Every line traced to the page it came from |
| Opening one | Hiring, an office and months of sourcing | Connecting the city’s public records |
A day in the bureau. Morning packets, missing documents, a draft sent back, an evening vote. Follow fictional stories through a working newsroom. Some make the wire; others wait. Quiet stretches move faster. Click any room to look closer.
Atlanta’s agenda listed $3.6 million for Peachtree Street. The bureau read all 169 pages behind it and found what the agenda didn’t say: the plan also calls for testing options that keep the lanes.
Every line in its stories points to its source page, so your editors can check the work in seconds.
WHEREAS, the project proposes to make safety and placemaking improvements to Peachtree Street in Midtown between North Avenue & West Peachtree St., approximately 1.7 miles in length; and
Atlanta’s Oct. 14 committee review concerns a $3.6 million proposal.1 An attached framework calls for studying safety options that keep the lanes.2
A Sandy Springs jail agreement came in at 10:42 a.m. on Oct. 10. By 10:49 the bureau had pulled the supporting files, written the story and passed review.
More than four in five of its stories go out after hours, when the packets land and your newsroom has gone home.
Reads the new document and spots two separate cases in it.
Asks for three supporting files.
Gets them in 17 seconds and drafts the story.
A separate reviewer checks every claim against the documents.
Sandy Springs approves longer Lumpkin jail agreement, with costs beyond $55 daily rate
In two recent days it wrote up 56 matters and passed on 38 that weren’t news or were already covered.
A filing isn’t an approval and a recommendation isn’t a vote. Its stories say which one happened.
“The recommendation is not final approval.”
Before anything moves, a second AI reviewer reads the draft against the original documents, without seeing how the reporter got there.
Checks the public sources you choose, day and night: agendas, packets, minutes, ordinances, permits, inspection records.
Saves every original file exactly as the government published it.
Reads whole documents and pulls out each item: the rezoning, the contract, the appointment.
Chases what it needs, from linked files to earlier records and web leads, then writes with citations.
A separate reviewer checks the draft against the documents. Approved stories go to your desk.
Your reporters can’t sit through every planning commission or read every 400-page packet at 11 p.m. Your bureau can. It files stories your editors can run as they are or build on.
We’re taking on a small group of founding partners.
Already cover your own city? Take the local wire alongside AP and Reuters.
Atlanta is our first bureau, publishing in public every day as The NickO Report. Its other desks run on the same system, which is how we know it travels.
A new bureau starts with that city’s public records. Everything after that works the same way.
Name the cities you wish you still covered. We’ll show you what a bureau there would watch and what our first bureau files today.