The people writing your town's paper here work for themselves, journalists and publications paid by their readers and by the local businesses that back them. The mission is to ensure the future of independent local journalism and make the world a better place in the process. Read, follow the people whose work you want more of, post under your own name, and back one when you can.
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 piece, whatever kind it is, with a private message to the writer, or with a letter to the editor that runs under your own name if the editor prints it. 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, and a podcast here is audio or video, whichever its maker chose. On your phone, there are real iPhone and Android apps, same feed, same account: get the app.
From across My Local Press
We 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. While a town's own coverage builds, we fill its page with the best stories from other communities on the platform, each one marked with where it comes from. Anything local goes to the top the moment it's published, so as a town's own reporting grows, the page fills up with it.
Anyone can write a story or start a publication.
Hiding what you don't need
Don't want the weather, or the tip line? Tap the three dots on it and choose Hide, and it's gone from every feed you read. The same works for the From Across My Local Press row, the How My Local Press works list, and the invitation at the bottom of a page. To bring one back, open Settings → Your feed and turn it on again. Your choice follows you to the apps. Signed out, the menu asks you to sign in first, since the choice lives with your account. It's free, and it only changes what you see. On the web you can also ask the Desk: "hide the weather on my feed" flips the same switch, and asking it to bring one back does too.
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 or a writer who 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. Turn the bell on for a person and you'll hear about everything they publish, under their own name or in any publication they write for. Tune each one's alerts, or turn them off, in Settings, under Notifications; the unsubscribe link in a publication's 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, and on writers who are on one themselves, so someone you follow 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 piece
There are no public comment sections here. That's deliberate. There are two ways to answer a piece, 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 author or editor control at the foot of one of their pieces; 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.
Every email about your own account has a switch in Settings under Email notifications: messages, mentions, tips, picks, notes about your subscribers and supporters, and editorial alerts, which include letters to the editor about your work. On the website you can also ask the Desk to turn one off or back on. Sign-up codes, password resets, security notices and receipts always arrive, because an account can't work without them.
A letter to the editor works the way it did in print: it runs only if the editor prints it. The editor is the person who published the piece, and when it ran in a publication, the publication's owner as well. Either of them can print your letter, and nobody else sees it unless they do. Open any piece, a story, a podcast, a video, an event, and tap Write to the author or editor at the foot of the piece, then choose Letter to the editor. The same control is where you'd pick 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 piece you're answering. Anyone with an account can draft one; sending it requires being vouched for, because a letter is signed with your name.
Send letter puts it with the writer of the piece (and, when it ran under a publication, its owner). Until they decide, nobody else can see it: it isn't on any feed or under any piece, and My Content shows it as with the editor. If they print it, it runs in the Letters section under their piece and on your own feed, as one piece. A printed letter doesn't run on your local feed as a piece of its own. The piece it answers shows there once, with an envelope and the number of letters under it, and tapping the envelope opens the piece at its Letters. If they decline, you get it back as a draft with one short reason: not this time, already covered, or please shorten. And the editor never has to answer. A letter nobody prints comes back to you on its own after a week, or two weeks if the editor chose that, so nothing gets lost. A letter that comes back can be posted as your own piece with one tap, as an ordinary story under your name; a "please shorten" letter can also be trimmed and sent again. You can take a waiting letter back yourself from My Content.
If you publish here, the letters about your work wait for you in My Content, under Waiting on you, alongside requests from other writers to link their stories to yours. Read each one there, print it, decline it, or report it; you'll get a notification when one arrives. Once you've printed a letter you can write back with a piece of your own. Your piece's page looks the same to you as to every reader. If you'd rather not take letters, turn off Accept letters to the editor in Settings, and everything you publish will offer only the private message. 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 and a start time, or switch on All Day; the date is what makes it an event. Put the venue or street address under Where so readers know where to go, while the location pin places it on the map. For contact, give a name and at least one way to reach them: a phone, an email, or a website. You don't have to publish all three. 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.
Built in the open
The paper you're reading is being built as you read it, and updates go out daily. Send us the story that should have led the feed and didn't, or the feature you wish were here, through the feedback form. A confirmed bug is worth an extra month of Premium, every time. And if posting turns into reporting, get vouched for. The journalists' guide picks up from there.