Can AI write local news from city council meetings and permits?

This was my idea a year ago. If you had asked me the week before, I'd have told you it wasn't realistic, that it would take three to six months. Then a new frontier model came out, and within days it was ready.

"The tech watches for city council meetings and then proactively writes the article by researching. There's seven main softwares in the United States that host city council content. It wrote adapters for all seven."

How does AI turn a council meeting into an article?

1. It watches public sources: council meeting minutes and agendas, permit filings and other public data.
2. It connects through adapters for the seven main council-hosting platforms in the US.
3. It researches and drafts an article on the most important thing that happened.
4. A person reviews it, edits it, or pushes publish.

Meetings hosted only on YouTube need a paid third-party transcript service. That gets passed on as an option.

What does the human do?

You become an editor. Here's how I describe it to publishers:

"Last night they talked about X at city council. We wrote an article on the most important thing. Go review it, edit it, or push publish... The stuff that doesn't need you as a person writes itself."

Same with a permit: a restaurant chain files to open in your town, the system writes it up, and you publish if you like it. First-person columns still come from you, by brain-dumping your take out loud and letting the AI shape it.

And local judgment still matters. The value isn't that the restaurant is coming. It's knowing the intersection was already backed up. AI can't know that, so the editor adds it.

Isn't everyone already doing this?

No. Even the people who are ahead have a 10-step workflow that breaks all the time. The difference is putting the workflow inside the software. I've shown it to about eight people, including large local publishers, and they all wanted it. I think this, not the newsletters, is the real money maker.

How fast can you launch a local news site now?

I'd already bought a few city domains months earlier. I told the system: just make me one. It generated logos (one with a Statue of Liberty head I never asked for), maps and templates. It took me about 10 minutes of my own time to launch four sites.

larkfeed runs many sites from one backend, and cities can combine into a single brand covering two neighboring towns. One system, one AI agent and one team can create content for every site automatically.

For the newsletter side of the same idea, see can AI write and run a local newsletter.