News commentary

What we learned from a failed Nota News experiment

Poynter · Josh Brandau · last updated

From Josh Brandau, CEO of Nota

Last fall, Nota launched a small-scale experiment: 11 hyperlocal news sites in counties with limited local coverage. We were not marketing the sites to readers, but they were publicly accessible. The idea was simple: use AI-assisted tools to help a small editorial team turn public information into useful local stories. The approved source list was limited to public documents and civic sources: city council updates, school board actions, public notices, government announcements. It did not include other local news outlets.

The use of limited sources was not consistently followed by the journalist contractors we hired. As first reported by Axios — after the team at Axios Richmond identified similarities between Nota News content and local reporting — and further documented by Poynter, stories were published that drew from local news reporting without attribution, in some cases lifting content directly.

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