A tool-assisted speedrun of local news.
Tucson Daily Brief is an ongoing experiment in AI-augmented local journalism, by Nicholas De Leon.
There is a thing in video games called a tool-assisted speedrun: a player uses software — frame-by-frame input, save states, automation — to play through a game with a level of precision and speed that no human could achieve in real time. The result isn’t laziness or cheating. It’s a demonstration of what the game makes possible once you stop pretending the constraints of human reflex are the constraints of the medium.
Tucson Daily Brief is that same idea, applied to local news.
The newsroom is one person — me. The tools are large language models, transcription engines, public-data scrapers, schedulers, and a few hundred lines of glue Python. Together, the run reads every agenda packet that drops, listens to every council meeting that streams, scans every public-records filing, and synthesizes what the rest of the Tucson press is reporting — most mornings, before breakfast.
This matters here because Tucson is one of the most under-covered metros in the country relative to its size. The Old Pueblo has more than a million people in its metro area and a handful of beat reporters covering everything from school boards to courts to development. More public business happens here in any given week than the existing outlets can possibly reach. The legacy economics of local news will not support the coverage this city deserves. So I’m running a speedrun instead.
What you’re looking at isn’t the future of local news. It’s one experiment in what that future could look like — when a working journalist treats AI not as a replacement for the work, but as the toolkit that finally lets him cover a city at the depth it deserves.
What you’ll find here
The site is organized into a few clear sections. Here’s what each one is for.
Daily Briefs
Every morning, a synthesis of what the rest of Tucson’s press is reporting — city, county, courts, business, weather — gathered in one place, newest first. The fastest way to feel caught up before breakfast.
Local Government
What your local government is deciding — before and after. Local Meeting Previews read every agenda packet ahead of a meeting and flag what’s worth watching; Local Meeting Reports cover what was actually decided afterward. Coverage spans the City of Tucson, Pima County, Marana, and Oro Valley.
Around Town
What’s opening, building, and changing near you: new businesses and liquor filings, plus rezonings and development cases — surfaced automatically from public records, most of which never get reported. Every item is tagged New business or Development. This is where our growing coverage of the fast-growing suburbs — Oro Valley today, Marana soon — lives.
Deep Dives
Standalone feature stories on the issues that matter most across Southern Arizona, reported from TDB’s own archive of meetings, filings, and records, with the wider context layered in.
ChatTDB
Ask a question about Tucson and get an answer drawn from everything TDB has published — with citations. Think of it like ChatGPT, except it only knows, and only cites, TDB’s own reporting.
How this is made
The forward-looking work — meeting previews, the Around Town feed — publishes automatically, because it summarizes what is already on the public record. Everything that reports what happened — meeting reports, deep dives — is AI-drafted but reviewed and edited by a human before it goes live. Every piece carries a clear note about how it was made.
About the byline
My name is Nicholas De Leon. I’m a longtime technology reporter born and raised in NYC. I moved to Tucson in 2023 and quickly fell in love with the place! By day I’m a Senior Reporter at Consumer Reports and by night I work on TDB as well as a host of other interesting projects. The fastest way to contact me is by email. Tips, corrections, leads, and friendly hellos are all welcome.