About Dirt Road Ledger
Dirt Road Ledger is an independent network of local news sites for small towns that lost their newspaper. Each town gets its own site, built from that town's public records.
How a story gets made
- We collect public records: agendas, minutes, meeting packets, budgets, and official notices, from the governments that publish them.
- An AI system picks out items that matter to residents and drafts a short story. Every factual sentence must point to the exact words in a source document.
- A program checks that each cited passage really appears in the source. A second AI model then checks that the passage supports the sentence.
- Stories that name people, involve money above a set amount, or contain anything not fully supported go to a person for review before they appear here.
We use public records only. We do not rewrite other news outlets.
How we name people
Elected and appointed officials are named when they act in their public role. Residents who speak at meetings, applicants, and other private individuals are described by role, not name. We never name juveniles or crime victims.
Corrections
If we get something wrong, we fix it and say so on the story, with the date and what changed. Emailcorrections@dirtroadledger.com with the story and the error. We read every message.
Sponsors
Local sponsors keep these sites free. Sponsor messages are labeled "Sponsor" and never appear inside a story. Sponsors have no say in what we cover.