Hosted-search research with retained citations
Stories are found by hosted web search over your city and region. The native citations and provenance for each story are kept with it, not summarized away.
For independent newsrooms, local journalists and creators
A daily local news bulletin, researched, checked, produced and published.
Local Desk turns your city or region into a finished video edition: sourced research, a second verification pass, automated QA on the final file, and publishing to your connected platforms. Choose human checkpoints after research, after the storyboard before production spending, or after final QA before publication — or choose full autonomy with no approval clicks.
Pay as you go from $0.15 per finished second · no contract · cancel anytime
Publishes to your connected accounts on
- YouTube
- TikTok
- X
- Threads
- Bluesky
- Google Business
The edition workflow
From sourced research to a published video edition.
Inspect retained evidence, automated checks and delivery records. These support editorial review; they do not replace original reporting or guarantee factual accuracy.
- ResearchHosted search over your area, citations kept.
- VerifyA separate automated check of facts, dates and local relevance.
- ProduceAfter selected checkpoints: narration, captions, music bed, brand.
- QualityFinal file transcribed and its frames decoded.
- PublishConnected destinations and optional public web edition.
A separate factual and local verification pass
A second pass checks facts, dates and local relevance against your geography and source restrictions. Evidence strength varies: retained page text, a source quote or a page citation are not interchangeable. Inspect the evidence record and its limitations; automated checks can make mistakes.
Your checkpoints, tied to exact content
Select research, storyboard and/or publication review, or turn all three off for full autonomy. New jobs default to publication review. An approval applies only to its content version; changed content requires a fresh approval at that checkpoint. Autonomy never bypasses factual, rights, authorization or financial safeguards.
Automated QA on the final file
The finished video is transcribed and its frames are decoded and checked before publication. Selected publication review happens after QA, so you can inspect the output before release.
Web visibility is a separate choice
New editions are private on the web by default. Enable public web visibility explicitly; release timing still applies. Connected-account delivery is separate: private web visibility does not make a post on a connected social account private.
Word-timed captions with VTT and SRT
Captions are timed to the word, burned in for silent autoplay, and exported as VTT and SRT sidecar files.
Fictional AI presenter with on-screen disclosure
Optionally present each edition with a fictional AI avatar. The AI nature of the narration and presenter is disclosed on screen and on the edition page. Presenter editions use two credits per finished second.
QA/editor agreement and review export
Compare automated QA pass/fail with editor accept/reject verdicts and export reviewed editions as JSONL. These are editor labels, not independently established truth. Agreement does not measure factual accuracy or probability calibration.
Plan credits, not provider costs
Customer plan credits price your finished edition. Internal provider-cost accounting is separate, not an extra customer price. Credits are reserved before work and consumed when production is recorded, before QA and publication.
Audience report by platform, hour and story mix
See how editions perform by platform, by publishing hour and by the mix of stories they carried.
Live verified desks
See today's verified stories and source receipts, live.
Pick a city to inspect published stories and their available evidence. Records distinguish retained source material from page-only citations. Where present, timestamps and C2PA Content Credentials document provenance and integrity — they do not certify a story's truth.
Browse the full directory at Verified local bulletins or search the Verified Local News Archive.
Why we're different
Built like a newsroom, not a content generator.
Source-first
Every story starts from a real, cited source and keeps that source through production. Public edition pages expose it only when public web release is explicitly selected and permitted.
Safety checks in either mode
Full autonomy removes approval clicks, not verification, rights, authorization, financial or QA safeguards. Unresolved blocking failures stop publication and surface an exception.
Human review, when you choose it
Choose any combination of research, storyboard and publication checkpoints, or none. The desk produces; you remain the publisher of record.
No placeholder stories, ever
If no verified local stories remain, there is no edition. One verified story is enough, and news-only or events-only editions can proceed. We never pad a bulletin to fill a category.
Inspect the receipts
Publicly released editions expose evidence, quality verdicts, delivery records and an audit trail. A matching hash demonstrates integrity of the selected data, not independent certification of every narrated claim. Read the evidence standard and its limits.
Inside the desk
What you see when you open the desk.
Sourced research
Provenance you can show, story by story.
The research panel keeps each story's publisher and place, distance from your desk when coordinates are known, available evidence for its date and location, and rejected candidates. Retained text, quoted evidence and page-only citations have different strengths.
Brand presets
Your name on screen, every edition.
A brand preset holds the brand name, persistent screen text, font, narration voice and visuals. The preview card shows the treatment before the first run, and scheduled jobs reference a preset by version.
Every field explained
A job is a brief, a place and a clock.
The job editor asks for a brand preset, a daily local time and timezone, then a geographic brief: city, coordinates, coverage radius and look-back window. Every field carries its own help note, so nobody guesses what a radius or a look-back does.
Help & onboarding
Five steps from an empty workspace to a daily edition.
Searchable help covers every page of the desk, from readiness checks to sponsor segments. The getting-started guide walks through creating a brand preset, connecting accounts, scheduling a job, adding credits and checking readiness before the first run.
Why you need it
Daily cadence, audience trust, and a new line of revenue.
A daily workflow without a producer at every step
Schedule a daily edition or a one-shot run. In full autonomy the desk advances without approval clicks; selected checkpoints pause for your review. Source availability, safety checks, capacity and provider failures can delay or stop a run — a schedule is not an on-time delivery guarantee.
Trust signals your audience can check
Sources on a public page, verification before production, and clear AI disclosure. Your audience sees where each story came from.
Sponsor segments as revenue
On paid plans, add a sponsor card at the opening, closing or both, with the sponsor's logo, name and tagline and a visible "Sponsored" badge. Sell it like a broadcast spot.
Compare
Compare workflows, not untested quality claims.
Local Desk combines sourced local research, separate automated verification, selectable review gates, video production and connected-account publishing. Other products cover overlapping or different parts of that workflow:
- Nota Intelligence advertises monitoring, entity relationships and multi-format capabilities.
- United Robots advertises structured local content; DataDesk advertises monitoring.
- LocalLens and SeeGov offer focused civic alternatives.
These are advertised offers, not independently tested quality benchmarks or an exhaustive capability comparison. A capability not stated on a vendor page remains unknown, not absent. Confirm current scope and pricing with each vendor; prices for one product do not establish prices for another. Local Desk has not established comparative accuracy, superiority or customer savings.
Illustrative cost scenario
A 60-second daily edition, 30 editions a month.
| Option | Per edition | Per month (30 editions) | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Illustrative DIY producer | ≈ $90 | ≈ $2,700 | Assumed 2.5 hours per edition (research, script, record, edit, caption, post) at an illustrative $36.10/h. These are scenario inputs, not measured customer time or savings. Wage only; excludes benefits, software, stock media and music. |
| Local Desk — Pay as you go | $9.00 | ≈ $270 | 60 credits × $0.15. No monthly fee. |
| Local Desk — Pro | $4.97 | $149 | $149/mo includes 1,800 credits, exactly 30 sixty-second editions; extra editions cost 60 × $0.09 = $5.40. |
| Local Desk — Enterprise | $16.63 | $499 | $499/mo includes 6,000 credits, enough for 100 standard 60-second editions. At this table's 30-edition usage, $499 ÷ 30 = $16.63 per edition; using all 100 brings it to $4.99. Additional editions cost 60 × $0.075 = $4.50. |
Illustration, not a like-for-like quality benchmark or savings guarantee. Assumptions: one standard 60-second edition per day, no sponsor segment, Local Desk list prices, and hypothetical DIY time and wage as stated. Presenter editions use twice the credits; sponsor seconds count too. Credits are consumed at the production checkpoint, before QA or publication, not on confirmed delivery. Your own numbers will differ.
Pricing
Standard video: one plan credit per finished second.
A standard 60-second edition uses 60 credits; an AI-presenter edition uses two credits per second, or 120 credits for 60 seconds. Sponsor seconds count too. Credits are reserved before work and consumed when production is recorded, before QA and publication. A later QA failure or delivery failure does not undo that production charge; unused reservations are released. Included credits renew when subscription payment clears and do not roll over; purchased credits persist while your account is active. Internal provider costs are separate from your plan-credit price.
$0/mo
- $0.15 per credit
- Prepaid top-ups
- Every research, verification, QA and publishing feature
- No monthly fee
Standard 60-second edition ≈ $9.00 · presenter ≈ $18.00
$149/mo
- 1,800 credits included each period
- Additional credits $0.09
- Sponsor segments
- Stripe subscription, cancel anytime
30 standard 60-second editions per period · presenter uses 2× credits
$499/mo
- 6,000 credits included each period
- Additional credits $0.075
- Sponsor segments
- Stripe subscription, cancel anytime
100 standard 60-second editions per period · presenter uses 2× credits
from $5,000/mo
- Custom credit allotment and per-credit rate
- Multiple desks and regions
- Sponsor segments
- Quoted by our business development team
Tell us about your operation
Request a custom packageSubscriptions bill through Stripe. After you sign up and set your password, choose Pro or Enterprise from the Billing page; you start on Pay as you go until the first subscription payment clears. Prices in USD, taxes may apply.
Custom Packages
Running more than one desk, or a whole region?
Tell us what you publish and where. A member of our business development team will reach out with a custom quote. Custom packages start at $5,000 per month.
FAQ
Straight answers.
What is a credit, and when is it charged?
A customer plan credit is one finished second of standard video; AI-presenter video uses two credits per second. A 60-second standard edition uses 60 credits, or 120 with a presenter. Sponsor seconds count too. Credits are held before work and consumed at the production checkpoint, before QA and publication, not when a social post succeeds. Failure before that checkpoint releases the unused plan reservation. Later QA or delivery failure does not reverse the production charge. Provider-cost accounting is separate.
Do included credits roll over?
No. Pro and Enterprise include a fixed number of credits per billing period. Whatever is unused expires when the period ends. Additional credits you purchase persist while your account is active.
When do included credits renew?
When your subscription payment clears in Stripe. If a payment fails, the plan is marked past due until it succeeds.
Are there refunds?
No. Subscription fees and purchased credits are not refundable.
Can I cancel?
Yes, anytime, from the Billing page through the Stripe customer portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. There is no contract.
How is AI disclosed?
Narration is AI-generated and the presenter, when used, is a fictional AI avatar. Both are disclosed on screen in the video and on the public edition page. You remain the publisher and are responsible for meeting each platform's disclosure rules.
Where do the stories come from?
From hosted web search over your city and region, with a separate fact, date and local-relevance check. Evidence can include retained text, quotes or page-only citations; those strengths are distinguished in the record. Two publishers per story are not required. A source link or cryptographic credential is not a guarantee that every narrated claim is true.
Who publishes the edition?
You remain the publisher. Local Desk posts to connected destinations after the checkpoints you select, or without approval clicks in full autonomy. Public web visibility is a separate explicit choice; new editions default to private web visibility, and public release timing still applies.