What changed across Washington.

Across Washington State, routine public decisions often move with little coverage. Council agendas are posted. County updates are filed. School districts publish notices. Emergency agencies issue alerts. A lot of it matters, and a lot of it is easy to miss.

The Washington Wire Network watches those sources and turns the useful changes into readable local coverage.

The job is simple: watch the boring stuff, explain what changed, and show the source.

Three times a day, the Washington Wire checks public sources across the communities it covers: city councils, county commissioners, sheriff and police departments, emergency alerts, school districts, state agencies, and other local public records.

The system looks for new items, identifies what changed, and writes short local stories based on the source material.

The point is not opinion or commentary. It is public information, stated plainly, with the source one click away.

We cover 24 Washington communities today, and the network is expanding. See the cities →

The Washington Wire is an automated local news system. Software reads public sources on a schedule, identifies new items, drafts articles from those records, and runs a second pass for accuracy, clarity, and source fidelity before publication.

It is not perfect. No newsroom is. But it is built to be consistent, source-bound, and transparent about what each story is based on.

When urgent information appears, a separate monitor checks emergency sources every five minutes and can publish high-confidence alerts between the scheduled runs.

Every story should be checkable.

New articles must pass source checks for the headline, summary and every body passage. Each needs a supporting quote from the saved source text. Unsupported passages, missing receipts and verification failures hold the draft for review.

A story also has to belong where it runs, and still be news. A story about another community's area, a source that is out of date, or an event that has already ended is held instead of published.

“Source checked” means the current article passed those automated checks; it is not a guarantee of accuracy. Open the receipts to inspect the source and the assessment. Older stories are labeled “Evidence review incomplete” until reviewed against the current standard. Their original source snapshots may not be available.

Each community has its own desk. wawire.ai brings them together: what changed across the state this week, counted from source-checked stories, with every figure opening the stories behind it.

Every Sunday, Aiden's Weekly Brief picks the week's stories, led by the ones readers engaged with most, and gives each one line, checked against the story it links to. Aiden reads it aloud as well.

The network does not draw statewide conclusions that no single story supports. If a pattern matters, it has to be visible in the stories themselves.

The Washington Wire is a veteran-owned operation based in Washington State.

The goal is not to replace traditional journalism. It is to make sure communities have a reliable baseline of civic information, especially when routine local coverage is thin.

If your community is not covered yet, it may be added as the network grows.

From source to story.

1. 01
   Sources Checked

   Three times a day (5:30 AM, 11:30 AM and 11:30 PM), software visits public websites and feeds: city councils, police departments, school districts, and emergency agencies. Only content published since the last run is collected, and the source text is saved. No private data. No paywalled content.

2. 02
   Draft Written

   Each useful source item is turned into an original draft: headline, summary, and article body, one paragraph per point in the source. The draft is based only on what the source document contains. No speculation. No invented quotes. No unnamed sources.

3. 03
   The Editor Reviews

   Before any publish decision is made, an editorial pass checks the article for accuracy, clarity, unsupported claims, padded language, and source quality. It either corrects the draft or flags it as not ready.

4. 04
   Every Passage Checked

   The headline, the summary and each paragraph must match a quote from the saved source text. A headline or summary that fails is rewritten from the verified opening; a paragraph the source does not support is dropped; the draft is checked again.

5. 05
   Local and Current

   The story must be about the desk's own area, or come from a public agency that covers it. Out-of-date sources and events that have already ended are held, and so are stories with legal risk.

6. 06
   Publish or Hold

   A draft that passes every check publishes. Anything else is held with its reason recorded. A held draft that passed the source checks gets a second automated look the next day; after that, a person can repair, publish or reject it. Nobody can publish past a failed source check or a legal hold.

7. 07
   Newsletter at 7:20 AM

   Subscribers receive the morning briefing with that day's top stories. If nothing published that morning, the newsletter is skipped. No empty emails ever sent.

8. 08
   Urgent Alerts

   A separate monitor checks emergency sources every five minutes, including local police, county sheriff, state patrol, emergency management, and public river gauges. High-confidence items can publish quickly with a breaking banner.

The pipeline runs three times a day, and the alert monitor every five minutes, so routine public information doesn't slip by unnoticed.

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For news tips, corrections, or partnership inquiries.

The Washington Wire runs much of its publishing system on its own hardware. The goal is to keep the core reporting pipeline durable, auditable, and under local control.

The Washington Wire Network monitors public sources across Washington State and explains what changed.