Launching on the Fourth of July
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Local journalism in Tucson has taken a big hit recently with major staff cuts to Southern Arizona's longest-running publication.
As the corporate-owned dailies continue to slash reporting positions, it means fewer experienced journalists are left to keep an eye on our local communities and elected officials. And that leaves Tucsonans less informed about issues they want and need to understand.
We love Tucson! Tucsonans are civically engaged, community-oriented, thoughtful folks. They deserve a media landscape that reflects that.
And we think we can help.
Please welcome the Tucson Agenda, launching on the Fourth of July.
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The Tucson Agenda is a separate, sister publication of the Arizona Agenda. It is run by Caitlin Schmidt and Curt Prendergast, two veteran reporters who have spent their careers covering their community, Tucson.
Curt and Caitlin are old friends who spent nearly a decade working together and bouncing ideas off each other at the Arizona Daily Star.
Here are our semi-formal credentials:
Caitlin started at the Star as an apprentice, and in the more than a decade since, she has covered everything from public safety and local government, to sports, courts, health and solutions. She’s a two-time winner of the Arizona Press Club’s Sledgehammer Award for her fights to obtain public records to expose government misdeeds. But she also loves writing about government or nonprofit programs that actually work. Caitlin was named 2019 Arizona Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association for her ongoing coverage of gender-based violence in the University of Arizona athletics department, and has also won awards from the Arizona Newspaper Association, First Amendment Coalition of Arizona and Best of the West.
She’s obsessed with dogs (not hyperbole) and teaches public affairs reporting at the University of Arizona School of Journalism.
Curt agrees that dogs rule, particularly the three pups at his house. In his free time, he plays so much backgammon he actually wore out some dice the other day, a fact that makes him absurdly proud.
He worked at the Star for eight years, most recently as the Star’s opinion editor until he was laid off in late April. Before that, he worked at the Nogales International for three years. He’s fluent in Spanish and has covered the Arizona-Mexico border, federal court, local politics and a variety of other beats. He won numerous awards from the Arizona Press Club and the Arizona Newspapers Association, including community journalist of the year in 2014, best news story in 2021 for reporting on the border wall built under the Trump administration, and best series in 2022 for reporting on the crisis of migrants dying in the desert.
We’ll focus on the bread and butter of local news: local government decisions, politics and government-adjacent issues and organizations.
The decisions made by local elected officials have a major impact on our day-to-day lives. We’ll keep a watchful eye on our cities and counties to ensure you know how — and why — those decisions are made.
We think you deserve an informative and entertaining way to stay in the know about what’s happening in your community. So, we’re gonna create it!
Just like the Arizona Agenda, the Tucson Agenda is written by veteran local reporters with a deep understanding of the issues and personalities that affect our town. We’ll give readers the tools and information to make Tucson a smarter, stronger community. And we’ll make it fun and interesting because that’s how being involved in civic life should be.
The Tucson Agenda will also highlight great reporting that Southern Arizonans need to see from our friends at other news outlets. There’s no reason to spend half your day doom-scrolling and slogging through the social media rubbish to find the news you want and need. There’s too much news and too few reporters to cover it all. Let’s work together to boost each other up!
But to pull this off, we need your help.
The Arizona Agenda launched almost two years ago with a $100,000 advance from Substack that assured it would survive for at least a year. From that small investment, it has grown into a sustainable employee-owned local newsletter that can support two reporters, some contract staff and the occasional freelancer. And it’s still growing!
Unfortunately, Substack is no longer offering the kinds of local news advances that kickstarted the Arizona Agenda.
So we’re asking you to help get the Tucson Agenda running. In exchange for your support, you’ll receive cool bonuses like merch, VIP tickets to twice-annual events with local movers and shakers, or occasional coffees with the founders.
Donate to support the Tucson Agenda today.
We’re going out on a limb to do this. We have no advance from Substack. No major donor propping this up. No safety net.
We believe it’ll work. But that’ll depend on you. Our fate is in your hands. We trust you.
If you want the Tucson Agenda to exist, we need you to pitch in. Here are a few ways you can help:
📨 Forward or share this post. Tell all of your friends, family and random acquaintances in Tucson and Southern Arizona about this exciting new publication. Post on social media. Text a friend. Help us spread the word.
📜 Subscribe to the Tucson Agenda now. We have a lot of subscription options to choose from. You can become a founding member and get additional subscriptions for friends. You can give gift subscriptions or start a group subscription. Or you can sign up for free.
💵 Donate to help us get off the ground. Building a local newsletter from scratch takes a long time and a lot of hard work. Can you help us get there? Donate $1,000 or more to help us build a newsletter to serve your town. You’ll get some cool perks!
🙋 Get in touch. So many of our readers are experts in their fields: elected officials, lawyers, accountants, business owners, grant writers and social media marketers. If you have a skill that can help us build this thing, we’d love to hear from you. And if you have a hot tip or story idea, don’t hesitate to reach out! (You can also email info@tucsonagenda.com)
❓What’s next?: We’ll officially launch on July 4, but we’ll be sending our early subscribers occasional updates about the project and teasers about what to expect. Subscribe now wo you’re in the loop!
As always, thank you for your continued support.