Happy holidays, everybody!

We're wrapping up the year and scheming about 2025.

Good morning, readers!

Welcome to our 257th edition of 2024.

We enjoyed every minute of putting together all those newsletters. Now it’s time to change gears and start getting ready for another year of publishing the best newsletter we know how to make.

So after today, we’re taking a break for the holidays.

We’ll check in now and again, but we really need to get off the hamster wheel and take care of all those things that are so easy to postpone while daily deadlines loom: planning the 2025 editorial calendar, taking care of the business side of the Agenda, and working ahead for January.

We also need a little time to get some shopping done and hang out with our families.

We do have one piece of exciting news before we go. We hired a new reporter!

That’s right. We hired a veteran reporter who knows as much about how local government works as anybody in Tucson. In a few weeks, we’ll announce who they are and share why we’re so excited they’re joining our team.

We’ll be back in your inbox in full force on January 6.

In fact, with a new reporter coming on board we’ll be better than ever.

We wouldn’t be able to hire a reporter without you, our readers. We don’t have a billionaire or a newspaper chain supporting us. Instead, the Agenda is funded almost entirely by local subscribers.

We can’t thank you enough. When we say “we couldn’t do this without you,” we really mean it. Lucky for us, hundreds of Tucsonans have decided they want the Agenda to keep going and upgraded to paid subscriptions.

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As part of that thank you, we extended our 50% off sale until the end of the week!

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With that in mind, we want to share with you a little about what we’ve got in store for 2025.

We want to be the best newsletter you’ve ever read. That means learning how to plan better, which is why we’ve mentioned “planning for next year” several times over the past few weeks and why we were so eager to get your feedback in our reader survey.

We’re setting up an editorial calendar that puts us, and you, in tune with the rhythm of local government. A detailed schedule will allow us to use our scarce resources more wisely, as well as free up time to focus on more complex stories.

With a new reporter, we’ll be able to dig into those complex stories more than we have so far. We’ll have somebody who can spend days, or even weeks, working on a single story.

A note from an Agenda subscriber.

As we move through what is sure to be a chaotic 2025, we want to be a clear, steady voice amid the noise. Even when we take on complicated stories, we’ll work hard to write clearly and help you make sense of what’s going on around you.

We also want to keep innovating. We’ll keep the same basic newsletter structure we’ve used since the beginning. It works. But we’ve already designed new features and segments that you’ll see next year.

When you get down to it, a lot of this is geared toward a single goal: Earning your subscriptions. We’re trying to make a newsletter that is so good that you say to yourself, “Yep. I’m convinced. This is worth my hard-earned dollars.”

A note from another Agenda subscriber.

Before we sign off, we’d like to give all our paid subscribers another huge thank you. You’ve been the key to the Agenda’s success.

So thank you! And Happy Holidays!