The Daily Agenda: This train’s gathering speed

The Tucson Agenda's monthly business check-in ... AG checking on Nanos.

The Tucson Agenda is building great momentum as we wrap up our fourth month of publishing this startup newsletter with a dream.

We’re adding readers. We’re building beats. We’re marketing. We’re getting cited in other news outlets and invited to speak at local events. All the things a small publication like ours needs to grow.

It’s paying off. We now have more than 2,300 subscribers. Thanks to the 484 subscribers who pay for the Tucson Agenda, we’ve reached a milestone: We are halfway to being a financially sustainable news outlet.

We also passed another milestone last month. We’ve published more than 100 posts since we launched in July. That’s 25 local stories every month, on top of our daily curation of local news. 

We’ve also been getting more comments from our subscribers. A few caught our eye. One wrote about being surprised there was so much local news that actually interested him. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do.

The Tucson area is home to more than 1 million people, so there is always a lot going on. There just aren’t enough reporters to tell it all. We want to help people remember that they are surrounded by interesting, important stuff.

Other readers said they were hopeful we could avoid the pitfalls of corporate-owned news outlets. Every dollar you pay us stays here in Tucson and helps us do a better job. We have no shareholders to satisfy and no hedge fund demanding a return on their investment. It’s just us. And you.

When we checked in with our monthly update for September, we were on a plateau with new subscriptions. But we’re climbing again now!

We added over 240 new subscribers in October. We’re crossing our fingers (and working hard!) that those numbers keep going up. 

Our readership has been nice and steady. We had 63,000 pageviews last month and we’re closing in on 200,000 pageviews since we launched. Nearly two-thirds of our subscribers read the newsletter every day. 

It’s clear to us, and to most small business owners, that we have to keep working hard at marketing. So last month we spent a lot of time getting the word out.  

Curt talked to Arizona Republic reporters about Tucson’s mayoral race on the Republic’s podcast, the Gaggle. He also discussed the mayoral race with KJZZ. 

Caitlin’s book club was featured in an Arizona Daily Star story and she’s hard at work planning for this month’s club meeting, which is a super-collaboration with some new community partners. She also hustled to a million events this month.

We brought on some help to establish a stronger presence on social media, and we’ve got more help joining us in the new year.

We also ran a print ad in the Arizona Daily Star on Sunday. That was a big step for us. We’re hoping Star readers who’ve never heard of us will take a look and see if they like what we’re doing. 

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Out and about:

We’ve spent a lot of time this month attending and covering community events, talking to folks about the Agenda and helping young voters better understand their ballot.

We attended Tucson Young Professionals and Tucson Urban League Young Professionals mixer where we, along with the Arizona Luminaria’s Becky Pallack, got to talk about tomorrow’s city election and break down the ballot. We had a lot of fun! And it was nice to know so many voters care about an off-year city election.

We participated in our first University of Arizona School of Journalism internship fair, interviewing and recruiting students for the spring semester. It was great to see the excitement in the next generation of journalists.

Caitlin attended two NAACP Tucson Branch events, including the group’s annual awards ceremony, featuring keynote speaker Congressman Bennie Thompson, and a forum focusing on cash bail reform and pretrial justice.

Also this month, Caitlin spent a morning with 100 community members for a deep dive into the causes of poverty and how to break intergenerational cycles.

We love talking about the Agenda or the issues we cover. We’ve got a few more events lined up, but we’re always looking for me. If you want Caitlin or Curt to come talk to your group, reach out to us at info@tucsonagenda.com.

What’s next?

Caitlin will be hanging out at TenWest this week, starting with tonight’s Mega Mixer. She’ll also be attending sessions at the TCC for some upcoming stories, so keep an eye out and if you see her, ask for a Tucson Agenda sticker!

We’re also participating in the 2023 Local News Fund, a program to help independent news organizations raise money for local journalism projects through tax-deductible donations. 

Our goal in the Agenda universe—which includes our sister newsletter the Arizona Agenda— is to make politics and government accessible to everyone in the state (and Tucson!). And that means we want to provide our subscribers news in formats that resonate with your learning preferences. We have ideas to share the story of Arizona's divided government through podcasts, audio stories, social media, and short videos. And just imagine the possibilities during the 2024 election season!

Stay tuned for more news on that and join us on November 28, when we’ll be participating in Giving Tuesday, a global generosity movement that helps people and organizations make change in their communities.

And make sure you check out our new About Us page, which we’ve updated to reflect who we are now and what we’re doing. Next up is our editorial policy. 

We like hearing your ideas, so leave a comment or email us at curt@tucsonagenda.com or caitlin@tucsonagenda.com. 

As always, thanks so much for reading and supporting us.

Changes coming: Tucson educators are bracing for upcoming restrictions on how they can teach reading, the Arizona Daily Star’s Ellie Wolfe and Jessica Votipka report. The Science of Reading places an emphasis on phonics, with students focusing on sounding out letters into words. While some literacy experts say there’s data to show the program is effective, others say that the research is based on a “very, very small” number of students and that teaching kids to read shouldn’t involve a one-size-fits-all approach.

Innovation on display: Tucson’s TenWest Impact Festival, which started in 2015 as an Arizona response to Austin’s SXSW, has taken on its own Sonoran identity in recent years, the Arizona Luminaria’s Beatriz Limón writes. TenWest runs through Friday and showcases music, art, fashion, technology and business with keynote speakers addressing topics ranging from planetary science to archeological explorations of the art of the Indigenous people of the Sonoran Desert.

Two for two: The Arizona Attorney General’s Office will be criminally investigating Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos’ handling of an investigation into the sexual assault of a female deputy, Arizona Public Media’s Hannah Cree reports. This is the second time in his two turns as sheriff that Nanos has been investigated by an outside agency.

Ballot bind: Sen. Justine Wadsack may have broken the law last week when she tweeted a photo of a ballot she claims is hers, but that officials say can’t actually be hers, the Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith writes. The ballot pictured in the photo tweeted by Wadsack includes a proposition she’s not eligible to vote on, since it’s in a different precinct, but Wadsack publicly doubled and tripled down on her claims that it’s hers.

Vacant no more: The City of Tucson will be using nearly $3 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to buy and develop the land on the southwest corner of Speedway and Stone for affordable housing, KOLD’s Jack Cooper reports. The land, which is across the street from Pima Community College and Anza Park and has sat vacant for years, is part of the Choice Neighborhood Plan, which works on improving struggling neighborhoods. The project is in the early stages, with no set dates for development, but leaders say they’ll start hearing from neighbors by the start of 2024.

What a steal: The state sold five shipping containers meant for use as a $200 million border wall for about $19,600, KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick reports. Former Gov. Doug Ducey amassed thousands of shipping containers, before a court ruled their placement was illegal and construction was shut down by protestors. A public auction for the available containers started last month, with 30 unique bidders participating in the first round. Two of the 40-foot containers sold for $4,000 each and a set of three was sold for $11,351.

1: The number of days left for you to vote in tomorrow’s City of Tucson and Pima County elections. The Pima County Recorder’s Office put together a list of places where you can drop off your ballot.