The Sunday Agenda: Full steam ahead
The primary election is over. Let's talk about November.
The primary election is almost in the rearview mirror and while we sure could use a break, there’s no slowing down when it comes to covering November’s high stakes General Election.
Leading up to the primary, we published dozens of stories about the races, candidates and issues, and brought in new voices to weigh in on important topics.
We’re looking to do all that and more leading up to November, but we want your help guiding our coverage. If you haven’t already, please take a minute (seriously, it’s only five questions) to take our short survey.
This is a community-based newsroom, and we want the community’s input when it comes to the topics and races where we invest our time and resources.
Subscribers like you are the reason we can do this work, so exercise your right to be heard and tell us what you want to see from our coverage.
We’ve got some great stories lined up for next week. While you’re waiting for those, let’s take a look back at our coverage from last week.
Monday: “Older voters lead the way.” Older voters seem to understand better than anyone else the importance of each vote in local elections. When we looked at which age groups had returned the most early ballots leading up to the primary elections, we found two-thirds of those ballots came from voters over the age of 65, while just 6% came from voters under 35.
Tuesday: “First-time voters weigh in on elections.” Young voters will play a big role in November’s election, with local, state and national groups working hard to mobilize the youth vote. Our contributor, Angelina, spoke with a few dozen incoming University of Arizona freshman about becoming first-time voters, the issues that matter and how they’re getting involved in the political scene.
Wednesday: “Big names head toward big wins in primary election.” In our election day rundown (written at about 11 p.m. Tuesday), we laid out the results of the biggest local races. That included Pima County attorney, sheriff, supervisors, Tucson-area legislative seats, and a surprise upset in one of the down-ballot races.
Thursday: “Leveling the Olympic playing field.” More than a dozen athletes with Tucson ties are competing in the Paris Games, many of whom are household names. But three lesser known names are connected to a local nonprofit that boasts a growing list of Olympians, all while working it to promote pay equity in sports and give female professional athletes a leg up.
Friday: “Elections pay the price for dwindling Spanish-language news.” With fewer Spanish-language publications, Hispanic voters struggle to find accurate information, especially about politics and elections. Susan spoke with a trio of experts about the impact of the shortage of reliable news sources, efforts to improve the media landscape and ways that other groups are working to keep Spanish-speaking voters informed. You can read the story in Spanish here.
We just wrapped up our birthday month and want to take a moment to look back at our favorite moments of our jam-packed first year.
Curt’s favorite moments
What sticks out in my mind more than anything else are the thrilling days after we announced we were going to launch the Tucson Agenda back in June 2023.
Caitlin and I bet that enough Tucsonans were interested in local news to sustain a new outlet. Day after day I watched people step up and put down their money for paid subscriptions.
It reminded me of an old saying I heard from the actor Anthony Hopkins: “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.” We took a bold step when we launched the Agenda and mighty forces (that’s you, our readers) came to our aid.
Then, when we hit our one-year mark last month and hundreds of annual subscriptions came up for renewal, nearly 90% of you stuck with us. It just doesn’t get any better than that.
Another moment that jumps out at me when I look back on the year was when we put together the election wiki.
The wiki didn’t come out exactly as I hoped (we’re already planning how to do it better for the general election), but it did show me that an idea I’d been mulling for months—building an archive of local news—could actually be useful.
It’s frustratingly difficult to track the backstories of candidates and big issues, so in the spirit of 90’s infomercials, I said to myself “There’s gotta be a better way!”
When we built our wiki, I gathered all our daily Other News sections, along with our own coverage, and organized them by elected office, like sheriff, or big issue, like the border ballot measure.
When you can see months of coverage all strung together, it’s much easier to answer two key questions: What do these officials do anyway? Why should I care about voting for those offices?
It’ll take a lot of work to really make the archive shine, but I’m itching to see it come to fruition.
We’ve come a long way, but we want to get even better. To do that, we need enough money to pay more reporters.
Caitlin’s favorite moments
It always feels good to break a big story, so I’m especially proud that we were the first to report that former University of Arizona Chief Financial Officer Lisa Rulney had not resigned as President Robert C. Robbins had previously implied.
Our reporting on Rulney’s new position (created especially for her) and previous salary got a lot of attention, especially from the UA community, and our follow-up reaction piece generated even more buzz.
When we launched the Tucson Agenda, one of the things we sought to avoid was pack reporting and covering the same story as everyone else in town, since we can include that coverage in our “other news” section.
But the situation at the UA and reaction to our coverage reminded us that when the story is big enough, sometimes an “all hands on deck” mentality is required in order to discover the truth.
So we started digging into the UA financial crisis, requesting records and asking questions that no one else was asking, with this situation highlighting the importance of strong local news coverage.
My other favorite moment is the first time I met someone who told me they’re a regular reader of the Tucson Agenda before they knew that I’m part of the Tucson Agenda.
That actually happens fairly regularly now, but it feels just as good every time. Knowing that we’re a trusted source of information that people recommend to others is a dream come true, and I couldn’t be happier that the word is getting around.
One of my goals in launching the Agenda was to build a community-based newsroom that allowed me to have a relationship with our audience and I love that we’ve been able to do that.
I love having conversations with readers, so if you see me at one of our book club meetings or another event, come say ‘hi” and introduce yourself.
We couldn’t do any of this without our subscribers. Thank you for being part of this journey.
Speaking of book club, the next meeting of our solutions focused community book club is Wednesday, November 6. Battle those post-election blues with a rousing discussion about The Stonewall Reader, a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles about the 1969 Stonewall uprising. The Stonewall uprising is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States.
Our book club aims to bring together community members from all walks of life to bond over our shared desire to make the community better for all and be inspired by a shared reading experience.
The event will kick off with a pre-discussion panel of experts and refreshments will be served. Please RSVP in advance.
