Split the coverage into three layers
- Only you. Council meetings, local people, investigations, the story behind the story. This is why the site exists. Protect the time for it.
- Routine but local. Weather and road warnings, school and transport notices, local sports results, business openings, cultural listings, health and environment updates for your area. Predictable shape, changing facts.
- Context from outside. National and international developments that touch your readers, explained for your town.
The second and third layers are where a standing brief does the heavy lifting.
Write the brief once
A useful local brief names the country, the specific cities or districts, the language, the topics in the second and third layers, the length that fits your page and the number of items per day you can realistically review. Five items a day is a lot for a small team; two reviewed items beat five unread ones.
A realistic day
Morning: review overnight drafts, publish the two or three that matter, reject the rest. Midday: one original story. Afternoon: updates and corrections. The routine layer keeps the site alive while the original story gets the attention it needs.
Where local sites go wrong
- Publishing routine material without a local angle. Add the street, the school, the person.
- Copying national wires word for word. Readers notice, and so do search engines.
- Letting the routine layer crowd out original reporting. The brief serves the newsroom, not the other way around.
How this works in Doxx
A Stream is exactly that standing brief: country, optional cities, language, topics, length and pace. Doxx delivers drafts with sources & checks and image suggestions to the archive, a private RSS feed or the API. A small newsroom starts with the archive, reviews in the morning and publishes what fits. The Free plan is enough to run one Stream for a week and see whether the pace holds.
Set up a brief for your town and see what a week of routine coverage looks like.