I live in Campbell River, on Vancouver Island. My adult children live in other cities — far enough away that their local news never reaches me, close enough that I want to know it.
I wanted to know what was actually going on in their towns. Not in a vague way — the council decision, the fire, the highway closure, the thing they'd mention on the phone that I'd have no context for.
Trying to do that meant a different news site for every town, every day. Each one wanted me to accept cookies, watch a video I hadn't asked for, and then stay for another eleven stories engineered to keep me there. I'd go looking for one place and come out twenty minutes later having read about nothing in particular, still not knowing whether the fire was anywhere near them.
So I built the thing I wanted. One brief, once a day, about the places I care about. It ends. There is no feed underneath it.
It uses AI, and I'd rather say that plainly than have you find it further down. Claude searches the web each morning and writes a short brief for your city.
But it isn't generating fake photographs, or a synthetic presenter, or inventing detail to fill a page. It reads what actual reporters published today, tells you in a few lines what happened, and links you straight to their article. If something matters to you, you go and read the real thing. That's the whole design, and it's why every item carries its source — including the awkward cases where the link isn't as good as we'd like, which are marked rather than hidden.
Most technology I use is built to keep me on it longer. I wanted something that tells me what I need and is then finished.
Me. Mark Myles, in Campbell River, British Columbia. Kin Wire is operated by Onyx Custom Motorcycles Inc., a real Canadian company that I own and that has been around longer than this project has.
It is one person, not a team, and I think you should know that before you decide whether to rely on it. Email hello@kinwire.ca and I'm the one who reads it.
A fair question, and the honest answer has numbers in it rather than promises.
Kin Wire is paid for by subscriptions — $3 or $8 a month — and by nothing else. No advertising, no selling anything about you, no investor who needs this to become something other than what it is. That means it survives if enough people find it worth $3, and it doesn't if they don't. I'd rather tell you that than imply a permanence I can't promise.
What I can tell you is that the incentives are the right way round. Nothing here makes more money if you spend longer on it, so nothing here is designed to keep you. The brief ends because a brief that ends is the product.
Tell me. There's a feedback link under every brief, and replies to the weekly email come straight to me. Every report so far has turned into a fix — a stale source being presented as news, items arriving without a link, an email that said the wrong thing while it was still loading. That's the useful kind of message and I'd rather have it than a compliment.
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