The news is exhausting. The same story gets told a few different ways depending on who’s telling it, and keeping up means reading all of them and doing the math yourself. Most days nobody has time for that. The Local Loop is the fix I wanted and couldn’t find: read one clear overview, see who covered it and how they lean, and get on with your day.

The Local Loop is written and edited by Rob Nickels. It isn’t a newsroom — just one person who got tired of reading the same story a few times over to figure out what actually happened, and decided to build the thing he wanted to read. Opinions stay off the news pages. Where there is a take, it’s labeled as one and kept walled off from the overview. If the site ever picks a side without telling you, I’ve missed the one job I set out to do.

For how the site actually works — where stories come from, how the coverage spread is built, and how to flag a correction — see the About page.