by Marilyn Weissman
Arizona Agenda Is a Great Resource for Statewide Politics and News
I’m a subscriber and daily reader of the Arizona Agenda ( https://arizonaagenda.substack.com). This publication is part of the Substack Universe. If you’re not familiar with Substack (https://substack.com/), it’s a website where independent writers and podcasters can publish and speak directly to their audience and get paid through their subscriptions. Substack takes a small cut to be their host. They also, in some cases, subsidize them for a year as they did the Arizona Agenda. As the media landscape in the country has changed, this economic model has enabled unique voices to find their audience and try to make a living outside of mainstream media.
The Arizona Agenda was started in August, 2021 by two Phoenix political journalists, Rachel Leingang and Hank Stephenson. They were seeking freedom from corporate journalism to write about the Arizona political scene without being worried about offending advertisers and their out of state corporate overlords. They recently launched a Tucson Agenda (https://tucsonagenda.substack.com/) in June that already has over 1000 subscribers. The Arizona Agenda currently has 9000 Subscribers.
Here in Flagstaff we are facing our own media armageddon with the recent changes in cost and publication of our local newspaper into a primarily online advertising rag with AP stories. Local and state news is now rarely reported. I, myself, don’t subscribe to the Arizona Republic and was thrilled to find that the Arizona Agenda and the state political news I craved could show up in my email box every weekday morning for less than my subscription to the Arizona Daily Sun.
Some recent stories covered by the Arizona Agenda include the battle between School Superintendent Tom Horne and Attorney General Kris Mayes over Arizona’s “ English-only” education law, alerts and links to National articles about Katie Hobbs’ efforts to shut down the Saudis use of scarce Arizona groundwater to grow alfalfa for their cows in the Middle East, and updates on the repercussions of frivolous lawsuits about the 2022 election filed by Kari Lake and Mark Finchem. By subscribing you can stay up to date on all the Arizona political news that our newspapers fail to report.
You can sign up to get the newsletter for free but, if you can afford it, I recommend getting a paid subscription to support their work. Currently their subscription rates are $120/year but until August 31, they have set up a special rate for us. You can use this link (https://arizonaagenda.substack.com/coconinodems) to sign up for $90/year or $9/month. If we get over 15 subscribers from the CCDems we could have an even cheaper group rate. Who knows, maybe if enough of us subscribe from here we can get them to start a Flagstaff Agenda!
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