The Winchendon Courier is published by Winchendon Media Co. and built on FAHM, software we developed here in Winchendon, Massachusetts, for local businesses and community organizations. This page says plainly how the paper is made: where computers do the legwork, and where a person decides.
We go to the meetings — all of them
Town boards, school committees and other public meetings are recorded. Our system collects each public recording and turns the speech into a written transcript. A story from a meeting links to its recording, so you can hear exactly what was said, at the moment it was said.
AI helps write; a person decides what runs
The first draft of a meeting story is written with the help of AI models that run on our own computers. The recordings stay on our systems.
Then the draft is fact-checked. A second AI model — Claude, made by Anthropic, an online service — reads the draft and its video script side by side with the transcript of the meeting (the town's own captions, when the town makes them), and flags any name, number, date, vote or quote that does not match what was said, and anything important the story left out. It corrects what it can — a wrong figure, a misheard name, a vote credited to the wrong person — in a new version an editor can see and undo, and never changes the words inside quotation marks: a quote it cannot match to the recording is taken off the story instead. Then it checks the corrected story again. For that check, the draft and the meeting's transcript are sent to Anthropic; the recordings are not. A story that would post on its own waits for an editor when a serious problem is left, and a video brief is only made from a script that passed.
An editor reads the draft and the fact-check, checks it against the recording, corrects it and approves it before it runs. Some other features use online services too: the translations, and the voice that reads stories and video briefs aloud.
Some short briefs from meetings in neighboring towns are posted on their own, without an editor's review first. Each one says so at the top and links the original recording, so you can check it yourself. Every story tells you how it was made.
A story marked as a preview is written from a board's posted agenda, before the meeting. It says what is on the table, not what was decided; the story of the meeting itself follows once the recording is up.
Community editors
People who live in a town know its names and places best. A reader can ask to be a community editor for one town, and our editors approve each one. A community editor can fix a name, a number, a date or a typo in that town's stories. They cannot change a headline, they cannot change the words inside quotation marks, and they cannot add or take away a paragraph. A fix shows on the story as "Corrected by" the editor's name, and our editors can undo it.
Checked by three
What a community editor adds is checked by the town's other community editors, never by the person who added it alone. Three different community editors must agree before a speaker's name is attached to a voice or a person's name is put on a picture, and any one of them saying "not them" sends it to our editors to decide. A fix to a story is marked verified when two other community editors agree with it, and a single "disagree" sends it to our editors. Each person has one vote on each item, nobody votes on their own work, and if a community editor is removed, their votes stop counting.
Who is speaking
Our system learns the voices at a town's meetings over several meetings. A name is attached to a voice only when one of our editors confirms it by ear, when three community editors agree as described above, or when what was said and the sound of the voice both point to the same person. When those disagree, the voice stays unnamed until a person decides.
Names in pictures
Pictures of public meetings are stills from the meeting's own recording. Any signed-in reader can suggest who is in a picture. A suggestion is never published on its own: it waits until three community editors of that town agree, or until one of our editors confirms it. Then the name goes into the caption.
Quotes
We never turn a paraphrase into a quote. When a story puts words in quotation marks, they are the words the person said on the recording. If the recording is unclear, we do not quote it.
Errors can still happen inadvertently — a word misheard, a name attached to the wrong voice. When they do, tell us at editor@thewinchendoncourier.com or with the "Report an error" button on the story, and we will correct it and note the correction on the story. See winchendoncourier.com/es/corrections.
Stories from readers
A signed-in reader can send us a story or a letter, with up to four photos. Our editors read it, may ask the writer a question, and edit it before it runs. If it runs, it carries the writer's name as a community contributor. Readers can also write to our editors with a tip or a question, and the conversation stays on their own page.
Listening, and other languages
The "Listen" button reads a story aloud in a computer-generated voice. The Spanish, Portuguese and French editions are machine-translated from the English, and each one says so; the English story is the one of record.
How the paper is paid for
The paper is free to read. Readers who want to keep it going can support it on our Support page: every month, three months or a year up front, or once, at whatever amount they choose. Payments go straight to the paper's own account, and supporters can change or cancel on their own at any time, without writing to us.
Local businesses advertise to the readers of their own town. Advertising is always marked: an ad says "Advertisement", and a sponsor of a regular feature is named as "Presented by" or "Brought to you by". There are no ads on stories about a death, a fire or a crime. Advertisers and supporters have no say in what we cover or what we write.
Where the rest comes from
- Weather: the National Weather Service.
- Road and traffic alerts: the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT).
- The paper's printed past: our own archive of printed editions, and the scans of the old paper kept by the Beals Memorial Library, which we link to and never copy.
- School lunch menus and calendars: the schools' own published menus and calendars, linked.
Questions
Write to editor@thewinchendoncourier.com.
Last updated October 31, 2026