A local news podcast for your own town
Name your town or neighbourhood and Lissin makes a spoken briefing from what local outlets publish, daily or weekly. What it covers well, and where it runs thin.
The short answer
Ask Lissin for a recurring show about your area: "every weekday at 7, eight minutes on news from Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts: city council, schools, housing and new restaurants, no national politics". Before each episode it searches what local outlets have published online, writes a spoken briefing and lists its sources. It cannot cover what nobody has reported.
How to set it up
Name the place precisely
Give the town, the state or country, and any neighbourhoods. "Portland" could be Oregon or Maine, and a bare city name invites a guess. Two or three neighbouring towns together often make a fuller episode than one small town alone.
Say which beats matter to you
Local news covers everything from zoning votes to high-school sports. List the subjects you want and the ones to drop: "planning decisions, the school board and transit changes; skip crime reports unless they affect my street".
Pick a rhythm the place can fill
A large city produces enough reporting for a daily show. A small town may publish only a few stories a week, so a weekly show on Friday morning gives a fuller episode than five thin ones.
Add the outlets you trust
If your area has a local paper, a public radio newsroom or a council website you rely on, name it or paste its web address in the request so the research includes it. Each episode lists the sources it used, so you can see where a story came from.
At a glance
- What it reads
- Local news and public pages published online before the episode is made
- Live updates
- None. It is not a traffic, weather or emergency alert service
- Delivery
- Once, daily, weekdays, weekly or every two weeks, at a time you choose
- Length
- 5 to 25 minutes, depending on plan
- Cost
- Free includes 50 minutes of audio a week. Daily delivery needs Plus, $9.99 a month
Hear what comes out
Shows already published on Lissin, free to play in the browser.
Questions
- Does Lissin know where I live?
- Name the place in your request. The show covers the town you write, so you can also follow a place you do not live in, such as a parent's town or a city you are moving to.
- Can it read my local paper if it has a paywall?
- Not the paywalled articles. It works from what is openly published, so a story that appears only behind a paywall can be missed unless another outlet, a press release or a public notice also covers it.
- Will it cover city council and school board meetings?
- When they are reported or the agenda and minutes are posted online, yes. Ask for them by name. It does not follow meetings live. If your council posts recordings on YouTube with English captions, paste the link and the episode can work from the captions.
What this does not do
Each episode is built from local reporting, and many towns have few outlets left, so episodes about small places can be short or lean on regional news. It does not read paywalled articles, follow meetings live or give live traffic, weather or emergency alerts; check those with local services. Names, dates and figures in early reports can be wrong and the episode can repeat them. Creating a show needs an iPhone on iOS 26 or later, and daily delivery needs a paid plan.
Sources
Make your own show, or hear a sample
Make a show from your topic or documents in the Lissin iPhone app (iOS 26 or later). Or listen to public shows in the web player without installing the app.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026 by Lissin Editorial.