Always good to hear from you

Agenda readers are the smartest people in the world.

We asked and you answered.

Tucson Agenda readers gave us a wealth of stuff to chew on as we wrap up the year.

We sent out a survey before Thanksgiving asking how you were doing with Trump 2.0, what you thought we should focus on next year and how we could help you engage with civic life (without getting overwhelmed).

Nearly 100 readers responded and, as always, we learned a ton from you.

We put it all together below so you can see what your fellow readers are thinking about.

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Making the grade

First off, it’s fair to say most of you aren’t exactly thrilled with President Donald Trump.

This comment pretty much sums up what we heard from most readers:

“His actions are terrifyingly close to destroying our system of government. You’ve got to be kidding me -- worse than I could ever imagine, and I imagined pretty dire things.”

But others took some solace in how civil society is organizing in response to some of Trump’s worst policies.

“Depressed at times but energized by the reaction of the public.”

Overall, the Agenda got better reviews than Trump, which admittedly isn’t the highest bar to clear.

Nearly two-thirds of you gave us an “A” grade and another 29% gave us a “B.” But we did have a few “C” grades in there and one “D.”

The way we read that is we’re generally doing a good job, but there’s still some room for improvement.

We’re regular people, just like you, so we always appreciate nice comments like these:

“The Agenda is my go-to source for Tucson news. Keep up the great work.”

“So much is kept secret. So much is written to favor the advertisers. You don’t give a damn and provide some of the most informative reporting.”

Other readers offered criticism we need to hear, like this comment:

“Frankly, I’d like a more serious tone. I realize it’s Substack but at times the newsletter sounds more like a social media post than a group that wants to be taken as serious journalists.”

That’s fair. We try to keep it lively and engaging, but sometimes we overshoot. Still, some readers really appreciate our attempts at humor.

“I opted not to do the survey, until I read your newsletter this morning and saw that one of the respondents wanted a more serious tone. Absolutely not! I enjoy the sense of humor‚ the levity. When everything else in the news is sad, angry, diabolical and upsetting, a bit of humor is a relief.”

As for how your elected officials are doing, many of you said Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes was doing a good job. Tucson Mayor Regina Romero also got quite a few kudos.

We were pleasantly surprised to see some of the lesser-known officials get a nod or two from readers, like County Administrator Jan Lesher and Dora Maldonado, who was a “fantastic public servant” at the Ward 6 office.

Looking ahead

What would you like us to cover more (or less) next year?

That question got a wide range of responses. Overall, the message was that we’re in the correct lane and we should keep doing what we’re doing.

But you would like us to cover housing and environment more than we do now.

“The new state law will mean changes to local housing development, would love to see deep coverage of how that plays out!”

And K-12 education was right up there among the top priorities, along with water (both of which we cover in detail in the Education Agenda and the Water Agenda, but much less in the Tucson Agenda).

One thing we didn’t expect was how many people mentioned arts and culture, like exhibits at the Tucson Museum of Art.

We checked out the museum’s website and they do a good job highlighting those exhibits with colorful photos like this one:

Theodore Beatty, Checking the Crop, 2024.

That could be a fun starting point for keeping you up to date on Tucson’s art world, without letting it get in the way of politics and government coverage, of course.

Project Blue was one of the biggest stories in Tucson this year and we wrote about it dozens of times.

For some of you, that was a home run:

“You did a fantastic job covering Project Blue. Please keep finding those Gordian knot stories that subscribers don’t have the time to unravel themselves.”

But for others, it was just too much:

“Enough with all the project blue and other issues over and over again. More with local elections, school board issues, what’s going on at the sheriff’s office, property taxes, crime stats, other local issues.”

The interest in Project Blue dovetailed with a larger issue: covering local business.

Quite a few readers asked for more coverage of “non-local investors” and how local businesses are “finding/recruiting workers,” along with a critique we often hear from conservative readers:

“Tucson leadership seems to be proud of poverty. Their aspirations seem to stop at homeless housing. They’d prefer a new tamale shop to a growing business.”

We’ve got our eye on the state Legislature and it sounds like a lot of readers do, too.

“I would like to see the Agenda cover more state-level campaign details and data. I’m having a hard time getting a feel for whether any of the state legislative seats could actually flip, or if I need to prepare myself for the possibility of a GOP trifecta.”

As for what type of reporting you’d like to see, it is less about the topic of that reporting, and more about putting the sound bites into context.

The top choice for Agenda readers was explainers, with 57% of you choosing that one, followed close behind by public meeting coverage. Which is great, because that’s what we like to cover!

Want more of that coverage? All you have to do click this button!

You clearly don’t want us to do live coverage and there was just a small amount of interest in having direct access to us.

Finally, we asked how we could help you get more involved in civic life.

This was a hard one, as many of you told us you’re already pretty involved, and in some cases readers are just struggling to get by.

“I’m not uninformed so much as overloaded. Anything that makes the next step feel obvious and low effort makes it more likely I’ll follow through.”

You all gave us a lot of helpful suggestions:

“What about a bullet point list once a week of meetings/protests/presentations with links to registrations.”

“Write about opportunities to serve on commissions. Write about people who are organizing. Perhaps a short section, repeated often, with opportunities for volunteerism.”

“Run announcements for organizations seeking help. Example: My expertise of policy research and writing, but where do I go to connect with interested groups? We need a local clearing house. NextDoor and/or LinkedIn aren’t it.”

And for the person who said “Take 20 years off my age,” we hear you.

We’ll give all of these serious consideration, so don’t be surprised if you start seeing some of them pop up in our newsletters next year.

Thanks again to everybody who took the time to fill out the survey!