About

Since 2005, more than 2,000 communities across America have lost their local newspaper. New Carlisle was one of them.

When a local paper disappears, what gets lost isn’t just the headlines. It’s the everyday information that quietly keeps a community informed: what the town council voted on, where public money was spent, which facilities were cited for violations, whether the water passed inspection. Those records don’t stop existing when a newspaper closes. They’re still public. They’re just buried in databases, reports, and filings that most people don’t have the time—or even know where—to look.

We’re Adam Sahli and Joseph Abboud, and that’s the problem that brought us together.

Adam comes from a finance background with a long-standing passion for software, technology, and data. Joseph comes from a legal background with a deep appreciation for media, journalism, and public accountability. Although we took different paths professionally, we arrived at the same conclusion: communities need better access to information that already belongs to them.

We’re not a traditional newsroom. We approached this challenge from different angles, but we both kept coming back to the same question: why is so much important public information technically available, yet practically inaccessible?

The facts are there. They sit in government databases, public filings, meeting records, and financial reports. Anyone can access them in theory, but in practice it takes hours of searching, reading, and cross-checking. That used to be someone’s full-time job. In many communities today, it isn’t anybody’s.

So we built The Lantern.

Every day, our software reviews public records, identifies meaningful changes, and turns them into clear, easy-to-read stories. Before anything is published, every figure in it is checked directly against the original source documents. If a number, a date or a citation cannot be found in the record, that draft is withheld: the story then runs in a plainer form assembled straight from the filing, and it says on its face that is what happened. Every article includes the records it was based on, so readers can examine the source material for themselves.

Our goal is simple: make local information easier to access, easier to verify, and easier to trust.

The Lantern is free, and we intend to keep it that way.

Not free as a promotion. Not free until we find a subscription model. Free because staying informed about your own community shouldn’t depend on what you can afford to pay. The technology behind The Lantern allows us to operate efficiently, making that commitment sustainable.

We also believe transparency matters.

There is no traditional newsroom behind these stories. No person edits an article before it publishes — not some of them, none of them. The Lantern is built and operated by the two of us, supported by systems designed to verify information against official records. Every article is clearly labelled so readers understand how it was created and what level of checking it received. We’d rather explain exactly how the process works than leave people guessing.

We also recognize that there are limits to what we can cover.

Some public information is difficult to access, unavailable in a machine-readable format, or not published consistently. Community life extends far beyond public records. Local events, personal stories, opinions, and many of the things that give a place its character still depend on human reporting and community participation. As The Lantern grows, we hope to expand what we can cover while remaining transparent about what we cannot.

This is just the beginning.

Our vision is to help communities stay informed by making public information more accessible, understandable, and accountable. We believe every community deserves reliable local coverage, regardless of its size or resources.

And if you find something we’ve missed, misunderstood, or gotten wrong, please tell us. We publish corrections openly and update stories when new information becomes available. We’d much rather hear from you than never know about the mistake at all.

After all, local news works best when it serves—and listens to—the community.