From thousands of assignments to four new sites, eight peer exchanges, and one national Summit, we collected impactful highlights from across our Documenters Network.

By Navjot Heer

Our Documenters Network had an impactful 2025! We accomplished a lot together–from orientations to special assignments and peer exchanges to a national Summit. Dig in to our highlights!

In 2025:

  • 3,253 public meeting assignments were published across the Documenters Network, including notes, live tweets, audio, and special assignments. That brings our all-time total to over 12,000 completed assignments!

  • The most covered agencies were City Councils, Police Boards, and Education Boards.

  • $369,000+ was paid out to Documenters in 2025, helping us hit a major $1 million milestone since the program’s launch!

  • 1,779 new accounts were created on Documenters.org, bringing our Documenters community total to surpass 5,600 members.

  • 422 training workshops were hosted on topics like fact-checking, live-tweeting, and recording audio at public meetings, equipping over 2,500 Documenters from across the U.S. with new skills.

  • We welcomed four new sites to our Network this year: Columbia Gorge, Tulsa, Kansas City, and Columbus.

  • We piloted peer exchanges to strengthen cross-site learning and subgranted $40,000 to support 12 sites to participate in 8 visits to Documenters Network peers across the U.S.

We gathered in Chicago over two days for our 2025 Documenters Network Summit: 70 people, 20+ sites, 18 sessions. Our last nation-wide convening was in 2023, and since then the number of our Network sites has doubled in size!

And this list doesn’t even include the various sites’ news products, reporting & stories, new roles for Docs, special assignments, and other experiments!

None of this impact would have been possible without the Documenters, site leaders, and partners who show up every day to make local government more accessible and accountable. As we kick off 2026, we can’t wait to keep building with our community and expanding what’s possible for the Documenters Network!

20+ sites gathered for our 2025 Documenters Summit in Chicago. (Photo: Ariana Padilla/City Bureau)

Interested in bringing Documenters to your community, supporting our work, or exploring partnership opportunities? Reach out to network@citybureau.org!