AVIA AREE combines heartfelt, place-centered journalism with AI-assisted workflows to make work possible that once required an entire newsroom.
Every story still begins with human curiosity. LaRee walks the neighborhoods, visits the businesses, photographs the places, conducts the interviews, notices the details and decides what deserves to be remembered. That firsthand reporting gives the publication its heart and point of view.
AI helps build the infrastructure around that work: organizing research, working through interviews, connecting historical context, monitoring developing stories, identifying gaps that require verification, managing publishing workflows, maintaining the daily edition and adapting reporting for the website, newsletter, archive and social platforms.
It allows one independent editor to work with greater consistency, depth and reach—but it does not replace reporting, relationships, judgment or accountability. Sources must still be verified. People must be represented fairly. Partnerships must be disclosed. Final editorial decisions remain human and remain LaRee’s.
These workflows are helping build what would not previously have been possible alone: a living digital magazine with the structure to become a lasting independent publication. The goal is to grow AVIA AREE into LaRee’s full-time work and eventually bring it into print, creating a physical record of Kansas City’s people, places, businesses, histories and everyday details.
AI supports the newsroom. Human experience leads the story.
