✨✨ In The Media

NaCCRA (the National Association of Continuing Care Retirement Community Residents) is excited to announce the launch of a new daily news-monitoring project designed specifically for residents of Life Plan Communities and Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs). This initiative brings fresh, relevant news coverage directly to the NaCCRA.com online forum every morning — keeping members informed about the issues that shape their communities and their lives.

How It Works

Each day at 8:00 AM Eastern time, the project automatically scans a wide range of news sources for articles related to Life Plan Communities, CCRCs, and the broader world of senior living. The system then identifies the most relevant and interesting pieces — up to three qualifying articles per day — and drafts concise teasers to accompany each link. When additional noteworthy stories are found beyond the top three, their topics are listed so members can explore further on their own.

The teasers are written to be informative and accessible. Each one summarizes the article in 200 words or less, provides the full link to the original source, and is formatted for easy reading in the NaCCRA.com forum. The goal is to give members a quick, reliable snapshot of the news landscape without requiring them to sift through countless publications on their own.

The Role of Perplexity

This is where Perplexity comes in. Rather than relying on manual searches or traditional news alerts, NaCCRA tasked Perplexity's AI agent with two core responsibilities: finding the articles and writing the teasers.

On the research side, Perplexity was given a detailed brief describing the topics that matter most to NaCCRA members — governance, finance, resident rights, health and wellness, regulatory developments, and trends in senior living. Using its web search capabilities, Perplexity combs through news outlets each morning, evaluates candidates for relevance and quality, and surfaces the stories most likely to be of interest to the community. This automated search runs on a set schedule, meaning the work happens consistently and reliably, day after day, without requiring someone to sit down and do it by hand.

On the writing side, Perplexity was instructed to draft teasers that are clear, accurate, and genuinely useful. For each selected article, it reads the source, distills the key points, and produces a short summary that captures what the article says and why it matters to residents of Life Plan Communities. The teasers include direct links so members can click through and read the full stories at their leisure.

What Members Can Expect

Members who visit the NaCCRA.com forum will find a new post each morning featuring that day's curated articles along with their teasers. The selections will cover a range of topics — from policy changes and financial trends to health research and human-interest stories — all filtered through the lens of what matters to people living in or considering Life Plan Communities.

This project is a pilot, and we welcome feedback. If there are topics you would like to see covered more often, or sources you find particularly valuable, please let us know. Our goal is to make the NaCCRA forum a daily destination for news that matters to you.

This sounds like an informative new service. If the rollout is successful would it be possible to email a link each day to members rather than having us log in to see what was posted? Maybe an opt in for those who want a daily feed? I’m concerned I will miss something important.
David Lemire

Do you have a paid account with Perplexity? The free is quite limited.

Linda Kilcrease

Resident of a CCRC

Yes, I have a pro account. It is well suited to this type of project and also for more scholarly research. For most of my writing tasks, I use ChatGPT, where I have established a rich context of NaCCRA-related content. It is like having a research assistant and personal copy editor.

Richmond Shreve

NaCCRA Board Member & VP

Forum Moderator

These tools are very interesting and growing in features all the time.

Lots of chatter out there about adding safeguards to prevent hallucinations in a generated news digest and such.

Google has something similar where I'm learning about news digests. Perplexity is a very good little guy and has its challenges from the big companies. But I see that Jeff Bezos is a big backer.

Linda Kilcrease

Resident of a CCRC

It's easy to get bad results if you over-rely upon it. In the automated system I have initiated here, it summarizes a document and provides it via a link. So, in time, we will see how good those summaries are. You will notice that it has been prompted to present the article from a resident perspective.

In my other work, I have learned to discourage it from flattery and to demand that it give critical assessments of the work. Like a good debater, AI can argue for or against most anything. It can be very helpful in identifying one's own implicit biases.

Richmond Shreve

NaCCRA Board Member & VP

Forum Moderator

Hi Richmond,

One or more people has asked if we can receive a daily email with a link to the Daily News Monitoring Project. I also would like that. It seems that one message had instructions for how to register for that but when I logged in and went to the section on forums, I did not see a way to request the daily emails.

Please explain how we can arrange to receive a link every day.

Thank you,

Patrice Goodkind

This morning's automated run failed and I have done some troubleshooting with Perplexity. "We" think we have it fixed. The three new posts are what shoulld have appeared at 8AM this morning.

Perplexity will look for primary news like the Ziegler reports first, if it finds less than three, it will post human interest stories about seniors doing good works for neighbors and community.

If you have a newsworthy article from your local media or community newsletter, don't hesitate to share a link to it. Please write your own "teaser" telling why it's of interest to NaCCRA members.

Richmond Shreve

NaCCRA Board Member & VP

Forum Moderator