Glossary
Government meetings come with their own vocabulary. This glossary explains how JournoHelper uses these terms in the app and in alerts.
- Jurisdiction
- The geographic or administrative area a government body belongs to — a county, city, school district, or special district. Jurisdictions group organizations in Sources and Alert Subscriptions.
- Organization (body / source)
- A specific government entity you follow: city council, county commission, school board, planning commission, etc. Following an organization is what triggers document monitoring and alerts.
- Agenda
- The published list of topics for an upcoming meeting — often posted days before the session. May be a simple one-page list or a link to a fuller packet.
- Agenda packet
- The supporting materials for a meeting: staff reports, resolutions, contracts, and backup documents bundled with the agenda. Often the longest file and the most useful for pre-meeting reporting.
- Minutes
- The official record of what happened in a meeting — votes, motions, and sometimes summarized discussion. Usually published days or weeks after the session.
- Meeting notice
- A public notice that a meeting will occur, with date, time, and location. May arrive before the agenda. In alerts, labeled distinctly from agenda and minutes.
- Voting record
- A document listing how each member voted on items. Common in legislatures and some councils; useful for accountability stories.
- Transcript
- A text record of spoken proceedings, sometimes with timestamps. When available, JournoHelper links analysis timestamps to the transcript file.
- Press release
- An official announcement from a government agency — new program, appointment, event, or statement. Ingested from feeds or added manually on the Documents page.
- Dateline
- The city and date line at the top of a press release (e.g. "NASHVILLE, Tenn. — June 12, 2026"). JournoHelper uses it to set the release publication date when parsing feeds.
- AI credit
- One unit of AI usage. Each document analysis or press-release draft costs one credit. Alerts, following sources, and browsing documents are free.
- Instant alert
- A notification sent soon after a new document is ingested. Busy days may batch multiple files into one message.
- Digest
- A rolled-up notification — daily or weekly — summarizing all new documents since the last digest. Good for bodies you want to monitor without constant pings.
- Scrape / ingest
- How JournoHelper pulls public documents from agency websites on a schedule. Each organization uses a strategy matched to its platform (Granicus, CivicPlus, custom HTML, etc.).