Glossary: News Tracking Terms (2025 Edition)

A practical, no-jargon reference for PR, comms, and IR teams. Use this to align briefs, dashboards, and reports across stakeholders. (Lightly opinionated for Wizikey news tracking and Wizikey media monitoring workflows.)

A

Alert Latency
Time from a story’s publish time to when your team receives an alert. Lower = better for crisis work.

AI Summary
Machine-generated brief of a story or cluster (what happened, why it matters, action). Edit before sharing.

Audit Trail
Record of who created/edited queries, dashboards, and exports—useful for governance and compliance.

B

Boolean Search
Logic operators to refine tracking:

• AND (must include), OR (either), NOT (exclude)
  
• Quotes for exact phrases; parentheses to group terms
  Example: (“Wizikey” OR “Wizi Key”) AND (“news tracking” OR “media monitoring”) NOT “jobs”
  

Broadcast Monitoring
Tracking TV/radio transcripts (and, if licensed, clips). Crucial for reputation and regulated sectors.

Byline
Article authored by your spokesperson/executive; higher prominence than a simple quote.

C

Category Tracking
Monitoring broader themes (e.g., “AI in PR,” “fintech regulation”) to spot narrative shifts and opportunities.

Clip / Clipping
The captured article (or segment) for reporting. In automated systems, used less than “story” or “mention.”

Coverage
All relevant stories for a brief/period across channels (news, print, broadcast, podcasts, social).

Crisis Alert
A stricter alert profile for high-risk concepts (e.g., exec name + negative keyword + tier-1 outlet).

D

Deduplication (De-dupe)
Collapsing near-identical stories (syndication/wire pickups) into one canonical story to avoid double-counting.

Dashboard (Role-Based)
A saved view tailored to an audience (CXO / Region / Product / IR) so each group sees what matters to them.

E

E-Paper / E-Edition
Digital version of a print newspaper. Often needs licensed access for full text.

Earned Media
Unpaid editorial coverage (news, features, interviews). Core target of news tracking.

F

First Mention
Earliest credible story that triggers downstream pickups. Useful for issue tracing and journalist follow-ups.

Full-Media View
News + print + broadcast + podcasts + social in one place (what Wizikey media monitoring aims to unify).

G

Geo-Filtering
Limiting tracking to countries/regions/languages to reduce noise and reflect market priorities.

H

Headline Mention
Your brand/executive appears in the headline or first paragraph. Usually scored as highest prominence.

I

Impact Score (Custom)
A composite score combining outlet tier, prominence, sentiment, and potential reach. Define once; reuse.

Investor Relations (IR) Signals
Coverage that may be price-sensitive or triggers disclosure workflows (see MPM).

J

Journalist Mapping
Charting reporters who repeatedly cover your topics; supports pitching and relationship building.

K

Keyword Set
Approved list of brand terms, exec names, products, competitors, and category phrases used in queries.

L

Licensed Content
Paywalled/print archives accessed via license. Needed for many newspapers and magazines.

LODR
Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (SEBI). Relevant for India-listed companies.

Lookback Window
Time range a dashboard/alert evaluates (e.g., last 7/30/90 days).

M

Material Price Movement (MPM) Alert
A news-driven signal aligned to SEBI expectations for timely attention to potentially price-sensitive coverage.

Mention
An occurrence of your entity in a story. Distinguish headline, lead, and body mentions.

Media Monitoring
Umbrella term covering news tracking plus social, forums/reviews, and podcasts for total brand intelligence.

Metadata (Story)
Publish time, outlet, author, section, region, language, and URL—fuel for filtering and analytics.

N

Negative Keyword
Term you exclude to cut noise (e.g., NOT “jobs” NOT “coupon”). Review weekly.

News Tracking
Editorial-first monitoring across online news, print/e-paper, and broadcast—often with podcasts. Built for speed + accuracy (alerts, AI briefs, exec notes).

Noise Suppression
Filters (outlet tier, prominence, language) and de-dupe to keep dashboards readable.

O

Outlet Tiering
Quality buckets for outlets (Tier-1/2/3). Affects weighting in SOV/impact.

Owned Media
Your channels (blog, newsroom). Keep separate from earned in reporting.

P

Paywalled Source
Outlet requiring a subscription; often needs licenses to ingest full text.

Pick-Up / Syndication
Republished versions of a story (wire → local outlets). De-dupe into a canonical.

Podcast Monitoring
Tracking mentions in show notes/transcripts; clips where available/licensed.

Prominence
How central your entity is in a story. Common scoring example: headline=3, lead=2, body=1 (define once; stay consistent).

Press Wire / Newswire
Distribution services (e.g., press releases). Treat as owned/paid; don’t inflate earned impact.

Q

Query (Saved Search)
Your Boolean expression + filters. Version and name them clearly (e.g., “Brand—Global—EN+HI”).

R

Reach (Estimated)
Potential audience based on outlet metrics. Use as a relative indicator, not absolute truth.

Regional Coverage
Vernacular and local outlets that move sentiment on the ground (critical in India/GCC).

RSS / Feed Ingestion
A technical method to pull updates; one of many ingestion pipes.

Role-Based Dashboard
See Dashboard. Key to landing insights with leadership.

S

Share of Voice (SOV)
Your share of relevant coverage. Basic:
SOV% = (Your stories ÷ Total relevant stories) × 100
Weighted example (optional):
(Σ your stories × outlet_weight × prominence_weight) ÷ (Σ all stories × weights)

Sentiment
Tone classification (positive/neutral/negative). Calibrate models with examples from your category.

Spike / Anomaly Detection
Automatic detection of unusual volume or tone; triggers alerts and briefings.

Source Authority
A proxy for outlet credibility/influence (tiering + historical performance).

Summary (Executive)
Short, human-readable explanation (often AI-assisted) answering: what happened, why it matters, what next.

Syndicated Story
Republished content—see Pick-Up.

T

Tagging (Entities/Themes)
Marking stories with people, products, markets, and topics to drive dashboards and digests.

Threshold (Alert)
Minimum conditions to trigger (e.g., Tier-1 + exec + keyword). Prevents alert fatigue.

Tier-1 / Tier-2 / Tier-3
Your internal outlet quality ladder. Publish the list.

Time to Alert
See Alert Latency.

Transcript (Broadcast)
Text version of a TV/radio segment used for search, summaries, and quotes.

U

Unique Articles
De-duplicated count of distinct stories after collapsing syndications/near-duplicates.

UTM Parameters
URL tags on links in digests/dashboards to attribute traffic in analytics tools.

URL Canonicalization
Choosing a primary URL among duplicates for consistent counting.

V

Vernacular Media
Regional language outlets (e.g., Hindi, Tamil, Arabic). Critical to India/GCC strategies.

Volume
The count of relevant stories in a period—often split by channel and tier.

W

WhatsApp Alerts
Real-time notifications delivered via WhatsApp. Handy for leadership on mobile.

Wire Story
A newswire piece picked up verbatim by other outlets (see Syndication).

Wizikey News Tracking
Wizikey’s editorial-first layer: online, print, broadcast, podcasts + real-time alerts and AI summaries.

Wizikey Media Monitoring
Full-media layer unifying news tracking with social/category views into role-based dashboards.

How to use this glossary (team playbook)

• Pin it in your dashboard header; make it the source of truth for definitions.
  
• Standardize weights (tiering, prominence) once; publish the formula.
  
• Review exclusions weekly to keep noise down.
  
• Split owned/paid/earned clearly in reports.
  
• Run a quarterly audit of queries, tiers, and alert thresholds.