Glossary

These words have ordinary meanings that differ from the ones Loudest gives them. Each entry says what the site means, with the number the code uses where there is one, and points at the methodology section that has the detail.

Coverage: How widely a story is being reported: the outlets carrying it and the countries those outlets publish from. Loudest measures coverage, and judges one thing besides it: whether a story is hard news, which decides whether it is on the map. It does not judge whether a story is true, important or well reported. Section 3.
Story: A cluster of articles that the system judges to be about the same event, from any number of outlets and languages. A story is not an article: it has no author and no text of its own, only a written headline and the articles it links to. Section 2.
Outlet: One publisher in the feed list, read through one feed. A publisher with several editions or languages is one outlet unless the list says otherwise; the sources page shows every outlet with its country, language, ownership and class. Section 1.
Country vote: A country counts once in a story’s score however many of its outlets cover the story, so twenty outlets from one country do not outweigh twenty countries. Only general-press outlets cast a country’s vote. Each outlet still adds a smaller amount of its own; see Score. Section 3.
Score: How widely a story is covered. Every country whose general press covers it counts once, and every outlet adds a smaller amount. Each halves every 4 hours from the moment it joined the story. Trade press adds only a little. Section 3.
Rank: A story’s position in the day’s ranking by score, 1 being the most widely covered. The site serves the top 400 stories judged hard news and the map draws up to 120 of them. Section 3.
Momentum: Whether a story is louder or quieter than an hour ago: strongly rising, rising, holding or falling. A story first seen less than an hour ago is marked New. A story that gains no new coverage falls. Section 6.
First published: The earliest date a publisher gave for any article in the story. A claim, not an observation: feeds can carry items long after they were written. Section 6.
Earliest article: The article with the earliest claimed publication time among the outlets Loudest reads, at the outlet that gave it: the first published date, as an article. A claim, not an observation, and not a record of who broke the story, since most of the world's press is not in the feed list. The day files and the story JSON call it the lead article (leadArticle). The article at the top of a story page is a different thing: the one chosen for the reader, and the page says why. Section 7.
First seen: When Loudest first fetched an article of the story: the first moment the site could know about it. The story panel counts the running time from it. Section 6.
Updated: How long ago the story’s newest article arrived. Tiles and ranking rows show it as "updated 1h ago", or "1h ago" where there is no room for the word. It is the same clock that sets how much a tile stands out. Section 6.
Running: How long the story has been on the site, counted from first seen, with the moment it began: "44h, since Sun 20 Sept, 04:20". Shown in the story panel and the tooltip. Section 6.
First fetched: The same moment as first seen, under the name the dataset uses: firstFetchedAt in the day files. First published is firstPublishedAt. Section 7.
View: Loudest is the default ranking. Recent shows the 60 stories first seen most recently. Rising shows the stories gaining coverage. One-sided shows widely covered stories whose outlets come overwhelmingly from one region. Section 6.
Window: A ranking that counts only the coverage a story received in the last 1, 2, 6 or 24 hours, with no fade. Windows are reached by link only; the menu offers the views instead. Section 6.
Time box: A story accepts articles for 48 hours after its first, by the articles’ own times, and no longer, however many it keeps receiving. A narrative that runs on becomes a chain of stories rather than one growing cluster. Section 2.
Predecessor: The story a new story continues: the nearest story that resembled the article but was past its time box when the article arrived. Story pages link predecessors and successors both ways, and the day files carry the predecessor’s id as continues. Section 2.
General press: An outlet that reports the news at large. Only general-press outlets cast country votes and count in full in the score. Section 3.
Trade press: Shipping, energy and other specialist outlets, and official sources. They can add only a little to a story’s score, and their countries do not count. Section 3.
Reserve: A feed that was vetted and kept in the list but is neither read nor counted. The sources page lists every reserve feed with the reason it was not chosen. Section 1.
Ownership: Whether an outlet is private, public-service or state-owned, recorded by hand in the feed list as best effort. Public-service means a publicly funded broadcaster with editorial independence in law; state means owned or controlled by a government or party. A count of countries is not a count of independent press systems. Section 1.
Grouping: Articles join a story when they are similar enough in meaning to be about the same event. Stories that turn out to be the same event are merged. Section 2.
Region: Where a story is about, one of six: Africa, Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East and International. Not where it was covered: a story about Denmark covered by outlets on five continents is a Europe story. Section 5.
Brightness: How recently a story’s newest article was published, in five stops on the tiles and in the ranking’s headline colour. Not the story’s age: an old story with a new article looks fresh. On the dark theme the freshest tile is the brightest; on the light theme it is the strongest colour, and an old one fades toward the paper. Section 6.
Transition day: A day on which a major methodology version changed, so its stories were measured partly under one system and partly under another. The day page and the day file say so; compare it with the days on either side with care. Changelog.
Snapshot: A completed day’s top 400 stories, ranked by the highest point each reached that day, those left off the map among them with their judgement, captured minutes later (the first three days, 14 to 16 September 2026, two and a half days later). Each is a page, a JSON file and a CSV file. The files are written once at capture and never change, and the database refuses any change to a captured day. A mistake found later is noted on the day as a dated erratum, never corrected in place; a day is removed only on legal grounds, and every removal is logged with its reason. The files of the days before 25 September 2026 were written once on that day, and 14 to 18 September 2026 were edited after capture, before the lock, as their errata say. Section 7.
Hard news: What Loudest shows: politics and government, the economy, markets, business and trade, energy, conflict and security, disasters, and public policy, including climate, technology and health policy. Sport, entertainment, culture, lifestyle and celebrity stories count only when they have consequences for money, power, security or large numbers of people. Section 4.
Judgement: Whether a story is hard news, decided by the same AI model that writes its headline, and checked against the judgements on similar recent stories. Section 4.
Set aside: An article not read at all, because its address or its feed category clearly marks it as sport, entertainment, arts or lifestyle. Never stored, embedded or clustered, so in no story; only its address is logged, for a week, so it is counted once. The day files count them as articlesSetAside. Section 4.
Left off: A story judged outside the hard-news rule. It is not on the map or in any filter, and it keeps its page and its archive rows, with the judgement shown. The day files count them as storiesLeftOff. Section 4.