How This Site Works
EverettMassNews is run by one person, with software doing the heavy reading. This page explains exactly where every fact on this site comes from, what the software does, what a human does, and how to get an error fixed. If you're an official, a candidate, or someone whose name appears here, this is written for you.
Where the information comes from
Two sources, both official:
Meeting transcripts. Everett's public meetings — City Council, School Committee, boards and committees — are transcribed by machine at everett.munitrac.ai. Everything this site says about what officials said and did traces to those transcripts: the recaps, the "who did what" writeups, the vote records, the attendance counts. Every recap links to its transcript. You can check our work, and we'd rather you did.
The city's own announcements. News articles are based on official communications from cityofeverett.com. A press release is the city's account of itself, so our articles attribute every claim to the city and try to note what an announcement doesn't say.
That's the whole list. We do not rewrite other outlets' reporting. Earlier versions of this site ran articles based on Everett Independent coverage; in July 2026 we unpublished those and adopted the primary-sources-only policy described here.
The events calendar is different by design. Events come from three places: venue and organization websites we check automatically (the Everett Public Libraries calendar, and a hand-maintained list published in the site's source), events readers submit, and events an editor adds from announcements or flyers. Software drafts the details; a person approves every event before it appears — except those an editor enters directly, since the editor is the reviewer. Every event links to its original listing: this site is a pointer to the organizer, never the destination. RSVPs, registration, and updates live with the source. Signed-in readers can save events to get email reminders; event pages show only an aggregate count of saves and never any individual's name or attendance.
What the software does
For each meeting, the software reads the entire transcript — often several hours of proceedings — and splits it into agenda items. It classifies each item as substance (votes, ordinances, spending, appointments, contracts, permits) or mechanics (roll call, approving minutes, adjournment), so routine motions don't get dressed up as decisions and real decisions don't get buried. Then it extracts, item by item, what each official said and how each member voted, and drafts the recap and the per-official writeups from that record.
The name problem. Transcription software mangles names badly. In real transcripts, Councilor Pietrantonio comes out "Petrononia," Councilor Nguyen comes out "Ween," and Alcy Jabouin has appeared as "Allison Gabbin." We keep a hand-maintained roster of who actually sits on each body — the eleven members of the City Council, the School Committee, with term dates — and the software matches garbled names against that closed list. A vote can only be attributed to a real, seated member.
Rules the site runs on
These aren't aspirations; they're written into the code:
Absences are only named when two readings agree. We name an absent member only when the software's reading of the roll call matches the count the clerk announced at the meeting. If they disagree, we publish the count and name no one.
Unattributable votes stay unattributed. Roughly 5% of votes — voice votes, answers the transcript never ties to a name — can't be assigned to a specific member. We leave them out of individual records rather than guess.
Procedural votes are kept separate. A vote to take an item out of order is recorded, but it doesn't sit in a member's substantive voting record as if it were a policy position.
Campaign promises require receipts, twice. A promise only appears if it was found in a public source with a URL — unsourced claims are discarded automatically. And a promise is never marked "kept" or "broken" without a citable vote, quote, or action from the meeting record; every status shows its evidence, linked to the meeting it came from. When in doubt, the status stays weaker.
What a human does
Every news article and meeting recap is generated as an unpublished draft and read by a person before it appears on the site. The roster of officials and the list of tracked issues are curated by hand. Campaign promise pages don't render at all until a person has reviewed every promise and its source.
One honest exception: the per-official meeting writeups are restatements of the extracted record — quotes, votes, actions — and publish without a separate review pass. They contain no opinion by construction, and when the underlying record is corrected, they're regenerated from it.
Opinion and record are kept apart
Our articles and recaps are written with a point of view, and editorials are labeled as such. The records underneath them — who voted how, who said what, who was in the room — are extracted neutrally and shown with their sources. You don't have to share our view of a vote to use our record of it.
What can still go wrong
The transcripts themselves contain errors — mis-heard names, garbled numbers — and software reading them can compound those errors. We've built the checks above because we expect mistakes, not because we think there are none. When something is wrong, we fix it in the underlying record, and every page built from that record is corrected with it.
Corrections
If this site misattributes a vote or a quote, misses your attendance, or gets a fact wrong, write to news@everettmassnews.com and point to the meeting. Corrections to the record are made at the data level, not papered over in prose.