How We Work

This page is Lubbock Lights’ standing account of how the site and the apps are built — who we are, how each product is assembled, what we never do, and how to reach us when something is wrong. Everything that reflects our judgment inside the machinery — the rules, the keyword lists, the selection methods — is either published here or written so that it could be. If a rule changes, this page changes with it.

• Who we are
• How we build the Daily Ledger
• How we build Public Meetings
• How we build Capitol Tracker
• How we do public records
• Automation, AI and illustration
• Advertising is separate
• Corrections
• Confidential news tips
• Usage counts and privacy

Who we are

Lubbock Lights is published by Lubbock Stories, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News. Our masthead, board, funding sources and the disclosure of every contributor at $5,000 or more a year are on the About Us page. We produce original journalism without an agenda and avoid advocacy or commentary; news decisions and revenue are kept apart.

How we build the Daily Ledger

Daily Ledger is a daily reading list of the news that matters to Lubbock and the South Plains — our own reporting, plus brief summaries of stories reported by other newsrooms, each with a link to the original. It is compiled twice a day, every day, using automated tools working under written editorial rules seeking stories of interest to Lubbock and the South Plains set by our publisher and editor, who answer for it. This section is those rules, in plain language.

We summarize; we don’t republish. When another outlet reported a story, we write a short summary — 50 words or fewer — so you can decide whether to click, and we link you straight to the outlet that did the work. We never reproduce substantial portions of anyone’s reporting. The one exception is licensed material we carry under a publisher’s own republishing terms, with their headline and byline credit intact.

Every story shows you every version we verified. Most stories carry more than one link — different outlets, different takes, straight to each one. We would rather show you two doors into a story than pick one for you. When we had to choose whose version to summarize, that choice was our editorial judgment; the links beneath it are how you check us.

Our own reporting always leads the local section. Lubbock Lights stories run first, newest first, ahead of everyone else’s. That is house promotion and we say so plainly. Below them, and in the State and U.S. & World sections, stories run in the order of what they change for a Lubbock reader. Stories are never numbered.

How we rank: consequence, not drama. First, what you need to know today to act — warnings, closures, deadlines. Then what moves your money and your city — rates, taxes, housing, and the institutions big enough to move all of Lubbock. Then what government did with public money and power. Records and genuine surprises after that. An ordinary crime story or car wreck does not lead this product; one runs high only when there is continuing public danger, a death, a policy consequence, or unusual scale. And when we report an arrest, we consider the outcome of that case — dropped, reduced, or convicted — news too, at comparable prominence.

Names. Public officials, candidates, business owners, and people who speak on the record are named — the name is often the most useful fact in the item. We withhold two categories: people accused of crimes who have not been convicted, and individuals (not companies) being sued, until a court resolves the matter or the name is already established in the public record of a case we cover closely.

Corroboration and freshness. Some stories we will not run on a single outlet’s word; we require a second, independent source or we hold the story. A story we could not verify by reading the underlying article does not run. Every story has an event date and a report date, and both must be current; a story that ran in a prior edition returns only when there is a new development, and only the development.

Images. A photograph appears with a Ledger story only when the story is our own. We never display another outlet’s photo; we link to it.

Timing. The day’s edition appears on the date it carries. An edition prepared the night before does not show until midnight, on the site and in the apps alike.

Where we stand. Lubbock Lights is pro-Lubbock, pro-Texas Tech, and pro-growth. That shapes what we emphasize. It does not shape facts: adverse facts are reported accurately, about anyone. No person and no institution is exempt from coverage here.

Automation, honestly. The compilation is machine-assembled under the written rules above — that is how a small newsroom reads dozens of sources twice a day. The rules are set by people, the output carries our name, and our publisher answers for every edition.

How we build Public Meetings

Public Meetings lists the agendas, minutes and meeting video of every public body we can find in Lubbock County: 94 of them — 62 under the City of Lubbock and the county’s other municipalities, 9 under Lubbock County itself, 12 school boards, and 11 special or quasi-governmental districts (the hospital district, the water district, the MPO, the economic development corporations and others). The list, with each body’s posting location and meeting pattern, is a public file: boards_registry.json.

How it is assembled. Every morning at 6:30, automated tools read each body’s own posting page — the city’s Agenda Center, the county’s Legistar calendar, the school districts’ BoardBook pages, and the plain document pages the smaller bodies use — and record every meeting in a rolling window of roughly the past 90 days and the next six weeks. Documents are linked to where the body posted them; we do not copy or alter them. When a body posts video (the city’s Swagit archive, for example), we link that too. No one at Lubbock Lights selects which meetings appear; every meeting we can find appears.

Three kinds of upcoming meeting, marked differently. Agenda posted means the body has published the agenda; the document links are live. Scheduled means the meeting is on the body’s official calendar but the agenda is not yet posted. Anticipated means we expect the meeting from the body’s regular pattern (for example, first and third Mondays) but nothing has been posted yet — it is a projection, not a confirmation, and it is drawn with a dashed outline so you cannot mistake it for one.

What is missing, and why. The City of Lubbock’s current agenda portal carries almost no minutes; approved council minutes live on the city’s legacy site, which we cannot read automatically. So city rows often show “Minutes pending” long after a meeting — that is the city’s posting gap, not ours, and we show it rather than hide it. Seven bodies post nothing online at all — the Highland Oaks PID, the county Appraisal Review Board, the Juvenile Board, the Historical Commission, the Elections Commission, the Buffalo Springs Village Council, and the Lubbock Housing Authority — and they stay on the list so the gap stays visible. A few bodies (High Plains Water District, Ransom Canyon, Idalou) use systems we cannot read by machine; for those we rely on documents the bodies send us, which we host and link.

Watch live. On the day of a meeting, bodies that stream their meetings show a “Watch live” link to the body’s own stream.

How we build Capitol Tracker

The complete rules and every keyword Capitol Tracker uses, generated from the same file that runs it (capitol_registry.json):

How we do public records

Readers send prompts — suggestions for what we should ask of local government — on our Request a Record page. Our public information experts, with 30 years experience of successfully obtaining the information you want to know from government, will write a request that conforms with the law and produces results. We will publish your prompt, our request and the results — documents, fee estimates, delays, and denials — in a permanent, searchable archive. These are the standing rules; this section is the operating document and the public disclosure, one text, no private version.

Documents, not questions. The Act does not require government to answer questions; it requires government to produce documents it already has. The most useful suggestion names the paper: the invoices, the contract, the emails between two dates. Part of our job is translating a question into the documents that would answer it.

How a prompt becomes a request. Anyone can send a prompt, anonymously — the form asks for the prompt and nothing else, with one optional contact field that is never published; leaving it blank costs you nothing except our ability to ask what you meant. Nothing you submit appears on this site automatically: prompts go to a private queue, and a request is published only after an editor selects and files it — that is how vulgarity and personal attacks stay off the page while the asking stays anonymous. If we credit you, it is only with your consent and only in words you approve. Editors select four each month: prompts answerable from records a governmental body actually holds, that matter beyond one person’s dispute, and that we can afford to pursue. We do not file on behalf of a party to litigation or a commercial competitor fishing for advantage. We draft each request narrowly — a tight request gets records; a broad one gets a fee estimate and a stall — and the request as filed is published verbatim. Lubbock Stories Inc. is the requestor of record on every filing: we pay the fees, we handle the correspondence, and the reader who asked is never part of the record.

The clock, and what we publish about it. Texas law requires a governmental body to respond within ten business days — producing the records, certifying in writing that none exist, or referring the matter to the Attorney General with the specific exception it claims. Every request on the page shows the filing date, the statutory due date, and a running count of business days overdue. That count is arithmetic, not commentary. Where a body blows the deadline, the remedy is a complaint to the Attorney General, and we will use it and publish that too.

Money. Default budget: $50 per request. If an agency’s fee estimate exceeds it, we narrow the request or convert it to inspection rather than copies, and we publish the estimate either way — what agencies propose to charge for public information is itself public information. We may exceed the cap by editorial decision; when we do, the amount paid is published.

Before a document goes public. An editor reads every page of every responsive document before it is posted, checking for material the agency should have redacted and did not: Social Security and driver’s license numbers, dates of birth, financial account numbers, medical information, information identifying minors, crime victims, or confidential informants. Anything in those categories is redacted by us before publication and noted as our redaction. Our publishing system refuses to post a document that has not been signed off. We do not otherwise alter documents, and we publish agency correspondence as received.

Everything gets published. Completed requests, partial productions, “no responsive records” certifications, fee estimates, clarification demands, Attorney General referrals and rulings, and outright denials all go in the archive. A denial is a public record of how a body handled a request, and the archive is the running account of how local government responds to its public.

Conflicts. Our publisher’s consulting firm advises cities and political subdivisions in this region. No entity is excluded from this project — not clients, not anyone. Client entities are instructed to treat requests from us like requests from anyone else and to release records without consulting the firm. If any exclusion is ever adopted, it will be disclosed on this page. Requests involving an entity where the firm has an active engagement are noted as such on the request’s page.

What we ask of you. Prompt us with documents, not conclusions. “The invoices the district paid for X” beats “prove the district is corrupt.” The records answer; we just ask.

Automation, AI and illustration

The Daily Ledger, Public Meetings and Capitol Tracker are assembled by automated tools, some of them AI systems, working under the written rules on this page. The rules are set by people, are published here in full, and are written so that we would not be embarrassed to see any of them read aloud. Our test for every rule: would we put it on this page under our name? If not, it does not run.

What we never do. We never use AI to create or alter news images. No AI-generated pictures of events, places, or people in our coverage; no AI edits to real photographs beyond ordinary cropping and exposure; no bylines that do not belong to a real person. Any AI-assisted visual we do publish — an illustration, a chart, an editorial cartoon — is labeled where it appears, on the image itself, so the label travels with it.

Summaries. The one-line summaries on Ledger, Boards and Capitol items are built from the source document — the outlet’s report, the body’s notice, the bill’s official caption. They describe; they do not characterize.

Advertising is separate

Sponsors are labeled, never styled as stories, never placed inside a story’s source links, and never consulted on coverage. Buying an ad earns no coverage, and coverage earns no discount. The same sponsors appear on the site, in the apps and in the newsletter under the same label. See an ad problem — misleading, broken, or in the wrong place? Tell us: Incoming@LubbockLights.com.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we fix the published story or edition and keep an internal log of every correction so the pattern stays visible to us. Spot an error: Incoming@LubbockLights.com, or the editors named on About Us.

Confidential news tips

Send a tip to Incoming@LubbockLights.com with “CONFIDENTIAL News Tip” in the subject. We will treat it with discretion. Plain email is not anonymous or encrypted; if your situation requires technical confidentiality, tell us that in general terms first and we will arrange another way to talk.

Usage counts and privacy

Our apps send one anonymous daily batch of feature-use counts — event names and counts only, no identifiers, no device IDs — to our own server at lubbocklights.com, so we can tell sponsors how often the app was used. Readers can turn this off in the app’s Settings under “Usage sharing.” This website sends the same kind of anonymous counts from the Ledger, Boards and Capitol pages to the same server. Bills you follow and the search terms you add in Capitol Tracker’s “My Searches” are stored only on your phone or in your browser and are never sent to us. The apps’ privacy policy is at /app-privacy/; the site’s is at /privacy-policy/.

Last revised September 6, 2026. Questions about anything on this page: Incoming@LubbockLights.com.