How InstaTrac Can Benefit Your Media Organization

Effective communication of up to date and accurate information is the hallmark of quality journalism. In today’s complex and fast moving media landscape, gathering detailed research efficiently is absolutely crucial. Public policy relates to a wide variety of current events, but it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of every detail of the legislative process. Being able to seamlessly monitor and log the movements of state politics is key to researching and reporting on them. 

In-depth and informed reporting on legislative developments helps to educate the public on a variety of matters. With legislative progress affecting various sectors, like the environment, technology, and healthcare, it’s vital to obtain detailed information in order to cover these important issues. Details that seem small need to be researched accurately and thoroughly, which can be difficult and time consuming without the use of legislative tracking.  

That’s where InstaTrac comes in–to make these steps in the reporting process much easier. Below, you can learn more about a wide range of InstaTrac’s MassTrac software’s features that can help journalists simplify their processes and improve their reporting.

Daily Alert

The Daily Alert is a service that provides daily and immediate updates on tracked bills in the Massachusetts Legislature delivered straight to your email. This service is thorough and includes notifications for various legislative events, including votes, amendments, committee hearings, regulatory hearings, and more. MassTrac’s Daily Alert is the most important tool for journalists, ensuring they never miss a thing to report on. 

Transcription Services

When reporting on a bill or policy’s progress in the state legislature, it can be important to consider how it is being discussed by elected officials and what compromises might be made to ensure approval. Combing through hours upon hours of footage of floor debates and committee hearings can be tedious and monotonous.Our Talk-2-Text  transcription service provides high quality, searchable, and clickable transcripts, with speakers and bills allocated. This can prove incredibly useful when quoting specific legislators or testifiers without having to sit for hours at a hearing.

Bill Summaries

MassTrac’s bill summaries provide simple run downs of every bill in the State House, with in-depth explanations for major, complex pieces of legislation. This feature can help journalists quickly assess if a bill is relevant to the topic being reported on, and can break down complex policies to be shared with wider audiences. 

Bill Text Comparison

Using MassTrac’s bill text comparison feature can help journalists cover the ever changing language between versions of bills. While bills get debated, there are many amendments that are considered and included on the bill. As a journalist, it can be incredibly useful to track what policy is included on added amendments. 

Budget Analysis

On top of bill summaries and comparisons, MassTrac provides in-depth descriptions of one of the biggest bills in Massachusetts, the yearly appropriation bill. Not only does MassTrac provide a general overview of the budget, but it also catalogs and summarizes all of the amendments and sections within the bill.  

Elected Official Profiles

For journalists that cover elected officials, candidates, and other public figures, MassTrac’s information on legislators and constitutional officers is unmatched. With MassTrac, you have the ability to view demographic information, like party affiliation, and legislative district. More complex analysis is also available, including their voting record, committee assignments, effectiveness rating, and financial disclosure reports. This consolidated suite of information makes research straightforward and painless. 

Directories

Sometimes, it can be hard to contact elected officials for input or research, but MassTrac’s directories make that process much simpler. MassTrac’s staff directories are updated monthly with accurate contacts for every member of the state Legislature. This can save you invaluable time searching for communication methods.

Historical Data

It can be difficult to access data from historical legislative sessions online, making research difficult. With MassTrac you can access data on bill movements starting from the 1995-1996 legislative session through the present. The more recent data includes improved context and content, but every session includes texts, actions, and votes for historical bills. This log of data is invaluable for comparative policy research, and makes compiling historical narratives so much simpler. 

Scorecard

Lastly, MassTrac’s Scorecard feature allows you to consolidate a set of bills and their votes that can be tracked conveniently in one place. The scorecard is invaluable for policy research and can help identify elected officials that voted similarly on the selected bills. 

If you are considering subscribing to MassTrac, email info@instatrac.com for more info and to start your free trial!