Glossary

Plain definitions of the terms used on The Stovall Report — how stories are scored and flagged, the ideas behind the editorial lens, and the vocabulary of Screwworm Watch and TX-23 coverage.

Morning Edition

The Stovall Report's daily briefing: the ten highest-ranked stories from the previous 72 hours, chosen by composite score subject to topic, publisher and technology-and-science diversity rules. Each edition is frozen when published — its order, scores and reasoning are stored with it, unaffected by later re-scoring — and comes with an audio narration and a Saint of the Day. Every edition has a permanent dated page.

Related: Today's Morning Edition · Archive

Composite score

The number that orders stories on the front page. It is 0.6 × importance plus 0.2 × credibility, plus up to 20 points for reader engagement on this site (aggregated clicks over the last 48 hours). After 48 hours it declines by 3% per hour, to a floor of 10% of its value.

Importance score

A 1–100 judgment of a story's consequence under the editorial rubric. Scores of 95 and up are reserved for nation-altering events; 80–94 for major policy or geopolitical developments; 60–79 for significant but routine news; lower scores for marginal items. Sports, entertainment, celebrity and lifestyle stories fall outside the mandate and score low.

Related: Composite score · Prediction flag

Credibility score

A 1–100 judgment of the evidence in the article itself: specificity, named versus anonymous sourcing, data transparency, internal logic and sensational tone. A story cannot score above 95 without primary sourcing. It rates the article in front of the model, not the publisher's reputation.

Board reasoning

The short explanation, shown with every scored story, of why it received its scores. It is drafted by an AI model following the written editorial rubric (“the board”), not by a panel of people, and is shown so readers can check the judgment rather than take a number on trust.

Historical context

An AI-drafted note connecting a story to earlier events and longer patterns in history, philosophy and human nature. It is analysis, not reporting: the facts of the story are in the linked original article.

Related: What to watch

What to watch

An AI-drafted, forward-looking note naming the developments that would confirm, sharpen or overturn the board's assessment of a story. It is a guide to what to follow next, not a forecast.

Related: Historical context

Silence flag

Marks a story scored 80 or higher for importance that the model judges is receiving little mainstream coverage. It is a judgment made from the article and the rubric, not a measured count of other outlets' coverage. On a lead story it reads “The board considers this important. Most outlets do not.”

Contrarian flag

Marks a story whose conclusion the model judges runs against institutional consensus. The flag is descriptive: it neither endorses the story nor discounts it, and credibility is still scored on the evidence.

Related: Silence flag

Prediction flag

Set automatically when a story's importance score is 90 or higher — the band the rubric reserves for developments likely to shape events well beyond the news cycle.

Related: Importance score

Early-signal flag

A marker reserved for stories that may foreshadow a larger development before it is widely reported. The current scoring pipeline does not set it, so it does not appear on stories at present.

Related: Silence flag

Classical conservatism

A tradition of political thought that values inherited institutions, natural law, ordered liberty, limited and constitutional government, and prudence over abstract schemes of reform. It is a philosophical outlook rather than a party program. It is one half of The Stovall Report's editorial lens.

Related: Thomism · Editorial lens

Thomism

The philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) and the tradition that follows him: the harmony of faith and reason, natural law knowable by reason, an ordered hierarchy of goods, and law as an ordinance of reason for the common good. Pope Leo XIII commended it to the Church in the encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879). It is the lead perspective in The Stovall Report's editorial rubric.

Related: Common good · Rerum Novarum

Rerum Novarum

Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical on capital and labor, the founding document of modern Catholic social teaching. It defends private property and the family, insists on the dignity of work and a just wage, supports workers' associations, and rejects both socialism and an economy without moral limits.

Related: Subsidiarity · Common good

Subsidiarity

The principle that a matter should be handled by the smallest, most local body able to handle it — the family, the parish, the town, the state — with larger authorities helping rather than replacing them. It runs through the teaching of Leo XIII and was formally named by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (1931).

Related: Rerum Novarum · Common good

Common good

In Catholic social teaching, the sum of social conditions that allow people, families and communities to reach their own fulfillment more fully and more easily. For Aquinas it is the purpose of law itself. The editorial rubric uses it as a measure of whether a development matters.

Related: Thomism · Subsidiarity

New World screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax)

A parasitic fly whose larvae feed on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals — cattle, horses, sheep, goats, deer, dogs and, rarely, people. Females lay eggs at the edge of a wound, and the feeding larvae enlarge it. The United States eradicated it decades ago with the sterile insect technique; its return is tracked on Screwworm Watch.

Myiasis

Infestation of a living animal or person by fly larvae. Screwworm myiasis is especially destructive because the larvae feed on live flesh rather than dead tissue. In people it is rare and treatable when caught early.

Related: New World screwworm

Sterile insect technique

A pest-control method in which large numbers of male flies are reared, sterilized with radiation and released. Wild females that mate with sterile males produce no offspring, so sustained releases drive the population down and out. It eradicated screwworm from the United States and is used to hold a barrier against it.

TAHC

The Texas Animal Health Commission, the state agency responsible for livestock and animal health in Texas. In the screwworm response it issues Executive Director Orders, including movement restrictions and response zones, which Screwworm Watch reports from TAHC's own pages.

USDA APHIS

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the federal agency that confirms animal-disease detections and leads the national screwworm response, including sterile-fly releases. Confirmed U.S. detection counts originate with APHIS.

Related: TAHC · U.S. detections

TX-23

Texas's 23rd Congressional District, a 27-county district across southwest Texas, from the San Antonio area west along the Rio Grande toward El Paso, including the Big Bend. The Stovall Report's TX-23 page gathers the district's local news each day with short resident briefs.

Related: TX-23 daily local feed