About CivicDots

Democracy works better when someone is watching — even when the newsroom can't be in the room.

CivicDots is a self-service platform for local newspapers, community news sites, and public-media newsrooms. We help reporters monitor public-government meetings on YouTube, turn hours of video into searchable intelligence, and produce human-reviewed briefings — without requiring staff to attend every session live.

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The problem we solve

Shrinking newsrooms, growing agendas

A two-person paper cannot sit through every city council, school board, planning commission, and special committee meeting in its coverage area. Coverage gaps widen, and communities lose accountability reporting.

Tools that don't cover your town

Many meeting-intelligence products only monitor pre-selected jurisdictions, require you to wait for geographic expansion, or put you on a waitlist. If your market isn't on their map, you're out of luck.

Our approach

We are an editorial assistant, not an autopublisher. AI helps reporters find what matters. Articles aren't published without your review.

1

You choose the sources

Add any YouTube channel, playlist, or video URL for a public body on your beat.

2

We process the meeting

Detection, audio ingestion, transcription, and structured AI analysis run automatically.

3

Your newsroom decides

Review summaries, edit draft articles, export content, and publish only after verification.

Platform features

Y

YouTube source management

Subscribe to channels, playlists, livestreams, or individual videos. Pause and resume monitoring anytime.

D

Automatic detection

New meetings are discovered on a schedule and queued without manual checking.

T

Timestamped transcripts

Searchable segments with confidence scores and one-click seek to the moment in the source video.

I

Meeting intelligence packages

Summaries, agenda breakdowns, votes, action items, names mentioned, and story leads — all evidence-linked.

E

Article editor & export

Edit AI drafts with revision history. Export Markdown, HTML, or plain text for your CMS workflow.

W

Newsroom workspaces

Organization-scoped data with Owner, Editor, Reporter, and Viewer roles. Built for team review workflows.

B

Usage-based billing

Starter, Newsroom, Publisher, and Pay as you go plans — included-minute buckets or monthly metered billing for only what you use.

N

Review-ready alerts

In-app notifications when a meeting package is ready for editorial review.

A

Activity log

Track what your team reviewed, edited, approved, and exported for accountability inside the newsroom.

What makes us different

We built CivicDots for the newsroom that competitors leave behind.

Capability	CivicDots	Typical alternatives
Start monitoring your town	✓ Add any YouTube source today	Waitlist or pre-selected cities only
Geographic coverage	✓ You define your beat	Vendor decides which markets to ingest
Pricing model	✓ Pay for minutes you process	Enterprise sales or free but unavailable
Editorial workflow	✓ Draft, revise, export, review gates	Search-only or read-only summaries
AI accountability	✓ Evidence-linked to transcript segments	Summaries without source anchors
Publication	✓ Human review required by design	Varies; often positioned as autopublish

Who we serve

N

Local newspapers

Cover councils and boards across your county without adding headcount.

C

Community news sites

Hyperlocal outlets that need tools built for one-town coverage.

R

Public radio newsrooms

Accountability reporting with limited staff and wide geographic beats.

G

Regional media groups

Manage multiple publications from separate organization workspaces.

Editorial standards

No autopublish

Generated content is a starting point. Your editors verify names, quotes, numbers, and context before anything goes live.

Evidence required

AI outputs link back to transcript segments and timestamps so reporters can check the source recording.

Public meetings only

We process publicly streamed government meetings — the same material any citizen can access online.