Patent ID: 8442969

Claim:
A method of automatically calculating temporal characteristics of: electronic documents with a computing system comprising: a. identifying a first event, which first event is the subject of electronic news coverage; b. automatically identifying a geographic site associated with said first event with the computing system; c. automatically selecting at least some local sources with the computing system to report on such event based on their proximity to such geographic site; d. identifying a set of electronic documents containing content relating to said event with the computing system, wherein each electronic document is associated with a respective source; e. selecting a subset of said set of electronic documents with the computing system based at least in part on their correlation to said local sources; f. analyzing said subset of electronic documents with the computing system to identify temporal characteristics relating to a state of such event, which temporal characteristics are based on content other than but not excluding date/time data specified for said subset of electronic documents; g. assigning a temporal value with the computing system to each of said subset of electronic documents; h. wherein at least one of step (e) and/or (f) are controlled based on content from said local sources.