journalist-media-research

Build a relevant journalist and media shortlist for a story or PR brief using Crawlora's journalists dataset, news search, and public author pages. Use to find reporters by beat or outlet, verify recent coverage, and collect published work contact channels with supporting evidence.

Journalist and media research

Find reporters whose actual coverage fits a story, and explain the match. The output is a researched media list; sending pitches is a separate action requiring the user's request.

Setup and requests

Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY to your key from crawlora.net. Run the bundled scripts/crawlora.sh from this skill directory or by absolute path. It calls https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1 with x-api-key and prints JSON. Keep the key in the environment. Consult reference/endpoints.md for exact parameters and supported enum values.

Workflow

1. Identify the story angle, relevant beats, target audience/geography, and requested list size. A product category alone may need a more specific angle; use the user's supplied brief before asking for additional information.
2. Inspect /datasets/journalists/facets with facet=outlet, vertical, or topic to discover the supported roster and filter values. Search by q, vertical, and/or returned exact topic/outlet values. q searches name, title, and bio, not article text. Use page_size up to 100, within the 10,000-record result window.
3. Retrieve promising records from /datasets/journalists/items/{outlet}/{slug} using identifiers returned by search. Keep the outlet-specific identity: people can change outlets or contribute to more than one.
4. Verify current affiliation and recent relevant work using profile_url, /bing/search, /bing/news, and /web/scrape. Search a name together with its outlet/domain to avoid namesakes. Confirm bylines and article dates on the source pages; search snippets alone are leads, not verified coverage.
5. Rank by demonstrated story fit and recency. Cite one or two relevant pieces per strong match when available. Mark candidates with only bio-level evidence as unverified rather than asserting they recently covered the topic.

sh

scripts/crawlora.sh /datasets/journalists/facets facet=outlet vertical=tech
scripts/crawlora.sh /datasets/journalists/search vertical=tech page_size=10
# Refine with the story's terms; a topic label must come from facets:
scripts/crawlora.sh /datasets/journalists/search q=security page_size=10

Output and coverage

Return a table or CSV with name, outlet, title, beat, profile_url, relevant_article_urls, article_dates, fit_reason, public_contact, contact_source_url, retrieved_at, and verification_status.

• The dataset covers a curated roster of supported outlets. An empty result does not mean no journalist covers the topic. Use public search to supplement the roster and label externally discovered candidates.
• Beat topics are best-effort labels. Current bylined work is stronger evidence than an old profile bio. Keep unknown affiliation or dates explicit.
• contact_type=email means an address was published on the outlet's page; it does not mean the mailbox is verified or the person wants a pitch. social means only a social contact channel was found; none means neither. Do not invent addresses from an outlet's email pattern.
• Preserve contactless candidates when they are strong editorial matches, unless contact availability is a requirement in the user's brief.
• Bound the search to the requested list size and explain any shortfall. On 429, back off; retry a transient 5xx once. Stop on 401/403, check the application code, and retain successful evidence if another source fails.