Ways you can use the Assistant / MCP

Most people use the assistant to build media lists. It does a lot more than that. This page is a tour of everything you can ask it for.

Everything below works the same whether you are using the assistant inside JournoFinder or driving it from Claude, ChatGPT or your own AI tool. Same capabilities, same results, you are just chatting from somewhere else.

You do not need to know any of these by name. Ask for what you want in plain English and the assistant works out which parts to use, often several at once. The list below is just so you know what is possible.

The one most people already know. Describe your campaign and the assistant searches, judges each journalist against your brief, and builds the list live.

It can also plan the list before it starts, refine it, split it into segments, and export it.

Try: "Build a list for a study on commuter traffic times, broken down by city."

There is a lot more detail on this in Building your first media list and Refining, segmenting and exporting.

You do not have to be building a list to search. Ask for journalists on a subject and you get them back, with what they cover and why they matched.

Try: "Who covers small business lending in the UK?"

If you already have a name, just ask. Spelling does not have to be exact.

Try: "Do we have a profile for Sarah Butler at the Guardian?"

Before you pitch someone, get the full picture. What they write about, where they publish, and their recent work.

This is the one to use when you are about to send something important and want to open with a line that shows you have read them.

Try: "Tell me everything about this reporter before I pitch her. What has she written lately and what angle does she usually take?"

Search the coverage itself rather than the people. Useful for seeing how a subject has been written about, and who wrote it.

Try: "Show me recent coverage of heat pump grants and who wrote it."

A live search of Google News. Best for stories breaking right now, and for smaller local stories.

The most common use is pasting in a headline to get the reporters already on that story.

Try: "Find me the journalists covering the supermarket payment outage today."

Browse or search what is breaking across the news cycle, so you can spot something worth reacting to.

Try: "What is trending in consumer finance this week?"

Already working a story and want everyone else on it. The assistant finds more of the coverage around the same event and the reporters behind it.

Try: "Find me more outlets that have covered this, I only have the nationals."

If you have clients set up in Reactives, the assistant can pull up what they can react to. It can read the client's brief, list their current opportunities, then take one and turn it into a pitch and a media list without you leaving the chat.

Try: "What can my clients react to today?"

Then: "Take the second one, draft me a pitch, and build a list of the journalists already covering it."

See Quick start guide: Reactives for setting clients up. [LINK TO ADD once the Reactives article is published]

Reporters, bloggers and podcasters who are actively asking for sources right now. Ask the assistant to find the ones you can answer.

Try: "Any open requests I could put a mortgage expert forward for?"

A searchable record of how brands have actually run reactive PR, drawn from millions of published articles.

Describe a situation and you get back what other brands did when something similar happened. What triggered it, the angle they took, the kind of spokesperson they put up, and where it landed.

Good for the moment you know there is a story in something but cannot see the angle yet.

Try: "A cold snap is coming. How have energy and home brands played this before?"

Or: "Show me reactive campaigns where a finance brand commented on an interest rate decision."

[SCREENSHOT PLACEHOLDER - optional, the assistant returning past campaign examples]

The real value is chaining these in one conversation. You rarely want just one of them.

A normal reactive session looks like this.

"What can this client react to today?"

"How have other brands handled a story like that?"

"Draft me an angle along those lines."

"Now build me a list of the reporters already on it."

"Tell me more about the top three before I send."

"Export it."

That is six different capabilities and you never had to name any of them.

Not sure whether the assistant can do something? Just ask it. If it cannot, it will tell you.