How do you find relevant journalists?

There are four different ways you can find relevant journalists on JournoFinder:

Article search (pulls from our database of articles): To find recent articles in your niche, along with the relevant journalist. Works best with a 'headline first' searching approach, rather than a topic-style search.

Google News search (connected to the live internet): To find recent articles in your niche, along with the relevant journalist. Works best with a 'headline first' searching approach, rather than a topic-style search.

Journalist search: To find individual journalists, or search by things like job title.

Outlet search: To find relevant outlets for you campaign.

The quickest way to find relevant journalists for your campaign is to search for reporters who have recently written articles related to your topic - you can use Article search or Google News search for this.

Click on the links above to watch our demo videos for each search and get tips on searching effectively.

Article search pulls articles and journalists from our daily-updating database of over 50 million articles.

It works through keyword matching, so it returns results that include the exact words or phrases you type.

To get the best results, aim to use search terms that match headlines journalists in your niche would write. The most effective searches use a focused phrase - rather than a long list of keywords or a vague one-word term.

Because the search is instant, it's quick and easy to tweak your query until you find exactly what you're looking for.

For example, if you're looking for articles on the cost of homeownership, try searches like:

and so on.

You can filter the results by:

And you can use these search operators to further refine the search:

Google News search connects directly to the Google News index.

Again, aim to use search terms that match headlines journalists in your niche may have written. I call this 'headline-first' searching.

If your campaign is related to the UK's royal family, searching for a recent headline like "Harry Meghan release book" will give you much better results than a simple search for the "royal family".

You can use the same operators as you can in normal Google Search, including Boolean operators i.e. ('AND' and 'OR') and search modifiers like 'intitle:', or 'site:'.

The site: operator will limit your results to just one domain.

However you are limited to one search modifier per search.

Once you have decided on a search term type you need to select a location filter and a time period.

Time period filter

The default time period is "past year" and this is great for getting a comprehensive overview. However, for more time-sensitive campaigns (i.e. reactives), opting for "recent" or "past 24 hours" is more appropriate.

Location filter

The location filter works in the same way as the location filter on Google News. It will make results from your chosen location more important in the search, but you may still see extremely relevant results from other locations too.

Pro Tip: Preview your search instantly by clicking "preview search". This opens a new tab where you can see potential articles.

The aim of this is to ensure your search will return relevant articles. If you don't like the look of the results, you can modify the search.

If you're happy with the preview, press 'search' and the results will appear below within a few seconds.

Click on the result to review the articles and start adding journalists to your media list.

Article and Google news search are the main and most effective way to find journalists, but they're not the only option.

You can also find journalists by: