# Journalist

> Journalist follows the news for you, checks claims against independent sources, and drafts briefings, news articles, features, and digests.

Journalist is the assistant that follows the news for you and your company. You tell it the topics, competitors, markets, and places you care about, and it gives you a briefing with every story's outlet, date, and link. It also checks claims against independent sources and drafts news articles, features, interview questions, explainers, and news digests from sources it can point to.

> [!IMPORTANT]
> Journalist never invents a quote, a source, a statistic, a date, or an event. Every story it gives has its outlet, its date, and its link, and a claim counts as confirmed only when two independent sources or a primary document back it. It drafts and you decide: publishing, sending, posting, and pitching a journalist or an editor all wait for your Approve.

## What it does

- Give you a daily or weekly news briefing on what you follow, with what is new since last time and why each story matters to your company.
- Search the news on a topic, a company, a person, or a place, and record the outlet, date, and link of every item.
- Check a claim, a quote, a number, or a story against independent sources, and say what is confirmed, what only one outlet reports, and what is not confirmed.
- Follow press and news coverage of your company and your competitors over time, and spot when a story grows or turns.
- Write news articles, features, explainers, and headlines from facts that can be sourced, with a list of every gap it could not fill.
- Prepare interview questions and check every quote against your recording afterwards.
- Write a news digest for readers who opted in, in a plain text version too.
- Draft in the language you ask for.

Where a story is still developing, Journalist gives the time of each item and tells you coverage may update.

## Where the news comes from

Journalist says which source each story came from. It never says a tool is connected when it is not.

- **Google News**, through the extra research tools that use your credits, so you can see headlines, outlets, dates, and trends.
- **News databases**, built in with nothing to connect: worldwide online news coverage from the last three months in many languages, how a story is covered over time, and Wikipedia's In the news.
- **[NewsMCP](/docs/integrations/newsmcp)**, with your own free key: news stories grouped across newsrooms, each with its sources, and a check of how widely a claim was reported.
- **The web**, through the search and page tools you connect, so it can open a source and read it instead of the headline.

It summarizes in its own words and links the original. It quotes only short passages with attribution, and it never copies a whole article or a paywalled text.

## Skills

| Skill | What it does, in plain words |
| --- | --- |
| News briefing | The first win. A daily or weekly briefing with top stories first, what is new, and the outlet, time, and link of every item. |
| News search | Finds the news on a topic with the right sources and queries, removes duplicates, and records where each item came from. |
| Fact check | Traces a claim to its primary source, looks for two independent sources, and gives a verdict with the evidence and a link for each. |
| News article | Writes a news story with a lede, named attribution, quotes only from real interviews or documents, and a list of gaps. |
| Feature story | Writes a long read with an angle beyond the news, built from interviews and documents. |
| Interview preparation | Researches the person and the topic, writes open questions with follow ups, and checks quotes afterwards. |
| Media monitoring | Tracks coverage of your company and competitors over time, with the story behind each spike, and can run as a routine. |
| News digest | Writes a digest for readers who opted in, with the outlet and link for each item. Sending it waits for your Approve. |
| Headlines and dek | Writes accurate, specific headlines and a short summary line for the page, search, and social. |
| Ethics and sources review | Checks a story or a plan for fairness, anonymity, defamation care, copyright, corrections, and disclosure of AI help. |
| Explainer | Answers what happened, why it matters, how it works, and what is still unknown, with a timeline. |
| Live updates | Drafts timestamped updates for a story that is still moving, each labelled confirmed or unconfirmed. |
| Data story | Turns a dataset into a story after checking the numbers, with an honest chart and a note on method. |
| Corrections and updates | Verifies a reported error and writes a plain correction, clarification, or update. |
| Opinion and analysis | Drafts an op-ed or an analysis in your own argument, labelled as opinion. |
| Local news | Reports on a town or region from public records and local sources. |
| Podcast news script | Writes a news script for the ear, with a pronunciation list and show notes that link every source. |
| Press release to story | Turns a press release into a news story, finds the real news, and attributes what the sender claims. |

Journalist has four lines of work you can pick when you hire it: news briefings, news reporter, fact-checker, and features writer. Each starts with its own skills. You can also hire a ready-made one: Nellie, a morning news editor, or Ida, a fact-checker and reporter.

## Integrations

| Integration | Used for |
| --- | --- |
| [NewsMCP](/docs/integrations/newsmcp) | News stories grouped across newsrooms, their sources, and claim checks |
| [Exa](/docs/integrations/exa) | Searching the web and reading pages |
| [Tavily](/docs/integrations/tavily) | Searching the web and reading pages |
| [Firecrawl](/docs/integrations/firecrawl) | Reading pages and whole sites |
| [Jina AI](/docs/integrations/jina) | Reading pages and PDFs and searching research papers |
| [Google Drive](/docs/integrations/google-drive) | Finding style guides and sources, and saving drafts |
| [Notion](/docs/integrations/notion) | Notes, style guides, and story plans |
| [Gmail](/docs/integrations/gmail) | Reading tips and drafting emails |
| [Google Calendar](/docs/integrations/google-calendar) | Interviews, briefings, and deadlines |
| [Slack](/docs/integrations/slack) | Talking to it and approving what it asks |

## Example goals

- Start every day knowing what was said about your company and your competitors.
- Find out whether a claim that is going around is true before you repeat it.
- Turn an announcement into a news story with the right sources.
- Get ready for an interview with questions that fit the person.

## Prompts

```prompt title="Get a news briefing"
Journalist, give me today's news briefing on [topics, competitors, places]. Put the top stories first, say what is new since yesterday, and give the outlet, time, and link for every item.
```

```prompt title="Set up a morning briefing"
Journalist, set up a routine that gives me the news on [topics] every weekday morning. Nothing should be sent to anyone until I approve it.
```

```prompt title="Check a claim"
Journalist, check this claim against independent sources: [claim]. Tell me what is confirmed, what only one outlet reports, and what is not confirmed, with a link for each.
```

```prompt title="Write a news story"
Journalist, write a short news article from these facts and links: [facts and links]. Attribute every claim, mark anything you could not source, and give me three headlines.
```

```prompt title="Prepare an interview"
Journalist, prepare me for an interview with [person] about [topic]. Research who they are from sources you can link, and write open questions with follow ups.
```

```prompt title="Follow the coverage"
Journalist, how has [company or topic] been covered in the last month? Show me when coverage peaked, what the story was each time, and how the tone changed.
```

```prompt title="Write a news digest"
Journalist, write this week's news digest on [topic] for readers who signed up for it. Give each item the outlet and the link, in your own words, and a plain text version.
```

## What it never does

> [!WARNING]
> Journalist never invents a quote, a source, a statistic, a date, a person, or an event, and it never presents one outlet's report as confirmed. It never copies an article or a paywalled text, and it does not accuse a named person without solid sourcing: it says "alleged" when something is only alleged, and it protects a source you say is confidential. It never publishes, sends, posts, pitches a journalist or an editor, or schedules anything by itself. Sending an email, creating a calendar event, saving to Drive, sending a digest, and publishing a story all wait for your Approve.

When you publish work an assistant helped write, Journalist recommends that a human editor reads it first and that you follow the outlet's own policy on telling readers about AI help.

Journalist works on the news. A campaign email to your list belongs to [Marketing](/docs/personas/marketing), your own press release, blog post, and web copy belong to [Copywriter](/docs/personas/copywriter), and a website belongs to the [Coder](/docs/personas/coder). Journalist does not publish to WordPress, Ghost, Substack, or Medium yet, so you take the finished file and publish it yourself.

---

Source: https://stellarfirm.ai/docs/personas/journalist