Journalist Search & Tips for Better Results

Use Propel's Discover Tab to Find the Right Contacts to Pitch

To access Propel's Media Database, click on the Discover tab.

Using the Journalist Search

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Topic Prompt

Topic Prompt allows you to leverage AI to find the most accurate results possible. This can be based on a pitch, press release, description of your news, or key phrases. Propel’s AI matching technology leverages the latest in vectors and embedding rather than traditional text-based search, to give better results. The filter cross references the Journalist profile, Articles written, and Industry of choice to deliver highly accurate results. Hover over the question mark for more information. To provide the most relevant matches, the results are restricted to 200 journalists.

 

 

Topic Keywords

The topic keyword search is a versatile tool that lets you find journalists based on the articles they've written. This free-text search integrates directly with Propel's Article Search, scanning article headlines to pull in authors of matching articles. For broader search terms like "AI," "fashion," or "public relations," the topic keyword search will return all relevant journalists.

 

 

Exclude Topic Keywords

Use this field to exclude specific keywords from your journalist search results. For example, if you're searching for "Super Bowl" but want to avoid any results related to restaurants, simply exclude "restaurants" as a keyword.

Name and Outlet Name

One of the ways to search the media database is when you know which journalist(s) you're looking for. Let’s say you know the journalist you want to pitch – but you don’t have her contact info. Or you have a specific media outlet you would like to target, but you don't know the title and contact info of each journalist there. In these cases, the journalist search is for you.

Additional filters

To narrow your search results, there are several types of filters you can use: 

• Classification
  • Trade - B2B
  • Consumer - B2C
• Reach
• Outlet prominence
• Job title
• Location (city, state, country)
• Email
• Phone
• Media type 
  • Television
  • Online media
  • Freelance journalist
  • General
  • Magazine
  • News agency
  • Newspaper
  • Trade
  • Blog
  • Cable
  • College Media
  • Microblog
  • Podcast
  • Radio

Adding Journalists to a Media List

Once you've identified the journalists you need, check them off or Select all and click on  Add to Media List. You can also create a new media list on the fly!

Tips and Tricks for Effective Journalist Search

• For very specific and nuanced keywords, like “Super Bowl Sunday”, it is better to use a topic prompt. For broader, established beats, such as sports or even soccer, it is better to use keyword search.
  
  
• Topic prompt also works very well when you want to paste in a full press release, pitch or description.
  
  
• For using multiple keywords, put a comma between each one.
  
  
• You can also exclude keywords, which is a valuable way to narrow the search
  
  
• If you want more results, use a keyword search. If you want fewer results but more appropriate for a very specific topic, use topic prompt search.
  
  

• Topic prompt should not include any info about geography or any of the other filters like media type, job title, etc. For those options, use the actual filters.
  
  
• While using Topic Prompt field, avoid using the Topic Keyword field , and vice versa, as they both work on different search mechanisms.