📰 Media Pitch Leads & Journalist Source Request Monitor

Real-time journalist source requests, editorial queries, and digital PR pitch opportunities aggregated from live media channels — delivered straight to your dataset or instant Slack/Discord channel.

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💡 Why Media Pitch Leads Monitor?

PR agencies, SEO link builders, and startup founders routinely pay $3,000 to $10,000+ per year for enterprise media databases like Muck Rack and Cision. Meanwhile, journalists from top publications (Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, The Daily Telegraph) constantly publish public source queries seeking expert commentary, quotes, case studies, and founder interviews.

These media queries have a tight 12 to 24-hour pitch window. If you reply after the deadline, the story is already filed.

Media Pitch Leads Monitor solves this by continuously monitoring public journalist feeds, tagging them by Publication Authority Tier (DR 80+), calculating Urgency Countdowns, extracting Direct Journalist Emails & Phone Numbers, and dispatching Instant Alert Cards to Discord or Slack the moment a query goes live.

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⚡ Key Features

Feature	Competitor Actors	Media Pitch Leads Monitor
Data Sources	Single platform / slow scrapers	Multi-Stream: SourceBottle (12 Industries) + journa.host (Verified Journalists) + Mastodon Network
Authority Tiering	❌ None (treats DR 90 Forbes like a personal blog)	✅ Tier 1 (DR 80+), Tier 2 (DR 50-79), and Tier 3 (Niche) automatic scoring
Urgency & Deadlines	❌ Raw text only	✅ Calculated Hours-Remaining with CRITICAL (< 12h) and EXPIRING_SOON flags
Contact Extraction	❌ Buried in long text blocks	✅ Heuristic extraction of Direct Emails and Phone Numbers
Instant Alerts	❌ None (must manually check dataset)	✅ Rich Discord & Slack Embed Cards with 1-click respond buttons
Stateful Deduplication	❌ Delivers duplicate items on every run	✅ Key-Value Store memory — scheduled runs only return brand-new opportunities

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📡 Monitored Data Feeds

1. SourceBottle (12 Industry Sectors):
   • Business & Finance (61)
   • Technology (70)
   • Professional Services (67)
   • Health & Wellbeing (65)
   • Lifestyle (66)
   • Entertainment & Arts (64)
   • Public Relations & Marketing (68)
   • Retail & Consumer Goods (69)
   • Education & Non-Profit (62)
   • Environment & Agriculture (63)
   • Travel & Tourism (71)
   • General Interest (72)
2. journa.host:
   • The premier Mastodon server specifically built for verified reporters, editors, and columnists.
3. mastodon.social & Federated Network:
   • Global federated stream of #journorequest and #prrequest editorial callouts.

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🏆 Publication Authority Tiers

To help SEOs and PR specialists prioritize high-authority backlinks and top-tier press mentions, every request is categorized into:

• Tier 1 (DR 80+): Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, Financial Times, The Guardian, TechCrunch, Business Insider, The Daily Telegraph, News Corp, CNBC, Fortune, Wired, Sydney Morning Herald, etc.
• Tier 2 (DR 50-79): VentureBeat, Adweek, Digiday, Healthline, MarketingWeek, Search Engine Journal, Decrypt, Coindesk, The Register, etc.
• Tier 3 (Niche): Independent podcasts, specialized trade blogs, regional magazines, local newsletters.

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📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
sources	array	["sourcebottle", "journahost", "mastodon"]	Data feeds to monitor.
sourcebottleIndustries	array	["61", "70", "67", "65", "66"]	SourceBottle industry sectors to scan.
keywords	array	[]	Keywords to filter topic, publication, or requirements (e.g. ["finance", "AI", "Forbes", "startup"]).
publicationTiers	array	[]	Filter by TIER_1_TOP_MEDIA, TIER_2_MID_MEDIA, or TIER_3_NICHE.
onlyOpenDeadlines	boolean	true	Exclude requests whose submission deadline has already passed.
minHoursRemaining	integer	0	Exclude requests expiring in less than X hours.
maxRequests	integer	100	Maximum number of opportunities to retrieve.
onlyNewRequests	boolean	true	Enable stateful Key-Value Store deduplication for recurring schedules.
webhookUrl	string	""	Discord or Slack incoming webhook URL for instant alerts.
webhookUrgentOnly	boolean	false	Only fire webhooks for Tier 1 or Critical (<12h) requests.

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📤 Output Data Format

Each record pushed to the Apify dataset contains:

{
  "id": "sb_161359",
  "title": "URG - TODAY: looking for Sydney home buyers!",
  "publication": "The Daily Telegraph",
  "publicationTier": "TIER_1_TOP_MEDIA",
  "category": "Business & Finance",
  "urgency": "CRITICAL (< 12 hours)",
  "deadline": "22 September 2026 @ 12pm Eastern Daylight Saving Time",
  "deadlineIso": "2026-09-22T12:00:00+00:00",
  "hoursRemaining": 8.5,
  "contactEmail": "ike.morris@news.com.au",
  "contactPhone": "0403981799",
  "targetGeography": "Australia (Sydney)",
  "summary": "Are you a family looking to buy a home but have been put off because house prices are unaffordable? We want to hear from you!",
  "requirements": "I am a reporter from The Daily Telegraph and we are looking to interview a family living in Sydney who is trying to buy a home...",
  "sourceBadge": "Journalist",
  "respondUrl": "https://www.sourcebottle.com/query.asp?iid=61&qid=161359",
  "source": "SourceBottle"
}

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🔔 Setting Up Instant Slack & Discord Alerts

1. Create an Incoming Webhook in your Discord server (Server Settings > Integrations > Webhooks) or Slack app.
2. Paste the URL into the webhookUrl field in the actor input.
3. Schedule the actor to run every 1 hour on Apify.
4. With onlyNewRequests: true, you will receive immediate push notifications whenever a journalist matches your keywords!

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💰 Transparent Pay-Per-Event Pricing

• Pricing Model: PAY_PER_EVENT
• Actor Start: $0.002 (one-time base execution fee per run)
• Delivered Media Pitch Opportunity: $0.004 per verified lead (apify-default-dataset-item)

Example: A sweep delivering 25 fresh journalist requests costs only $0.002 + (25 × $0.004) = $0.102 (10 cents).