# News & Press Release Monitor (`cynix_dev/news-press-monitor`) Actor

Watch company newsrooms, blogs, and press pages and get one clean record per article — with new-item detection between runs, so a scheduled run emits only what's actually new.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/cynix\_dev/news-press-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [Cynix Dev](https://apify.com/cynix_dev) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Developer tools, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.25 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## News & Press Release Monitor

Watch company newsrooms, blogs and press pages and get **one clean record per article** — with new-item detection between runs, so a scheduled run emits only what's genuinely new. Optional sentiment scoring, entity extraction and signed webhooks.

### What it does

Point it at RSS/Atom feeds **or plain newsroom URLs** — it auto-discovers the feed behind a page, so you don't have to hunt for one. Each run fetches every source, keeps state in a named key-value store, and by default emits only items it hasn't seen before.

That state is what turns this from a feed reader into a monitor: schedule it hourly and each run produces a clean diff instead of the same fifty articles over and over.

On top of that it can score sentiment, extract entities (organisations, people, tickers, money amounts, percentages, dates), and POST each new item to your webhook with an HMAC signature.

### Features

- **Feed auto-discovery** — give it a newsroom page URL and it finds the RSS/Atom feed.
- **New-item detection** — `onlyNew` emits just the delta, with state kept in a named store.
- **Independent monitors** — use different `storeName` values to run separate watchlists that don't interfere.
- **Keyword filtering** — keep only items matching your terms.
- **Sentiment scoring** — a −1 to 1 score plus a positive/negative/neutral label.
- **Entity extraction** — organisations, people, tickers, money, percentages and dates from title and summary.
- **Webhooks with HMAC** — POST new items to your endpoint, signed with `webhookSecret` via `X-Signature`.
- **Event selection** — fire on every new item, only on keyword matches, or on sentiment thresholds.

### What people use it for

- Competitor monitoring — know within the hour when a rival announces something.
- PR and brand tracking — watch coverage and sentiment about your own company.
- Investment research — monitor portfolio companies' press releases for material news.
- Content curation — feed a newsletter or Slack channel with filtered industry news.
- Crisis detection — trigger a webhook when negative-sentiment coverage appears.

### How new-item detection works

Seen items are recorded in a named key-value store — `storeName`, defaulting to `news-press-monitor-state`. On each run, anything already in that store is suppressed when `onlyNew` is on.

Two practical consequences:

1. **The first run is your baseline.** It will emit whatever's currently in the feeds. Runs after that emit only new items.
2. **Separate monitors need separate stores.** Running one task for competitors and another for your own brand? Give each its own `storeName`, or they'll suppress each other's items.

To re-emit everything (a backfill or a test), set `onlyNew` to `false` or point `storeName` at a fresh name.

#### Webhook payloads

Set `webhookUrl` and each qualifying item is POSTed to you as JSON. With `webhookSecret` set, an `X-Signature` header carries an HMAC-SHA256 of the payload — verify it server-side before trusting the request. Use `webhookEvents` to fire on `new_item`, `keyword_match` or a sentiment threshold instead of everything.

### Input

`sources` is required and accepts feed URLs or plain page URLs. Keep `onlyNew` on for monitoring; turn it off for a one-time backfill.

| Field | Type | Default | What it does |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `sources` **(required)** | array | `["https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/", "https://openai.com/news/"]` | RSS/Atom feed URLs, or plain newsroom/blog page URLs (the actor auto-discovers their feeds). |
| `keywords` | array | `[]` | Only keep items whose title/summary contains ANY of these (case-insensitive). Empty = all. |
| `onlyNew` | boolean | `true` | Emit only items not seen in previous runs (state kept in a named key-value store). Disable to emit everything each run. |
| `maxItemsPerSource` | integer | `50` | Cap per source per run. Range 1–500. |
| `storeName` | string | `news-press-monitor-state` | Named key-value store for seen-item state. Use different names to run independent monitors. |
| `doAnalyzeSentiment` | boolean | `true` | Add sentiment score (-1 to 1) and label (positive/negative/neutral) to each item using a lightweight lexicon. |
| `doExtractEntities` | boolean | `true` | Extract organizations, people, tickers, money amounts, percentages, and dates from title+summary. |
| `webhookUrl` | string | — | POST each new item (or alert) to this URL. Payload includes the full item record. |
| `webhookEvents` | array | `["new_item"]` | When to fire webhook: 'new\_item' (every new item), 'keyword\_match' (only items matching keywords), 'sentiment\_negative' (negative sentiment), 'entity\_match' (specific entities). |
| `webhookSecret` | string | — | HMAC-SHA256 secret for verifying webhook payloads. If set, X-Signature header is included. |

#### Input example

```json
{
  "sources": [
    "https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/"
  ],
  "onlyNew": false,
  "maxItemsPerSource": 10,
  "doAnalyzeSentiment": false,
  "doExtractEntities": false,
  "storeName": "news-press-monitor-state",
  "webhookEvents": [
    "new_item"
  ]
}
```

### Output

One record per article: source and feed identity, title, URL, publication timestamp, summary, an `isNew` flag, plus sentiment and entities when those analyses are enabled.

Every dataset record contains: `source`, `feedUrl`, `feedTitle`, `title`, `url`, `publishedAt`, `summary`, `categories`, `isNew`, `fetchedAt`.

#### Output example

A real record from a run of this Actor:

```json
{
  "source": "https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/",
  "feedUrl": "https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/",
  "feedTitle": "Cloudflare Blog",
  "title": "A revisit of remote Spectre attacks on Cloudflare Workers",
  "url": "https://blog.cloudflare.com/revisiting-spectre-attacks-on-workers/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-08-19T16:00:28.000Z",
  "summary": "In 2024 and 2025, we reassessed remote Spectre attacks on our Workers infrastructure. We share details about the new attack primitives like Spectre gadgets, remote timers, achieving co-location and how new defenses furth …",
  "categories": [
    "Attacks",
    "Edge",
    "Research",
    "… +1 more"
  ],
  "isNew": true,
  "fetchedAt": "2026-08-20T02:32:24.858Z"
}
```

Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or JSONL from the Console, or pull it programmatically through the Apify API and any of the official clients.

### How to use it

1. Click **Try for free** (or **Start** if you already have an Apify account).
2. Fill in the input fields described above — the defaults already produce a working run.
3. Press **Start** and watch the log; results stream into the dataset as they are found.
4. When the run finishes, open the **Output/Storage** tab and export as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Runs can be scheduled (hourly, daily, weekly) and wired into Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, webhooks or your own backend through Apify integrations. Everything the Console does is also available over the [Apify API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2).

### Pricing

This Actor is billed on Apify's **pay-per-event** model: a small charge when a run starts, plus a charge for each result written to the dataset. You only pay for records you actually receive — a run that finds nothing costs only the start event. Current rates are always shown on the **Pricing** tab of this page, and the run log prints your usage as it goes.

Free-plan credits from Apify cover a large amount of light usage, so you can evaluate the Actor before committing to anything.

### FAQ

#### Do I need to find the RSS feed myself?

No. Pass the newsroom or blog URL and the Actor attempts feed discovery. Passing a known feed URL directly is still the most reliable option when you have one.

#### What if a site has no feed at all?

Discovery will fail for that source. Most newsrooms, blogs and press pages still publish RSS or Atom, even when they don't advertise it — check `/rss`, `/feed` or `/atom.xml` on the domain.

#### How good is the sentiment analysis?

It's a lightweight lexicon-based score — fast, cheap and directionally useful for spotting tone shifts across many articles. It is not a trained model and will misread sarcasm and industry jargon. Use it for triage, not as ground truth.

#### Can I monitor Google News or a search query?

Anything with a feed URL works, including feed-producing search services. Point `sources` at the feed and treat it like any other.

#### How often should I schedule it?

Hourly suits most competitive monitoring. Every 15 minutes is reasonable for breaking-news use cases. Because only new items are emitted, frequent runs stay cheap.

#### Why did an item appear twice?

Usually because the same article is syndicated on two feeds you're watching, or a publisher changed the item's URL/GUID. Deduplicate on the article `url` downstream if that matters.

### Other Actors by cynix\_dev

| Actor | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| [Company Tech Stack & Hiring Intelligence](https://apify.com/cynix_dev/company-tech-intel) | Detect technologies from company websites, extract tech requirements from job postings, discover competitors. |
| [Job Postings — ATS Boards Extractor](https://apify.com/cynix_dev/job-postings-ats) | Pull live job postings straight from companies' public applicant-tracking boards — Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, SmartRecruiters, and … |
| [SEC EDGAR Filings Extractor](https://apify.com/cynix_dev/sec-edgar-filings) | Search and extract SEC EDGAR filings: full-text search across all filings or company filing histories by CIK. |
| [WHOIS & DNS Enrichment](https://apify.com/cynix_dev/whois-enrichment) | Enrich domains with structured WHOIS data (registrar, registration/expiration dates, status, nameservers) and optional DNS … |
| [Website to RAG Chunks](https://apify.com/cynix_dev/web-to-rag-chunks) | Crawl any website and turn its pages into clean, chunked, metadata-rich Markdown records ready for RAG pipelines, vector stores, … |
| [Dataset Drift & QA Monitor](https://apify.com/cynix_dev/dataset-drift-qa) | Stop finding out your scrapers broke three days late. Point this actor at any Apify dataset or JSON endpoint and it watches the … |
| [Page Change Monitor](https://apify.com/cynix_dev/page-change-monitor) | Monitor web pages for content changes. Diffs each run against the previous snapshot and emits structured change records with … |
| [OpenStreetMap Geocoder](https://apify.com/cynix_dev/osm-geocoder) | Forward and reverse geocoding via the free Komoot Photon / OpenStreetMap service. No API key, no scraping, ODbL data. |
| [Page Change Monitor](https://apify.com/cynix_dev/page-change-monitor) | Monitor web pages for content changes. Diffs each run against the previous snapshot and emits structured change records with … |

### Legal and responsible use

This Actor collects only publicly available information. You are responsible for how you use the data, including compliance with the target site's Terms of Service, robots directives, copyright, and data protection law such as GDPR and CCPA. Do not use it to gather personal data without a lawful basis.

### Support and feedback

Found a bug, hit a site change, or need an extra field? Open a ticket on the **Issues** tab of this Actor — issues are read and fixed. Feature requests and custom-scraper enquiries are welcome through the same channel.

# Actor input Schema

## `sources` (type: `array`):

RSS/Atom feed URLs, or plain newsroom/blog page URLs (the actor auto-discovers their feeds).

## `keywords` (type: `array`):

Only keep items whose title/summary contains ANY of these (case-insensitive). Empty = all.

## `onlyNew` (type: `boolean`):

Emit only items not seen in previous runs (state kept in a named key-value store). Disable to emit everything each run.

## `maxItemsPerSource` (type: `integer`):

Cap per source per run.

## `storeName` (type: `string`):

Named key-value store for seen-item state. Use different names to run independent monitors.

## `doAnalyzeSentiment` (type: `boolean`):

Add sentiment score (-1 to 1) and label (positive/negative/neutral) to each item using a lightweight lexicon.

## `doExtractEntities` (type: `boolean`):

Extract organizations, people, tickers, money amounts, percentages, and dates from title+summary.

## `webhookUrl` (type: `string`):

POST each new item (or alert) to this URL. Payload includes the full item record.

## `webhookEvents` (type: `array`):

When to fire webhook: 'new\_item' (every new item), 'keyword\_match' (only items matching keywords), 'sentiment\_negative' (negative sentiment), 'entity\_match' (specific entities).

## `webhookSecret` (type: `string`):

HMAC-SHA256 secret for verifying webhook payloads. If set, X-Signature header is included.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "sources": [
    "https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/",
    "https://openai.com/news/"
  ],
  "keywords": [],
  "onlyNew": true,
  "maxItemsPerSource": 50,
  "storeName": "news-press-monitor-state",
  "doAnalyzeSentiment": true,
  "doExtractEntities": true,
  "webhookUrl": "",
  "webhookEvents": [
    "new_item"
  ],
  "webhookSecret": ""
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `dataset` (type: `string`):

One record per detected article: source, title, url, published date, sentiment/entities, new-item flag.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "sources": [
        "https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/",
        "https://openai.com/news/"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("cynix_dev/news-press-monitor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "sources": [
        "https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/",
        "https://openai.com/news/",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("cynix_dev/news-press-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "sources": [
    "https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/",
    "https://openai.com/news/"
  ]
}' |
apify call cynix_dev/news-press-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,cynix_dev/news-press-monitor"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/finSVysWkQWqeUJtI/builds/Z6pECTQzgqlRes5nI/openapi.json