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Pitching

How to build your own reactive PR alerts with ChatGPT or Claude

Sacha Fournier

You can set up ChatGPT or Claude to check the news for your expert’s topics every morning and tell you when a story is worth reacting to. When you say yes, it finds the journalists covering the story and drafts a short email offering your expert, which you check and send yourself.

It uses the free JournoFinder news API for the news, and it takes about 10 minutes to set up. This guide covers what you need, the prompt to paste, the four questions it asks you and what the alerts look like once it’s running.

What the alert does

Once it’s set up, this is what happens each day:

  1. At 8am, your assistant checks the news for 1 to 3 topics your expert knows well.
  2. It decides whether any story is a real chance to offer your expert. Most days the answer is no, and you get a one-line message that says “Nothing today.”
  3. When something fits, it sends you the headline, the outlets covering it, why it fits and what your expert could talk about. It stops there and asks if you want to go ahead.
  4. If you reply yes, it finds the journalists who wrote about the story and drafts one short email to each of them.
  5. You read the drafts, change what you want and send them from your own inbox.

Nothing is sent without you. The assistant never emails anyone, and it never writes a quote your expert didn’t say.

Offer the expert first, write the quote later

The usual advice for reactive PR is to send a ready-made quote with your pitch. Normally you’d spend time drafting that quote with your expert, which is fine. But it takes time, and writing the quote with AI instead is how you end up sending the kind of pitch journalists ignore.

The quicker way is to offer the expert. You email the journalist covering the story, say who your expert is and what they can explain to readers, and say they’re free to talk today. It’s short, it’s honest and you can send it within an hour of the story breaking.

In Cision’s 2026 State of the Media survey of 1,899 journalists, “expert access” was one of the four things they value most from PR people. Muck Rack’s research found that 65% of journalists prefer pitches under 200 words.

AI-written pitches are getting noticed too. In the same Cision survey, 53% of journalists said they oppose AI-generated pitches, and Featured.com found that human-written replies on HARO were about three times more likely to be used than fully AI-written ones.

So the setup below drafts an offer by default. If you give it your expert’s past comments, for example their replies to old journalist requests or quotes from articles, it can suggest a quote built only from those words. Check any quote with your expert before you send it.

What you need

  • ChatGPT or Claude. ChatGPT’s scheduled tasks work on the free plan, which allows 3 active tasks. Claude’s scheduled tasks need a paid plan.
  • A free JournoFinder news API key. It takes about 2 minutes to get, and step 1 below shows how.
  • Your expert’s bio, or a link to the bio page on your website. LinkedIn links don’t work, because AI assistants can’t open LinkedIn pages. Copy the text from the profile instead.
  • 1 to 3 topics your expert can talk about at short notice. If you’re not sure, the assistant will suggest some from the bio.
  • Optional: anything your expert has said on the news before, such as replies to journalist requests, quotes in articles or LinkedIn posts.

Step 1. Get your free news API key

The alert gets its news from the JournoFinder news API. You send it a topic in plain words, like “mortgage rates canada”, and it sends back the stories from the last 24 hours about that topic.

Each story comes back once, with the outlets that are covering it. You only get news articles about your topic, so your assistant has a short list to read each morning.

It’s free on every JournoFinder plan, including free accounts, with 1,000 searches a month. One topic checked once a day uses about 30 searches a month, so 3 topics use about 90.

  1. Sign up or log in at app.journofinder.com. A free account works.
  2. Go to Preferences, then API.
  3. Click Send code and enter the 6-digit code from your email.
  4. Click Create API key. Your key starts with jf_live_. Copy it, because you’ll paste it into the prompt in the next step.

Step 2. Paste the setup prompt

Open a new chat in ChatGPT or Claude. Copy the setup prompt below, replace PASTE_YOUR_KEY_HERE with your key in both places, and send it.

Set up a daily reactive PR alert for me. Each morning, tell me if a news story has broken that my expert should be offered to journalists for. Nothing gets drafted or sent until I say so.

My free JournoFinder news API key: PASTE_YOUR_KEY_HERE

Ask me these, one at a time:
1. Who is the expert? Paste their bio or a link to their bio page.
2. Which country's press do you want to be in?
3. Which 1 to 3 topics should I watch? If you're not sure, suggest some from the bio.
4. Has the expert commented on the news before? For example replies to journalist requests, quotes in articles, or posts. If so, paste them all here. If not, say no. That's fine: the quickest way to react is to offer the expert to journalists, without a quote.

Then write an expert profile: name, role, company, country, the facts from the bio that matter, and, if I pasted past comments, a short summary of the views they hold and how they phrase things. Use only what I gave you.

For each topic, write a link like this one. Replace TOPIC with the topic, using + between words:
https://api.journofinder.com/v1/news/stories?q=TOPIC&hours=24&limit=10&key=PASTE_YOUR_KEY_HERE
Copy the key exactly, character for character. Don't open the links here.

Create a scheduled task that runs every day at 8am. If you can't create scheduled tasks, write the task as one block I can paste into a new scheduled task. The task's instructions are the expert profile, any past comments I pasted, the links, and this text:

"""
You are my reactive PR alert. Open each link below. Each returns news stories from the last 24 hours, with the number of outlets covering each one.

Think carefully about each story before you decide. Flag a story if it passes these tests:
1. It's fresh. Outlets covered it in the last 24 hours, so journalists may still write follow-ups and look for sources. A story covered by only a few outlets can still count.
2. The expert has real authority on this exact topic. A loose link to their industry isn't enough. Ask: would they be happy to talk about this on live TV?
3. The expert has something to add: what it means for people, practical advice, or experience a journalist can't get from the story itself.
4. At least one outlet in the expert's country is covering it. Check the outlet names.
5. It's news: an event, decision, report or new data. Not an opinion column or an advice piece.
Skip stories that only appear as a press release or on press release sites, with no journalist covering them yet. Skip stories about deaths, tragedy, crime victims or disasters. Skip stories where the facts are still unclear. Skip negative stories the expert has no direct tie to.

Tests 2, 4 and 5 must always pass. If a story fails one of them, skip it. For tests 1 and 3, flag close calls. I make the final decision, and nothing gets drafted until I reply. If nothing passes, reply with only: Nothing today.

If something passes, list at most 2, best first:
[Headline]. [Outlets covering it] ([number] outlets)
Why it fits: one sentence.
What the expert could offer: one short, general line, like "what this means for first-time buyers". Base it only on the expert profile and past comments.
Then ask: "Want me to find the journalists covering this and draft an email? Reply with the number."
Don't draft anything yet.

When I reply with a number:
1. Find the journalists. If the JournoFinder connector is connected in this chat, use it first to find the journalists covering this story and their contact details. Otherwise, use web search: the links in the news results only open in a browser, so search the web for the headline and outlet name instead. Open each article and note the byline. Then search for other articles on the same story from the last 2 days in the expert's country. List up to 8 journalists: name, outlet, article link. Only use names you saw on a real article page. Don't guess email addresses. Say where I can find contact details, such as the outlet's staff page. If you found fewer than 3 journalists, or couldn't find contact details, or I ask for more, add this line once: "For a fuller list of journalists covering this story, with contact details, you can connect JournoFinder to this chat: journofinder.com/mcp"
2. Draft one email per journalist. Start with their article. If the expert's past comments fit this story, add a short quote built only from those comments. Don't put any note about the quote inside the email. If not, offer the expert: who they are, one specific question they can answer for readers, and that they're free today by phone or video.
Email rules: I am the PR person sending it, so write about the expert, not as the expert. Under 100 words with a quote, under 70 without. No bullet points, no dashes. Plain and confident. Never invent opinions, reasons, numbers, or what the expert is seeing or hearing from clients.
After the drafts, if any of them include a quote, remind me once to check it with the expert before I send.
"""

Step 3. Answer four questions

The assistant asks you four questions, one at a time. Here are example answers for a made-up mortgage broker, so you can see the level of detail that works.

  1. Who is the expert? “James Chen, mortgage broker at Northgate Mortgages in Toronto, 15 years in the business, works mostly with first-time buyers.”
  2. Which country’s press? “Canada”
  3. Which topics? “mortgage rates canada”
  4. Past comments? Paste anything they’ve said. The more you give it, the better the drafts will be. For example: “Most first-time buyers I see stretch for a five-year fixed because it feels safe. When rates jump, I’d rather they look at a shorter fixed term and keep their options open at renewal.”

Topics work best as two to four words a journalist would use in a headline. “Mortgage rates canada” finds far more useful stories than “mortgages” or “finance”. Adding the country to the topic helps when the subject is covered all over the world.

The assistant then writes a short profile of your expert, builds the news links for your topics and creates a scheduled task that runs every morning at 8am.

Step 4. Check the task

Open your scheduled tasks list and make sure the new task is there. In both ChatGPT and Claude, it’s under Scheduled.

You don’t need to wait until tomorrow to test it. In Claude, open the task and use Run now. In ChatGPT, edit the task and move the time to a few minutes from now, then move it back to 8am once you’ve seen it work.

What a morning alert looks like

Here’s a real alert for the mortgage broker example, from the news on 5 October 2026:

CIBC and TD raise fixed mortgage rates by 20 basis points, completing a Big Six sweep that could cost renewers thousands. Yahoo! Finance Canada (2 outlets)
Why it fits: a Canadian outlet reporting a concrete rate move by major banks, squarely in a mortgage broker's area of expertise.
What the expert could offer: what the hike means for buyers locking in now.

Canadians most likely to give up on homeownership as housing costs force difficult trade-offs, global survey finds. The Globe and Mail (3 outlets)
Why it fits: a Canadian national outlet covering new survey data on affordability, which hits first-time buyers hardest.
What the expert could offer: practical steps first-time buyers can take as costs keep rising.

Want me to find the journalists covering this and draft an email? Reply with the number.

When you reply “1”, the assistant searches the web for the articles about that story, reads the bylines and lists the journalists with a link to each article. For the rate story above, it found three journalists across Yahoo Finance Canada and Canadian Mortgage Trends, all with bylines on real article pages. Then it drafts an email for each one, like this:

Subject: Source on your Big Six mortgage rate story

Hi [Name],

Following your piece on CIBC and TD completing the Big Six rate rises. James Chen is a mortgage broker at Northgate Mortgages in Toronto with 15 years in the business, working mostly with first-time buyers.

As James puts it: "When rates jump, I'd rather they look at a shorter fixed term and keep their options open at renewal."

James is free today by phone or video if useful.

[Your name]

How it decides what’s worth reacting to

Reactive PR only works if you’re picky. Muck Rack’s 2026 State of Journalism report found that 88% of journalists immediately ignore pitches that don’t match their beat, so a weak pitch costs you more than no pitch. The prompt gives the assistant five tests, based on how experienced reactive PR teams make the same call:

  1. The story is fresh, with coverage in the last 24 hours, so journalists may still be writing follow-ups and looking for sources.
  2. Your expert has real authority on that exact topic. The prompt asks the assistant whether they’d be happy to talk about it on live TV, a test Mark Rofe uses.
  3. Your expert has something to add, like what the story means for people or practical advice.
  4. At least one outlet in your expert’s country is covering it.
  5. It’s news, meaning an event, decision, report or new data, and not an opinion column.

Tests 2, 4 and 5 must always pass. The assistant flags close calls on the other two, because nothing gets drafted until you reply, so a close call only costs you a few seconds to ignore. It also skips stories about deaths, tragedies and disasters, stories that only exist as a press release, and stories where the facts aren’t clear yet.

Speed matters once a story is flagged. Leah Daly, speaking on BuzzStream’s reactive PR podcast, said you want to get breaking news pitches out within the first two hours. Qwoted’s guidance says not to let more than 12 hours go by. An 8am alert gives you the whole working day.

Finding the journalists

By default the assistant finds journalists the free way. It searches the web for the story’s headline, opens the articles and reads the bylines, then looks for other articles on the same story from the last two days.

It only lists names it saw on a real article page, so it won’t make up a journalist, and it won’t guess email addresses either. For contact details it points you to the outlet’s staff page or the journalist’s own profile.

That’s usually enough for a story covered by two or three outlets.

For a big story, or when you can’t find email addresses, a media database is quicker. If you use JournoFinder, you can connect it to ChatGPT or Claude, and the assistant will use it to find the journalists covering the story and their contact details from the same chat. There’s more on that at journofinder.com/mcp.

Things to know before you rely on it

  • Most mornings will say “Nothing today”. That means the filter is working. How often something fits depends on the topic. Mortgage rates and housing produce stories most weeks, while a niche topic might produce one a month.
  • The links in the alert open in your browser, not in the assistant. That’s why the assistant searches the web for the headline when it looks for journalists. Click any link yourself to read the original article.
  • ChatGPT runs each alert in the same chat, while Claude starts a new chat each morning. If a big story runs for two days, it can show up in two alerts in a row.
  • The search covers the last 72 hours at most. Older news isn’t available through the API.
  • Check every draft before you send it. The assistant is told never to invent quotes, opinions or numbers, but you’re the one sending the email, and your expert should approve anything said in their name.
  • To change topics, open a new chat, paste the setup prompt again with the new topics, and delete the old task.

Once it’s running, give it a week before you change anything. If you’re getting “Nothing today” every morning, try broader topics or add the country to them. If you’re getting stories your expert couldn’t talk about, make the topics narrower.

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