How to build a media list of journalists who cover your industry

You find journalists who write about your industry by reading what's been published on your topic recently and working back to the people who wrote it. Search Google News and the trade publications in your space for stories from the last three to six months about your market, your competitors, and the problems your product solves. Every byline that shows up more than once is a candidate. A reporter who covered a competitor's funding round in August tells you far more than a staff page listing someone as "technology editor."

There are several other places to look, and each one has a limit:

• Media databases. Paid tools such as Muck Rack, Cision, and Meltwater let you search journalists by beat, outlet, and past articles, and they usually include contact details. They cost thousands of dollars a year, and their beat labels can lag behind what a reporter actually writes about now.
• Outlet mastheads and author pages. Many publications list their editors and reporters with their coverage areas, and an author page shows every story a writer has filed there. This is accurate for the outlet but tells you nothing about the outlets you haven't thought of yet.
• Social profiles. Reporters often state their beat in their LinkedIn or X profile, and what they post shows what they're following this month. Profiles go stale, though, and a profile can stay unchanged long after a beat shifts.
• Source request services. Services such as Qwoted show journalists who are looking for sources right now. That's useful for quick quotes, but it only covers reporters who use the service.

Whichever route you use, the hard part comes after finding the names. Journalists change outlets and beats often, so a list built six months ago is partly wrong today. Each name needs checking against what the person has published lately, and the list needs a reason beside every name, or you'll end up sending the same pitch to everyone.

A good media list is short and specific. It holds the 15 to 30 people who have written about stories like yours recently, each at the outlet they work for now, with the articles that show why they belong and a way to reach them. That list matters more than its length, because a pitch only works when it reaches someone who covers the story and can say so in its first line.

Kite builds that list for you. It searches recent coverage, checks every reporter it finds, and gives you the evidence behind each name.

Start by telling Kite what you want to pitch and who you think should hear about it. You can do this in the Kite web app or in Slack:

"We're announcing our seed round next month. Find the reporters who've covered funding in our market this year."

Or describe the topic and let Kite work out the beat:

"Build a media list of trade reporters who write about restaurant operations and software for restaurants."

Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. From that research, your team's knowledge base already holds your positioning, your customers, your competitors, and your market, so Kite can propose which kinds of outlets fit your news without a long brief. It tells you the angle it plans to search for, such as trade publications that serve your customers or reporters who cover startups in your category, and you confirm it or adjust it.

You don't need to connect anything for this job. Kite finds articles, reporters, profiles, and work emails with its own built-in research sources, so you don't need a media database subscription. Connect a spreadsheet or your CRM only if you want the finished list saved there.

Building a list is research, so Kite does it and shows you the result. Nothing is sent to any journalist until you ask Kite to pitch them and approve the pitches.

Kite starts by deciding what kind of story you're pitching, because the story decides which journalists belong on the list. A funding round interests reporters who cover venture deals and startups. A product that changes how clinics book appointments interests the trade press that covers healthcare operations. A survey with new data interests reporters who write about trends in your field.

Kite reads your news alongside your positioning and your market, then names one or two angles and the kind of reporter each one suits. When the angles point at very different audiences, such as trade press and business press, Kite builds a separate group for each so the list stays easy to work from.

Kite finds journalists by searching the web for articles published in recent months and working out who wrote each one. It runs several searches for each angle, because different reporters use different words for the same subject:

• Stories about your topic and your category, using the terms your customers use as well as the industry's own terms.
• Coverage of your competitors, including their launches, funding, and hires.
• News about the industry your customers work in, which is where trade reporters are easiest to find.
• Newsletters, independent writers, and podcasts that cover the same subject, since many reporters now publish on their own.

For each article, Kite records the writer, the outlet, the date, and the link. A writer who appears in several searches, or who has covered the subject more than once, moves up.

If you track your visibility in AI answers with Kite, it also checks which publications ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude cite when they answer questions about your category. Those outlets go on the list with a note, because coverage there can put your company into AI answers as well as in front of readers.

Kite checks every reporter before they stay on the list, because a byline from four months ago doesn't prove the person still covers that subject at that outlet. It looks up each reporter's public professional profile to confirm their current outlet and title, and it reads their author page at the outlet when one exists.

Kite also reads the reporter's recent public posts and their latest articles. Those show what the person is following now, which is often narrower or different from what their title suggests. A reporter who has moved to a new outlet stays on the list at the new outlet when the beat still fits. Anyone who has left journalism, changed beats, or stopped writing about the subject is dropped, and Kite tells you who was dropped and why.

Kite ranks the reporters by how well they match your story, and it gives each one a short reason. It weighs three things:

• How recently they covered a related story. Last month counts for more than last year.
• How closely their coverage matches your angle. Someone who writes about your exact category ranks above someone who covers technology in general.
• Whether their outlet reaches the people you want to reach. A trade publication your customers read can be worth more than a bigger outlet they don't.

A reason reads like a note a colleague would leave you, such as "Wrote two stories on restaurant staffing software since July, including one on a competitor's launch." When the list runs long, Kite splits it into a first group to pitch and a second group to keep in reserve.

If fewer reporters fit than you hoped, Kite says so and explains where the coverage thinned out. A list of 12 strong matches is more useful than 80 names you'd have to sort through yourself.

Kite finds a work email for each reporter through its built-in email lookup, which tries several sources in turn. It keeps each address's verification status as the source reports it, whether that's verified, catch-all, risky, or unverified, so you know which addresses are safe to use.

When no address can be found, Kite marks the reporter as not found instead of guessing one. It notes the other ways to reach that person, such as their public profile or a contact form on the outlet's site. If the reporter's author page or profile says how they prefer to be pitched, Kite adds that to the list too.

When the list is ready, Kite posts it in the conversation where you asked, as a table you can scan and sort. It says how many reporters it found, how many it checked and kept, and who it dropped and why. You can remove names, add journalists you already know, or ask Kite to look harder at one kind of outlet.

From there, Kite can save the list to a spreadsheet or CRM you've connected. It can also go straight on to the next step: reading each reporter's recent stories and writing a pitch for each one, ready for your review. Because beats keep changing, you can ask Kite to refresh the list on a schedule, such as once a quarter, so it's current the next time you have news.

When Kite finishes, you have a media list you can pitch from today, with the evidence behind every name.