AI Just Built My Media List. Should I Be Worried?
An AI-powered media database that claims it can find the right journalists in minutes.
This is a FUN topic for us because we each have our own opinion & just overall gut reaction when we hear the word AI.
Sarah: “Tell me more.”
Kris: Listen, I get it. It an be a tool. It can be supportive. I 100% use ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner, especially when the creative juices are just not flowing.
Most AI PR tools promise more.
More productivity. More leverage. More capacity. More information.
Relief.
I heard about Medialyst in a Substack (can’t remember who - but probably Alice or Jill) in January and it peaked my interest. I signed up. Quickly built a couple of lists & then…kinda forgot about it.
I reached out to Elvis back in March for a checkin call. It turned into a lowkey brainstorm session when I asked if there was a way to search for articles that contained affiliate links.
It is still one of my favorite calls this Spring & when you’re in affiliate, you have calls 20 hours a week it feels and theycanallkindaruntogether…ya know what I mean?
Elvis followed up within an hour of the call with WILD news:
“I just put together a table as a proof of concept, it extracts the full article and analyzes if they have affiliate links, and how many affiliate links they have.” 😳
When I hear the term “programer” or “developer” Elvis face is what will forever show up now. The dude is an insane coder/builder/doer of things!
Here is a screenshot of 2 columns from a list I just built prompting a very niche look. This is just one example (and probably not the best) in regards to an affiliate specific search. But that’s one of the great things about this platform.
it’s 100% customizable to you & your clients
it’s affordable
it’s built by someone who gets back to you quickly & truly wants to give the people what they want - MORE time.
Now, the Q&A you’ve all been waiting for…Elvis Sun, everyone!
What made you want to start this platform?
We worked on AI systems for 8 years at Google - building tools, shipping products, obsessed with what the technology could actually do. Then in 2023 I started PressPulse as a niche experiment: using AI to curate HARO opportunities so PR people weren’t drowning in emails. It worked, people paid for it, and that opened the door to hundreds of conversations with agencies, freelancers, and in-house teams.
The more I listened, the more I realized media list building was where everyone was bleeding time and money. I watched agencies spend hours manually cross-referencing spreadsheets, eight people sharing one Muck Rack login because the price for what’s essentially a spreadsheet is absurd, and freelancers eating billable time on research that should take minutes.
Our North Star is simple: find all relevant journalists with accurate contact info in under 60 seconds. If we nail that, nothing else matters.
Top 3 pain points & how we solved them:
1. “I spend hours building media lists manually.”
Cross-referencing spreadsheets, Google News, Twitter/LinkedIn - the typical workflow is cobbling together 20 tabs and hoping you didn’t miss anyone. We replaced that with a single AI-powered search that pulls from real-time data so everything is as fresh as it gets.
2. “The data is stale or wrong.”
Emails bounce, journalists switch outlets, contacts go dark. We’ve had users switch from tools costing $6k/yr because the data was unusable - “dead people in the database” level bad. We built the world’s first media database maintained by AI agents, which works around the clock to keep our data fresh. Lastly we cross-reference everything using AI in real time before showing you the results, so we know the data is fresh by the time you see it.
3. “Every PR niche works differently.”
Something we learned during our early days of talking to customers: affiliate PR, finance PR, music PR - they all have different workflows. Instead of forcing one rigid process, we built the platform with flexibility in mind, and an AI that adapts to how you work and glues everything together.
Walk us through the platform — your favorite features as the developer:
The Medialyst agent, hands down. This is something we just released 2 weeks ago, you can build entire media lists through a conversation - describe what you’re looking for, and it handles the research, list assembly, and email drafting. You can literally talk to it on your phone, walk away, and come back to a finished list ready to go. No filters to configure, no buttons to click. Just tell it what you need in plain English.
Who is this platform useful for?
Anyone doing media outreach. Small agencies that want to punch above their weight - compete with the big shops without the big shop budget. Solo PR consultants who can’t justify $1000/mo for Cision/Muckrack. Founders and marketers who love PR but don’t have the time to do it properly - the AI fills the gap so they can do more of it without hiring. If your job involves finding the right journalist and reaching out, this is built for you.
Trial for your audience — specifically for affiliate link detection:
We’re adding 2,000 credits ($85 value) to everyone who signs up through this link: medialyst.ai/kris
Once you’ve got your media list, just ask the AI: “help me find the articles that use affiliate links“ - it’ll pull each article and use AI to flag them for you. Great for affiliate PR teams who need that intel without the manual dig.
A message that made me smile…😃
Have you tried MediaLyst? What did you think? Would love to chat about it with you in the comments!