When people first see journalist results, they assume Medialyst is another media database. It's not.

Traditional tools are database-first. Medialyst is evidence-first.

Static Tags vs Live Reading

Muck Rack and Cision organize contacts with static labels:

• covers travel
• covers lifestyle
• covers startups

Those labels are useful, but they're often broad, outdated, or missing context. A journalist tagged "covers startups" might have pivoted to climate tech six months ago.

You can add journalists by name, from a CSV, from article URLs, through news search, or with AI discovery. An article is not required to start. Medialyst then resolves each journalist and brings recent coverage into the same profile so you can evaluate current fit.

That means the starting input can change without changing the research standard:

1. Add the people or discover the coverage that matters.
2. Resolve each Journalist Profile and review recent articles.
3. Score relevance against your campaign context.

Practical Difference

Database approach: "This person is tagged as a travel journalist."

Medialyst approach: "This person wrote about boutique wellness resorts twice this week and tends to cover premium travel, not budget travel."

That's the difference between a phonebook and a matchmaker. The second approach tells you not just who to pitch, but how to pitch them.

Why This Matters for Pitch Outcomes

A static label helps you find names.

Live article reading helps you understand intent, angle preference, and recent focus. That's what lets you adapt your pitch instead of sending the same template to everyone. Fewer, better, evidence-backed pitches—not mass-blasted templates.

We built Medialyst to answer one question databases struggle with: "Who is most likely to care about this story right now?"