12 Tools for Journalists to Help With Your Daily Tasks

It has been an incredibly busy and chaotic start to the year for the media. To help journalists who may be feeling overwhelmed, we wanted to put together a list of tools that might help lighten the load and streamline your workflow this year.

These tools can help with a variety of day-to-day tasks, from research to deepfake detection, project organization, video creation, portfolio management and more.

Dive in to see if one or more of these tools for journalists fits your needs.

1. feedly

Journalists are some of the most avid news readers out there. But that can mean being overwhelmed by busy newsfeeds. Feedly allows you to take control and organize all your favorite sources (news sites, blogs, industry outlets) in one place. Categorize them and you’ll have your own personalized newspaper waiting for you every morning (and of course any time you want). You can also have all your newsletters sent to feedly to help declutter your inbox (which we know is full).

• Cost: Feedly offers free and paid plans. The free plan allows you to follow up to 100 sources.

2. Data Portals

If you need more valuable data and statistics from government organizations and NGOs, check out Data Portals. According to the site, it’s “curated by a group of leading open data experts from around the world – including representatives from local, regional and national governments, international organisations such as the World Bank, and numerous NGOs.”

• Cost: The list of portals is free to browse.

3. AnswerThePublic

Writing for your audience is key and to do that you need to understand what they are searching for online. Use this freemium tool to expand on a keyword — get common questions with your keywords, your keywords + prepositions, and comparison phrases that include your keyword. Answer readers’ questions in your article or use the tool to come up with future content ideas. Browse results in visual charts or easy-to-scan tables.

• Cost: Free and paid options are available depending on your needs. The free version allows 3 searches per day.

4. Noisli

Whether you’re working in a busy newsroom, chatty coffee shop or at home, sometimes you just need help creating a calm space to focus on your writing, editing or research. Check out Noisli, which provides high-quality background noises to help you work, from rain to a crackling fireplace, rustling forest, train and more. There are 28 sounds available to users. You can also get creative by combining sounds and adjusting each sound’s volume to make it your own (rain with a fireplace anyone?).

• Cost: The free plan is perfect if you just need to set aside 90 minutes each day to create that calm atmosphere to boost productivity. Paid plans are available if you want unlimited streaming, more sounds and additional features.

5. Deep Research

OpenAI claims its new AI agent can match the output of research analysts. The tool can reportedly find, analyze and synthesize hundreds of online sources to create a “comprehensive report” by sifting through “massive amounts” of text, images and PDFs. Each task will reportedly take 5-30 minutes to complete, and sources will be cited in the report.

• Cost: Deep Research is available in the U.S. for OpenAI Pro tier users ($200/month, limited to 100 queries a month).

6. PR Newswire for Journalists

Once you sign up for your free account, you will be able to create a custom newsfeed to help you cut through the clutter and receive the news that’s most relevant to you, on the schedule that works best for your workflow. Filter news releases by industry, subject, keyword, company, multimedia and more. Users also have access to ProfNet, a database of industry experts available as sources for your story.

• Cost: PR Newswire for Journalists is free for reporters and bloggers!

7. Pinpoint

This is another research tool — this one from the Google News Initiative — that can help journalists analyze large collections of documents (up to 20,000 in a single collection!). It can search for specific words, phrases, locations, organizations, and people, as well as generate searchable transcriptions from audio files.

• Cost: Pinpoint is free to journalists approved for access by Google (Gmail address required).

8. WebFX Readability Test

To keep readers on the page and engaged, it’s important that your writing is easy for your audience to understand. Writing simply and concisely also has SEO benefits, so it’s a win-win. But you’re the expert, so how do you know if your audience will be able to comprehend your article? Try this readability tool by pasting in your text or entering a URL for live articles that might need a refresh. The tool will give you scores for several readability indexes that analyze the number of words, syllables, complex words and sentences, including Flesch Kinkaid, Coleman Liau and more.

• Cost: This easy-to-use tool is free!

9. PromoAI

Promo is a popular AI video creation tool used largely for marketing. But for bloggers and journalists, the tool can be a great way to generate visually appealing videos to highlight takeaways from your latest article. Use the video to promote the content on social media, increase visibility and boost clicks to your site. All videos have royalty-free licensing, so you don’t need to worry about any copyright claims or usage restrictions. The site also has a large library of video templates for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to make the process even simpler.

• Cost: A Basic plan ($29/month) gives you access to Getty clips and licensed music, but if you want to use the AI tool to generate your own videos, the Standard plan starts at $59/month.

10. Toby

From news sites to email, design files, research tools, social media and beyond, journalists are typically working with a lot of open tabs on their screens and it can become overwhelming. Toby is a bookmark manager that works as a hub for all your documents and links. Working on a story with multiple people? Share the Toby workspace with them so everyone has the necessary links and files at their fingertips.

• Cost: Free and paid plans are available. The free plan allows you to save 60 tabs. Paid plans offer unlimited saved tabs, additional security and support.

11. Authory

We’ve written before about the benefits of curating a clean, professional writing portfolio. Authory allows you to store everything you’ve written in one place with a self-updating portfolio page. For freelancers or journalists writing for multiple outlets at once, this can be a great solution to showcase all of your work (articles, podcasts and videos). Content is automatically backed up, can be private or shared publicly, and can be categorized by topic, publication, etc. Analytics help you see how your content is performing in terms of reach and social media interactions.

• Cost: After a 14-day free trial, standard and pro paid plans are available. The pro plan includes custom domain support, API access, a higher update frequency and app integration.

12. Reality Defender

AI-generated content and deepfakes are getting tougher to spot. Reality Defender can help newsrooms identify fake images, voice clones, manipulated videos and AI-generated text to defend against disinformation and help you stay a trusted source.

• Cost: Flexible, scalable pricing plans can be tailored to the specific needs and requirements of each organization.

Do you have another tool you want to share with fellow journalists? Share it in the comments! We’d love to hear about the tools and sites that you find helpful in your day-to-day work.

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