Open this lesson in your favourite AI. It'll walk you through the why, explain the demo, and quiz you on the try-it list.
Manual contact research works at small scale but breaks down the moment you need to run a coordinated campaign across 20 publications — media databases give you verified contacts, beat histories, and response-rate signals that manual research cannot match. Knowing the tradeoffs between Cision, Muck Rack, and free alternatives lets you choose the right tool for your budget.
Use these three in order. Each builds on the one before.
In one paragraph, explain what a media database is and why PR teams use them instead of building contact lists manually.
Walk me through how a PR team would use Muck Rack to build a targeted media list for a fintech product launch, step by step.
Given a 5-person startup with no PR budget, design a free and low-cost media research stack that gets to 80% of the value of a paid Cision subscription for a targeted launch campaign.