Journalist and Media List Builder MCP Server

An MCP server for the Mamba Labs Journalist and Media List Builder actor on Apify. Give it the beats or topics you want press for. It finds recent news articles on each one, reads the byline on each article page, and returns one row per journalist and outlet: name, outlet, author page, how many matching articles they wrote, their latest one, and the article links as proof.

What's Inside

What it does
Quick start
Prerequisites
Example prompts
Tool
Inputs
Pricing
Your keys
Full actor documentation
License

What it does

The articles come from the Mamba Labs News and Media Mention Monitor, which the actor runs on your Apify account. Press release wires are left out by default, and agency, desk, and staff bylines are never returned. When no journalist is found, one free summary row gives the article, page, and byline counts. All of the work runs on Apify. This package is a thin client that starts the actor run, waits for it, and hands back the dataset rows.

Quick start

You need Node.js 18 or newer and an Apify account with an API token.

Add this to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json), Cursor, or any MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mamba-journalist-media-list-builder": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@mambalabsdev/mcp-journalist-media-list-builder"
      ],
      "env": {
        "APIFY_TOKEN": "your-apify-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart the client. The find_journalists tool appears.

Prerequisites

Node.js 18 or newer.
An Apify API token from console.apify.com/account/integrations, set as APIFY_TOKEN. The server lists its tool without a token; a call needs one.

Example prompts

"Which journalists wrote about sales automation in the last month?"
"Build me a media list of reporters covering fintech funding at TechCrunch and Finextra."
"Find reporters who wrote at least twice about revenue operations, with their author pages."

Tool

find_journalists. One tool. Example arguments:

{
  "topics": ["\"sales automation\""],
  "since_days": "30",
  "min_articles": "1"
}

Inputs

Every buyer facing input of the actor, unchanged. Omitted inputs take the actor's own defaults. Numbers and yes or no values are sent as strings.

Input	Type	Description
`topics`	array	1 to 20 topics or beats. Required
`since_days`	string	Days back, 1 to 90. Default 30
`country`	string	Google News country edition. Default US
`language`	string	Language code. Default en
`outlets_include`	array	Only these outlet domains
`outlets_exclude`	array	Never these outlet domains
`include_press_releases`	string	false (default) or true
`min_articles`	string	Least matching articles per journalist, 1 to 20. Default 1
`max_articles_per_topic`	string	Newest articles read per topic, 1 to 100. Default 30
`max_journalists`	string	Most journalist rows, 1 to 500. Default 50
`max_charge_usd`	string	Optional cap on the whole run, the news run included

Pricing

Pay per event on Apify, billed to your Apify account. Prices in USD.

Event	Free plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold
`journalist-row`, per journalist and outlet	$0.008	$0.0076	$0.0072	$0.0068
`apify-actor-start`, per run start	$0.0025	$0.0025	$0.0025	$0.0025
News run `article-row`, per article read	$0.0023	$0.002185	$0.00207	$0.001955
News run `apify-actor-start`, per run	$0.0015	$0.0015	$0.0015	$0.0015

About half of news article pages name a journalist, so expect roughly 3 to 4 articles per journalist row. A summary row is free.

Your keys

The actor needs no key and holds none. Proxy traffic adds nothing to your price: Mamba Labs pays the platform costs of the run.

Full actor documentation

apify.com/mambalabs/journalist-media-list-builder

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Journalist and Media List Builder MCP Server