Introduction to Journalist Profiles
What is a Journalist Profile?
A journalist profile on Muck Rack is a comprehensive and dynamic online portfolio showcasing a journalist's or media professional's background, expertise, and work. It is a centralized hub for journalists to highlight their articles, multimedia content, social media presence, and accomplishments.
Navigate a Journalist Profile
You can find a Journalist Profile by running a People Search in Muck Rack, selecting a journalist's name, then selecting the View Full Profile button.
NOTE: The full profile can also be accessed directly from search in a new tab by either using cmd + click (Mac) or ctrl + click (Windows) when selecting the name.
Watch the video or follow the table below to learn how to access and navigate a journalist profile in Muck Rack.
Features of A Muck Rack Journalist Profile
Profile Feature | Description |
Journalist Bio
| Contains basic information about the journalist's location, who they write for, etc. It also displays the verified status if it applies |
Topics Most Covered
| This will display which topics a journalist has covered in the last 12 months in order of frequency. |
Articles
| Articles by the journalist. You can click these to read their work |
Add A Note Or Log
| Allows you to make private comments/notes about the journalist. For example, if there is a special way this journalist should be contacted |
Word Cloud
| Displays common keywords extracted from articles written by them (in the last 12 months) presented as a visual word cloud, with the most frequently mentioned terms appearing larger.
NOTE: English and Spanish are the only languages supported on word clouds for journalist profiles at this time. |
Contact Information | A journalist's default email and phone number, as well as any active social media accounts they have
You can also add Contact Preferences in this area, such as best days or times to contact the journalist. |
Request Update
| Request an update if you feel the journalist's profile is out of date |
Create Alert, Export, Job History
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Log Emails
| Forward emails with this journalist to an email of your choice |
Media Lists
| Add the journalist to a media list |
Relationship Owner
| A place to note if there is a teammate that communicates with this journalist regularly
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NOTE: If any information on a journalist's profile is outdated, click Request Update to the right of the reporter's name. If the profile is not a maintained Muck Rack profile but rather one of your team’s Custom Contacts, Muck Rack’s team cannot research them.
Journalist Verification
A green Verified badge on Muck Rack lets people know that a profile page meets Muck Rack’s criteria to be defined as a verified journalist, and that the information is maintained by Muck Rack’s Editorial team. It also gives you unlimited access to some of Muck Rack’s more powerful tools.
Learn More About Journalist Verification
Learn more about how accounts get verified, how to request verification, and tools available to varified journalists in our dedicated Journalist Verification article.
Share a Journalist Profile
You can generate a sharable link from any Journalist Profile to share with your team. From the Journalist Profile, select "Share this page" under Actions:
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Question | Solution |
Why does Muck Rack create these profiles? | Ever since the inception of Muck Rack, we've been building free tools to help journalists expand their online footprint, measure their impact, maintain portfolios, more easily discover each other's work, and more.
Our automatic profile creation has been especially helpful for journalists who are frequently writing for multiple publications, have worked at publications that don't maintain a repository of their work, and for those who don't want to constantly organize their own online portfolios after every article is published.
While we encourage journalists to promote their Muck Rack profiles, we realize that not everyone may want to have a page in our database. To remove your profile from Muck Rack, you can make edits to your privacy settings here: https://muckrack.com/profile/privacy. |
Why can't I find a journalist's email address? | When an email address or phone number cannot be found, a message will appear in the Contact Information section of the journalist’s profile. The "Muck Rack's team was unable to find..." message is only set to display if Muck Rack’s team cannot locate an email address or phone number. It will be replaced automatically when a new email address is found or if your team adds it directly to the profile.
You can add a custom email address if you have one that will be suitable for that journalist as a workaround. |
How often will the key terms refresh in a journalist word cloud? | Unlike the Word Cloud widget available in Dashboards that refreshes every 15 minutes, key terms on journalist profiles will only refresh when the page is refreshed. |
Why can't I see a word cloud on this journalist's profile? | There are several reasons why you may not see a word cloud on a journalist’s profile:
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Can I request that Muck Rack's team update a journalist's profile? | Yes. If you notice outdated information on a journalist's profile, such as an incorrect email or outlet, select the Request update button in the top right-hand corner of the profile:
Muck Rack's research team will look into updating the profile page within a matter of minutes.
NOTE: If the profile is not a maintained Muck Rack profile, but rather one of your team’s Custom Contacts, Muck Rack’s team cannot research them. |
As a journalist, do I have to pay for Muck Rack? | No journalist is required to pay in order to use Muck Rack. As a free user, you can showcase your portfolio, specify the topics you cover, share a detailed biography and make updates to your page as your career progresses. You also have access to Who Shared My Link, the easiest tool for seeing social share information on your articles.
Verified journalists receive unlimited access to some of Muck Rack’s more powerful features. See our Journalist Verification article for more information on those features and getting verified. |
Why do some journalists appear in a Google search but not on Muck Rack?
| In the process of monitoring thousands of outlets, ingesting millions of articles, and identifying the bylines; Muck Rack automatically creates new journalist profiles every day. These profiles are searchable in Google for the benefit of journalists to find and claim as their own online portfolios/profiles.
Muck Rack’s editorial team is responsible for filling in a selection of these profiles that meet our criteria so they appear on Muck Rack’s curated platform. A smaller subset of these searchable profiles are set as verified.
This is why they may appear in one place and not the other. The quickest way to flag these profiles for review is by using the Request update button. Alternatively, you may start a new chat anywhere in Muck Rack or email us at support@muckrack.com. |
Will every journalist profile have Topics Most Covered? | No. There is a minimum threshold for articles written in the last year per journalist (>20 English articles) for this calculation to run.
These topics are updated once per day, in the morning. |
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