News monitoring for brands, technology, and policy

News monitoring is a newsroom job: Google News sections and keyword search as JSON. Headlines and topics, not tweets. Social mentions belong on brand mention monitoring. Crypto and policy is a tighter vertical. The objects live on the News host note.

This is not a press-release wire, not a clipping service with a human in Bangalore, and not a 402 tutorial. You schedule GETs against sections and keywords. You read headlines. You decide whether something is a story.

Business, technology, and world are the default beats for this title. Science, health, sport, and entertainment exist on the same host when the beat needs them. Keyword search with a language edition sits beside the sections. Do not skip the edition.

Sections as beats

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer bby_live_…' 'https://google-news.fetcher.sh/api/technology'

A technology desk hits /api/technology and maybe a keyword for the one company that matters this quarter. A policy desk hits world plus business, and keyword-searches the regulation string. A brand desk that only cares about the name should still run News — but they should also run X and Reddit, which is the other article.

If the watch is specifically crypto and regulation, use that vertical note. Stay here for the newsroom feed: sections, editions, a keyword when the beat has a name.

Dedup by story, not by title string. The same wire item will show up with three headlines. Decode URLs when you need the publisher. Store what you have already sent to Slack so the morning job does not re-ping last night’s cluster.

Headlines are not tweets, and that is the point

X is faster and worse. News is slower and sourced. A monitoring program that only watches tweets will be first and wrong. One that only watches News will be late to the joke and on time for the statement. Most teams want both, labeled.

Do not paste News rows into a sentiment graph next to Reddit without a column for corpus. “Negative coverage” in headlines is not “people are mad in a subreddit.” Policy people who mix those get yelled at by comms, correctly.

Press-release wires will still beat you on embargoed corporate news. We do not sell a wire. If the comms team needs PR Newswire, they already have it. This job is Google News as JSON.

A case: a technology desk without a clipping vendor

A five-person startup cannot buy a Meltwater seat this year. They can hit /api/technology twice a day, plus keyword search for their product name in en-US.

Most mornings are nothing. One morning a trade blog has them in a roundup. That row is in the JSON. They did not need a vendor to print a PDF. They needed not to miss the roundup.

When they start caring about UK coverage, they add en-GB. When they start caring about tweets, they add the brand-mentions job and they keep it in a different channel so the editor’s Slack is not a firehose.

A case: policy, not “the brand”

A researcher is watching AI policy, not a company. Keyword search for ai policy, world and technology sections, two editions. They do not run the company name. They would drown in product launches.

Crypto and regulation is the same idea with a different vocabulary. This case is the general desk: beats and keywords, headlines only, stop before you add X unless you mean to.

Sport and entertainment exist when the brand is a team or a show. Forcing everything through /api/business because the company is a company is how you miss the story that ran in entertainment. Pick the section that matches the beat, not the org chart.

A twice-a-day cadence is enough for most desks. Every five minutes is how you pay for the same cluster all morning. Pay per call makes that visible. A clipping vendor hides it in a seat. Neither replaces a human who can say “this is the same wire item three times.”

Brand mentions add X and Reddit when the name is the story. This job stays headlines when the beat is technology, policy, or business as news. Mixing a tweet into the morning News channel without a label is how an editor yells. Keep channels separate even when the cron is the same key.

Science and health are real sections. Use them if that is the desk. Do not dump a drug-trial headline into /api/technology because the company is a startup.

What this watch is not

Not tweets. Not a wire. Not Search Console. Not Apple News. Headlines as a feed, on google-news.fetcher.sh, paid per GET. If you needed blue links, google.fetcher.sh is next door and a different object. Weekday mornings are enough for most beats. Save hourly for a crisis you can name.