Everything You Need to Know about News Monitoring [2025]

In 2017, Dove – a well-known cosmetic brand – released a controversial ad campaign. It featured a body wash bottle labeled “body soap for normal skin” next to a black woman and another labeled “glowing” next to a white woman. The ad was widely criticized for being racially insensitive and perpetuating stereotypes about skin color.

However, thanks to Dove’s effective news monitoring, the brand could promptly detect the issue, address it, and crush the crisis in the bud. That’s why you probably didn’t hear about this gaffe!

News monitoring means tracking and analyzing news sources to detect specific information. It helps organizations and individuals stay updated with relevant topics and brand mentions. News monitoring is essential for keeping up with trends, understanding public sentiment, protecting a brand’s reputation, and discovering potential brand crises.

The ultimate goal of this article is to answer three questions that have bothered philosophers since at least Socrates’s time: what news monitoring is, how to monitor news, and why should you even care.

It’s time to reveal these truths of humankind!

What is news monitoring?

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News monitoring is the process of following the media coverage that aims to gather relevant information about specific topics.

It’s like listening to all the news sources to find out who, where, and how talks about the topic you’re interested in.

As the name suggests, news monitoring focuses on a specific source type – news media channels.

In a broad sense, news monitoring includes traditional media like print media (newspapers and magazines), TV, and radio.

I imagine you might think: “Dude, we’re in 2024! Who cares about radio and TV news?!”.

Sure, the consumption of traditional media is declining.

However, the truth is that these sources still have a significant audience share and provide valuable insights, particularly for certain demographics and regions where traditional media consumption remains strong.

According to Statista, there over 120 million American households still have TVs. The average time spent with TV in the US is 3 hours 17 minutes a day.

In a narrower sense, news monitoring often focuses on tracking mentions from online news websites and blogs.

Because online platforms have major advantages over traditional media.

They offer real-time updates, a broader reach, and the ability to quickly disseminate information, making them crucial for timely and comprehensive news monitoring.

Ultimately, your PR, marketing, and communication strategy should include a comprehensive media analysis. In other words – you should care about both traditional and digital media.

How to monitor news?

One question down. It’s time for another philosophical puzzle – how to monitor the news?

Monitor media mentions

There’s no better way to discover and analyze news coverage than monitoring mentions. Why?

Because simply put, tracking mentions is easy and efficient!

All you need to do is choose the appropriate news monitoring tool and create a project tracking your desired keyword.

News monitoring tools scan the web 24/7 to detect public mentions.

Once mention is found, the tool puts it into a magic box to analyze and categorize it based on various criteria, such as reach, sentiment, etc.

Such an automated process gives you real-time updates about your earned media coverage.

The keyword can be anything – a brand name, a hashtag, the name of your product, etc.

Okay, and how to choose the right news monitoring tool?

The top 3 factors you should consider are:

1. Diverse and useful features – look for tools that offer a wide range of quantity and quality of your media coverage, like the volume of mentions, sentiment analysis, competitor analysis, and more;
2. The number of tracked sources – the more sources a tool can track, the more complete & accurate data you get;
3. Offering and developing AI solutions – because artificial intelligence features can save you a lot of time.

I strongly recommend you to give a try to Brand24.

It’s a comprehensive AI-powered news monitoring tool that accesses nearly all social and non-social news sources. If you’re interested only in news sites, you can easily filter results to those only.

Next to online news sites, Brand24 tracks and analyzes mentions coming from:

• Blogs, video platforms, podcasts, forums;
• Social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitch and Telegram);
• Review sites (like TripAdvisor or Yelp) and newsletters.

Of course, Brand24 does much more than just collecting news mentions.

Thanks to over 12 years of experience in news monitoring, the tool’s algorithm is nearly perfect in assessing the reach of each news mention and the emotions behind them.

Moreover, Brand24 offers the help of a superhero that never sleeps. His name is AI Anomaly Detector. And – unlike Superman – he has no weakness for kryptonite.

In short, Anomaly Detector constantly watches your project and looks for any unusual pattern.

If it spots one, your personal superhero searches the web to discover what caused the anomaly.

Ultimately, it presents the conclusion in one or two essential sentences.

Check the following example of Qatar Airways.

It’s May 2024. Nothing special is going on, at least regarding Qatar Airways brand awareness.

Suddenly – beep-beep! Anomaly detected!

It turned out that Qatar Airways’ serious turbulence incident from May 26th caused massive news coverage.

Thanks to using a news monitoring tool, you can:

• Monitor news mentions across multiple media channels;
• Save time with automated tracking and analysis;
• Get an instant sentiment analysis;
• Identify trends and topics in your niche.

Monitor the progress

Monitoring news is just the first step.

You should build your competitive advantage by tracking your progress to make the most of it!

Generally speaking, it’s up to you how to define success.

For instance, you might track the increase in positive mentions over time, monitor the impact of PR efforts, or measure your brand’s share of voice compared to competitors.

Setting clear goals and KPIs will help you measure progress effectively.

Okay, and how could you track your news coverage progress (regardless of your definition of “progress”)?

The most convenient way is – again – to use Brand24!

This tool offers a feature called – surprise, surprise – “Compare periods”.

To see your media coverage only, you can simply apply “Sources” filter and exclude social media channels.

Again, let’s do it in practice with Qatar Airways. I decided to compare the company’s performance in April and May 2024.

Look at the screen below. Has Qatar Airways progressed or not?

Ha, the answer is: it depends on your definition of progress!

If you care more about the number of mentions, then yes, Qatar Airways’ news performance in May was definitely better than in April.

Non-social reach has grown by 47%, and Advertisement Value Equivalency (AVE) by 44%.

However, if you care more about quality (and that’s my personal approach) – it doesn’t look so colorful.

As you can see, despite the overall increase in mentions volume, there are far fewer positive ones. At the same time, the number of negative mentions nearly doubled – from 34 to 61!

Why monitoring news is important?

I believe you can feel why news monitoring is important.

But as naming things makes them more real and clear, let’s enumerate the benefits of monitoring news articles and other online news sources.

01 Reputation management

Reputation is like a sandcastle. It takes hours of effort to build, but just one wave can wash it away.

Monitoring media helps detect potentially harmful stories early, enabling you to respond quickly and in the right way before they escalate into full-blown crises.

The Dove case I described at the beginning of this article is the best example of how to do it well!

02 Understanding public sentiment

News monitoring isn’t just about tracking mentions. It’s also about analyzing and understanding how the public feels about your brand, campaign, or the whole industry.

By analyzing the tone of media coverage and online discussions, you gain insights into whether your efforts are positively received or need adjustments.

Imagine you launched a campaign that – contrary to your expectations – received just a little positive coverage.

In such a situation, you could pivot messaging to align with your target audience’s expectations.

To show you a real-life example, I asked the Brand Assistant – another amazing Brand24 AI-powered feature – to identify Qatar Airways’ campaigns with a lukewarm reception.

The Brand Assistant discovered two such campaigns: a partnership with the famous F1 driver Lewis Hamilton and engagement in Italian Cusine Week.

Both campaigns enjoyed excessive reach, but overall, they were perceived neutrally. The Assistant provided me with some actionable recommendations to change this status quo. Wow!

03 Crisis management and prevention

News monitoring acts as an early warning system.

Whether it’s a customer complaint gaining traction, a critical news article, or a viral post threatening your social media presence, being alerted in real-time allows you to:

• Address issues before they escalate.
• Create timely responses that demonstrate accountability and transparency.

04 Competitive analysis

Your brand does not exist in a vacuum. You must have a reference point to understand your online performance.

This can be achieved in two ways:

• By measuring your current performance against your past achievements (we discussed it in the “Monitor the Progress” section);
• By benchmarking your brand against your niche competitors.

From the perspective of news monitoring, competitive analysis can give you incredibly valuable insights regarding your competitors’ campaign strategies, the media outlets covering them, and their share of voice within the industry.

The most effective way to perform competitor analysis is to use real-time media monitoring tools like Brand24 and its “Compare projects” feature. Let’s return to our Qatar Airways example.

I decided to compare Qatari airline news performance with its direct competitor, Etihad Airways. Both are premium Middle Eastern airlines with a strong presence in sports sponsorships.

The analysis revealed that, in November 2024, Qatar Airways enjoyed more than twice as much brand visibility in online news sources compared to Etihad Airways.

It also outperformed Etihad in non-social media reach and the volume of positive coverage.

These factors combined to give Qatar Airways nearly twice the share of voice, highlighting the effectiveness of its media and marketing strategies.

Conclusion

News monitoring is a crucial process for staying updated on relevant topics and brand mentions.

It can protect a brand’s reputation and prevent crises from escalating, as seen with Dove’s quick response to a controversial ad campaign.

By using appropriate news monitoring techniques, you can effortlessly track media coverage, analyze trends, and spot potential threats. With the help of AI solutions, the process is more effective than ever. 

So, whether you’re focused on traditional media or online platforms, make news monitoring an integral part of your PR strategy to stay ahead and in control.

Final thoughts:

• Effective news monitoring should involve tracking mentions across various media channels.
• AI-powered tools like Brand24 enhance the efficiency and accuracy of news monitoring.
• Monitoring helps identify trends and potential crises, protecting brand reputation.
• You should benchmark the quality & quantity of your news coverage.

Ready to implement news monitoring? Let Brand24 help you – sign up for a free trial!