🦞OpenClaw Guide
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AI Assistant for Journalists

More time on the story. Less time on research, transcription, and administrative overhead.

Journalism is about being first, being right, and being compelling. An AI assistant handles the research lift, interview transcription, and source management so you can focus on the craft.

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Sound familiar?

These are the daily frustrations that drain your energy and steal your time.

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Background research before interviews takes hours

Interviewing a CEO about a regulatory issue requires understanding the regulation, the company's history with it, and what competitors have said. Solid background research takes 4-6 hours per interview. With 3 interviews a week, that's 15+ hours of background work before you even pick up the phone.

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Transcription is tedious and time-consuming

A 45-minute interview produces 8,000+ words of raw transcription that need to be cleaned, organized by theme, and mined for quotes. Doing this manually takes 3 hours. Many journalists pay for transcription services or skip important quotes because they can't find them in the raw text.

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Document analysis is a specialized skill in short supply

FOIA documents, SEC filings, earnings transcripts, court records — these are goldmines for investigative stories but they're dense and technical. Finding the needle requires reading the haystack, and the haystack is often thousands of pages.

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Social listening and tip monitoring is impossible to sustain

The story often breaks on social media before it breaks in official channels. Monitoring relevant accounts, hashtags, and communities across platforms for tips and breaking news is a full-time job you can't maintain while also writing.

With an AI assistant, you can...

Transform how you work. Here's what becomes possible.

Pre-interview research briefs in minutes

Input your subject's name, the topic, and the angle you're pursuing. Get a briefing: their background, prior statements on this topic, controversies, and 15 interview questions worth asking.

Example:

'Brief me on Dr. James Chen for tomorrow's interview about his clinical trial results. I'm looking at potential conflicts of interest. Background, prior statements about the drug, industry relationships, and 10 tough questions.'

Interview transcription and quote extraction

Upload your audio and get a clean transcript, key quotes organized by theme, and a summary of major claims. Find any quote from your interview in seconds.

Example:

45-minute interview processed in 10 minutes: full transcript, 12 key quotes organized by theme, summary of the 5 most newsworthy claims, and 3 claims that need fact-checking.

Document analysis and pattern finding

Upload documents — filings, contracts, court records — and ask questions in plain English. AI identifies inconsistencies, notable clauses, and connections across multiple documents.

Example:

'I have 400 pages of FOIA documents about the permit approval process. Find any instances where the timeline deviates from standard procedure, and any emails between the official and the developer.'

Source and contact management

Track every source: who they are, what they've told you, their reliability history, and when you last spoke. Never lose track of a source or tip.

Example:

'Who in my source list has expertise in pharmaceutical regulation? When did I last speak to each of them? Which ones have been reliable in the past?' Instant answer instead of digging through notes.

Real use cases

Practical ways to put your AI assistant to work right away.

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Investigative Research Pipeline

Go from tip to story with an AI research partner

  • Input the tip or topic you're investigating
  • AI researches background, related public records, and prior coverage
  • Identifies gaps, inconsistencies, and angles worth pursuing
  • Generates a source list and interview strategy
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Interview Processing Workflow

Turn raw interviews into publishable material faster

  • Upload audio or paste transcript
  • AI produces clean transcript with speaker identification
  • Extracts key quotes organized by theme
  • Flags claims that need fact-checking with suggested verification sources

A day in the life

A journalist's day with AI research support:

8:00 AM

Interview at 10am with a city council member about the zoning change. AI sends a 2-page briefing: council member's voting history, her statements on development in the last 2 years, the developer's political connections, and 12 specific questions based on your angle.

10:00 AM

Interview goes deep. You ask follow-up questions you wouldn't have thought of without the brief. Record everything.

12:00 PM

Upload recording. AI produces full transcript and pulls the 8 most quotable moments. You write from the quotes instead of re-listening to 45 minutes of audio.

3:00 PM

Editor asks you to check a claim in the story. AI searches your notes, prior interviews, and source documents for any relevant material. Answer in 2 minutes instead of 20.

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My background research went from taking half a day to taking 30 minutes. I come into every interview better prepared than I ever was before, and the transcription workflow saves me 3 hours per story. I'm filing more stories and they're better.

J

James Thornton

Investigative Reporter, Regional Newspaper

Frequently asked questions

Common questions from journalists like you.

Can it help with fact-checking?

OpenClaw can cross-reference claims against documents you've provided, flag inconsistencies in statements, and search for public records that might confirm or contradict a claim. It's a research assist — final fact-checking judgment is always yours.

Is source information kept confidential?

OpenClaw runs on your own infrastructure. Your source contacts and confidential documents are not shared with any third party or used to train AI models. You control the security configuration.

Can it monitor specific social accounts or topics?

Yes. OpenClaw can monitor Twitter/X accounts, Reddit threads, and other public social sources for activity related to your beat. Get alerts when relevant people post, without manually checking everything.

Getting started is easy

You can have your AI assistant running in about 30 minutes.

1

Get the guide

Free, step-by-step instructions to set everything up

2

Set it up

Follow along at your own pace, no coding required

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Start chatting

Message your AI via WhatsApp, Telegram, or Discord

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Ready to get your time back?

Set up your own AI assistant in about 30 minutes. Free guide, no fluff.

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