Writing & MediaFree
Press Release and Pitch Triage
Paste or attach the week's releases and press kits. Get each claim marked supported or not, the embargoes checked, and a pursue call per pitch.
Paste the week's pitches or attach the press kits, and River gets the text out, including kits that arrived as images, then does the split that decides whether any of it is a story. Every factual assertion gets sorted by whether support for it exists and can be found: traceable to a document the release names, to one it does not name, or to nothing locatable at all. Then each embargo is read for whether it can be acted on.
Everything ranking for this query is advice about inbox habits. Set up filters, write a rule that kills anything with the words exciting announcement, batch your reading to twice a day, unsubscribe aggressively, and reply to nobody. All of that is sound and none of it reads a single pitch. The reason the pile is exhausting is not the volume, it is that separating the claim from the substantiation takes ten minutes per release and there are eighty of them.
Built for reporters and editors whose inbox is the beat's front door, and for anyone triaging a press kit against a deadline. Paste the emails in one go, or attach up to ten kits from this page and add more in your River space. When something does turn out to be worth chasing, fact reconciliation works out what the record can carry, earnings call brief handles the release that came with a quarter attached, and the source register records who pitched what and when.
Almost half of what a week of releases asserts has nothing findable behind it
Here is an invented week on a regional healthcare beat, built to a realistic shape: 84 pitches, 61 of them carrying a PDF press kit. Fourteen of those 61 have no text layer at all, so 23 percent of the kits are pictures of words that cannot be searched or quoted until someone reads them off the image. That is the tax before any journalism happens, and it is why practitioners keep asking for a Word file instead.
Across the 84 releases there are 212 assertions of fact. Sixty-three trace to a filing, registry entry or paper the release itself names. Another 38 trace to a source the release does not name but which can be found. Ninety-four have no locatable support of any kind, and 17 are opinion or forward-looking statements that were never checkable. So 101 claims, 48 percent, stand on something, and 94 of them, 44 percent, do not.
The embargoes sort just as unevenly. Twenty-nine of the 84 pitches carry one. Eleven state a date, a time and a timezone, which is a term a desk can plan around. Thirteen give a date only, which is ambiguous the moment two outlets in different countries hold it. Five say until further notice, which is not an embargo. So 11 of 29 are actionable as written, and after all of that, two of the 84 were worth a call.
How it works
Send the pile
Paste the pitch emails, or attach the press kits, then say what your beat would genuinely pursue.
Get the pitch sheet
One row per pitch with its central claim, the embargo terms and a pursue or decline call.
Read the claims
Every assertion sorted by whether support for it exists and can actually be found.
Work it in chat
Ask what to check first, what to ignore, and which sender keeps moving the baseline.
What you get
- Text pulled out of every release and kit, with any kit River could not read listed by name
- One row per pitch with the claim, the sender, the embargo terms and a pursue or decline call
- Each factual assertion marked by whether support exists, is named, or cannot be located
- Forward-looking and opinion statements separated out, because those were never checkable anyway
- Embargo terms parsed and sorted by whether a desk can actually plan around them
- The specific questions to ask before running anything, per pitch rather than in general
- Repeat senders tracked, including the one whose baseline moves every single quarter
Common questions
How is this different from inbox filters?
A filter decides by sender and subject line, which is a proxy. This decides by what the release asserts and whether anything supports it. In the worked week, 44 percent of the factual claims had no locatable support, and none of that is predictable from who sent the email or what the subject line said.
Why is a PDF press kit a problem?
Because a lot of them are images. Fourteen of the 61 kits in the worked week had no text layer, so nothing in them could be searched or quoted without reading it off the page image. That is why desks ask for Word or plain text. River reads image kits where it can and lists by name any it could not, so you know which quotes to check.
What counts as substantiated?
That a document supporting the claim exists and can be located, nothing more. A release naming the filing, registry record or paper behind its number is substantiated. One asserting a market-leading position with no cited basis is not, even when the claim happens to be true, because you cannot publish it either way.
Can I check a company's claim about a clinical trial?
Often yes, and quickly. Results information for an applicable trial is generally due in the registry within one year of primary completion. Four of the six trial claims in the worked week named a registry identifier, and two of those four had results actually posted.
Is there any obligation on what a press release says?
Commercial claims are not consequence-free. The Federal Trade Commission Act declares unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce unlawful, which is the framework substantiation duties sit inside. That matters less as a threat than as a reason a sender will produce backup when a reporter asks for it.
What do I do with a vague embargo?
Treat it as unagreed. A date with no time and no timezone breaks the moment two outlets in different places hold it, and until further notice is not a term at all. Eighteen of the 29 embargoes in the worked week fell into one of those two states, and each one needs a reply before it binds anybody.
Does it write me a story?
No. It produces the extracted facts, the substantiation status per claim, the embargo terms and the questions worth asking, which is what you work from. The reporting and the writing stay yours, and the pass is explicit about what it could not verify rather than filling the gap with the release's own language.
Sources
Built by
Chandler Supple
Co-founder & CEO, River
Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.
Press Release and Pitch Triage
Describe what you need, add any files you have, and your workspace opens with the work already underway.