Journalists do most of their sourcing, research, and drafting in a browser. Here are Firefox extensions that support a news reporting workflow.
Monitoring beats without visiting sites
News Widget Dashboard — RSS feeds from your beat's key sources on the new tab.
Journalists covering specific beats (tech, local government, finance, healthcare) need to monitor 10-20 sources regularly. RSS eliminates the need to visit each site. Headlines from all subscribed sources appear together, chronologically, without engagement-based ranking.
Useful RSS sources for journalists:
- Government press release feeds (most agencies publish RSS)
- Court filing notification feeds
- Competitor publications
- Local press wire services
Source call notes
Voice Notes and Audio Recorder — quick audio capture after a source call, before you forget the detail.
For off-the-record calls where you cannot take visible notes, a quick voice memo after hanging up captures the key facts before they fade. The audio is local — not uploaded to any transcription service.
Sensitive document review
AI Writing Assistant — grammar checking for drafts that runs locally.
For journalists handling sensitive sources or unreleased documents, putting draft text through a cloud grammar tool (Grammarly) sends that text to a third-party server. Local grammar checking keeps the content private during drafting.
Research tab organization
Tab Manager and Session Saver — save named sets of research tabs per story.
A multi-week investigative story might require 20-30 reference tabs across multiple research sessions. Saving these as a named session ("Story A — March budget docs") preserves the research context between sessions.
Daily story priorities
Daily Planner — today's story tasks on the new tab. "Interview follow-up with Source X," "File 500-word brief by 3pm," "Review leaked document."
Market data for business journalism
Stock Market Dashboard — for journalists covering business or financial stories, a quick watchlist of relevant company stocks on the new tab surfaces price movements during the day.
These are six of 11 Firefox extensions I built — see the full series.
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