Hey Press vs Source of Sources in 2026: a search tool folded into JournoFinder vs Peter Shankman's free HARO successor
Hey Press no longer operates as an independent product; hey.press is now a PR content hub. Source of Sources is a genuinely free email digest, run by the founder of HARO, that still requires you to do the pitching yourself.
Hey Press
Source of Sources- Hey Press is no longer an independently operating product. It merged into JournoFinder, and hey.press now functions primarily as a PR content and guides hub.
- Source of Sources is completely free for both journalists and sources, with no paid tiers of any kind, run by Peter Shankman, the founder of the original HARO.
- Hey Press's own FAQ describes itself and HARO-style tools as complementary rather than interchangeable: Hey Press was for finding a journalist to pitch, while Source of Sources puts journalist queries in front of you instead.
- Source of Sources has no dashboard, search, or topic filtering; every subscriber receives the identical digest, and off-topic pitchers are removed from the list with no appeals.
- Neither tool has published, self-serve pricing today. Source of Sources is $0 by design; Hey Press has no pricing of its own since the live product now sits under JournoFinder.
- Source of Sources scores highest on value for money (10.0) and lowest on features (4.5) and API access (1.0) of any tool in this category, reflecting its deliberately minimal, human-run design.
- The comparison guides still hosted on hey.press, including how-to-pitch content for startup founders, remain useful reading regardless of which live tool a founder ends up using.
Hey Press and Source of Sources were never direct competitors even when Hey Press was fully active, and the comparison has only gotten stranger since the merger into JournoFinder. Hey Press was an outbound tool: search for a journalist by topic, then go pitch them cold. Source of Sources is inbound: Peter Shankman, who built and later sold Help a Reporter Out (HARO) to Cision, compiles journalist queries into a free email digest up to three times a day, and you reply directly if one matches your expertise. Hey Press has since folded into JournoFinder and hey.press now functions as a content hub rather than a working tool. Source of Sources, by contrast, still runs exactly as originally designed: free, simple, and entirely dependent on Shankman's manual curation.
The tools at a glance
Hey Press
Journalist discovery tool for startups, now part of JournoFinder
Hey Press launched as a lean journalist search tool for startup founders who wanted to find relevant press contacts without paying for a Muck Rack-level subscription. The core idea was outbound: search by topic or beat, get a list of matching journalists, and pitch them directly on your own timeline.
The product has since merged into JournoFinder, and hey.press now describes itself as "now part of JournoFinder" on its homepage. Users looking for the live journalist search functionality are directed to JournoFinder's own site, where pricing and features are documented separately from hey.press.
What remains natively on hey.press is a library of PR guides, including comparison content on HARO-style platforms and how to pitch journalists as a startup founder. Hey Press's own content explicitly frames tools like itself and query-digest services like Source of Sources as complementary: one helps you find a journalist to approach, the other puts journalist requests directly in front of you.
| Feature | See JournoFinder Via JournoFinder |
|---|---|
| Journalist search | Via JournoFinder |
| Contact database | Via JournoFinder |
| PR guides and resources | Free on hey.press |
Source of Sources
Free daily email digest connecting journalists with expert sources, from the founder of HARO
Source of Sources is a free journalist-to-source matching service run by Peter Shankman, who originally founded Help a Reporter Out (HARO) in 2008 before selling it to Cision and watching it eventually get wound down. SOS is his attempt to rebuild what made HARO useful before it was commercialized, minus the platform and the paid tiers.
The model is deliberately bare: journalists submit queries, which get compiled into email digests sent up to three times a day to subscribers. If a query matches your expertise, you reply directly to the journalist, with no in-platform messaging, approval queue, or tracking layer in between. There is no dashboard, no search, and no topic filtering; everyone gets the same digest.
Shankman runs SOS almost as a side project and enforces a strict no-spam rule: off-topic pitchers are removed from the list with no appeals. In place of a paid subscription, he asks people who benefit to donate to animal welfare charities or give SOS a social media shoutout, which keeps the operation grassroots rather than scaled SaaS.
| Feature | Free $0 |
|---|---|
| Daily journalist query emails | ✓ |
| Direct journalist contact | ✓ |
| Dashboard or search interface | ✗ |
| Topic filtering | ✗ |
| Analytics or tracking | ✗ |
| API access | ✗ |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Hey Press | Source of Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Not published on hey.press | Yes, entirely free |
| Pricing published on own domain | No, redirects to JournoFinder | Yes, $0 is the only price |
| Outbound journalist search | Original core feature, now via JournoFinder | No |
| Inbound query digest | No | Yes, up to 3 digests per day |
| Dashboard or search interface | No, not on hey.press | No |
| Topic filtering | No, not on hey.press | No |
| PR guides and resource content | Yes, comparison and pitching guides | No |
| API access | Depends on JournoFinder | No |
| Actively developed as a standalone product | No, merged into JournoFinder | Yes |
| Starting price | Via JournoFinder | Free |
Which should you choose?
Source of SourcesSource of SourcesSource of SourcesIt helps to remember these two were built to solve opposite halves of the same problem, not to compete head-on. Hey Press, in its original form, was for finding a journalist and pitching them yourself; that outbound search product now lives under JournoFinder, and hey.press is left as a content hub. Source of Sources is the inbound half: journalist queries land in your inbox, and you decide whether to respond. It still works exactly as designed, free, minimal, and manually curated by Shankman. If you need the outbound search capability Hey Press used to provide, go to JournoFinder. If you just want a free, no-setup feed of journalist requests, Source of Sources delivers on that narrow promise better than almost anything else in this category.
Bottom line
Sign up for Source of Sources today if you want a genuinely free, zero-setup stream of journalist queries and are comfortable with no filtering, search, or tracking. Do not evaluate Hey Press as software: read its guides if useful, then go to JournoFinder if the original outbound journalist-search pitch is what you actually wanted. Pair Source of Sources with a paid tool like Qwoted or Connectively if you need filtering or analytics on top of the raw query feed.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hey Press still a product I can sign up for in 2026?
No, not as an independent product. Hey Press merged into JournoFinder, and hey.press now functions as a content hub for PR guides while the live journalist search tool operates under the JournoFinder name and pricing.
Is Source of Sources really free, with no hidden paid tier?
Yes. Source of Sources has no paid tiers at all; it is entirely free for both journalists submitting queries and sources subscribing to the digest, with Peter Shankman asking beneficiaries to donate to animal welfare causes instead of charging money.
Is Source of Sources the same thing as HARO?
No, but they share the same founder. Peter Shankman created Help a Reporter Out (HARO) in 2008, sold it to Cision, and launched Source of Sources as a simpler, independently run version of the same concept after HARO was wound down.
How does Hey Press compare to a free query digest like Source of Sources?
They solve different problems, as Hey Press's own comparison content states directly: Hey Press was an outbound search tool for finding journalists to pitch on your own initiative, while Source of Sources is an inbound digest that puts journalist queries in front of you. They were designed to be complementary, not interchangeable.
Can I filter Source of Sources queries by topic or industry?
No. Source of Sources has no filtering, search, or categorization; every subscriber receives the same full digest up to three times a day. If topic-filtered journalist requests matter to you, a paid tool like Qwoted or Connectively offers that functionality.
What happens if I pitch a journalist off-topic through Source of Sources?
Shankman removes off-topic pitchers from the Source of Sources list with no exceptions or appeals, a firm policy meant to protect journalists from being spammed through the network and to keep response quality high for everyone still subscribed.