🇨🇭 Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

📰 news-monitor-mcp

MCP server for global news monitoring, media analysis and sentiment tracking via WorldNewsAPI — full-text search across 150+ countries, German/English sentiment analysis, top headlines, GL briefings, newspaper front pages and geo-search. API key required.

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

Overview

news-monitor-mcp transforms any AI assistant into a proactive media intelligence agent. The server connects LLMs like Claude with global news data: from Swiss institutional reputation monitoring to weekly leadership briefings and trend detection across categories.

Source: WorldNewsAPI (worldnewsapi.com) — the only freely available news API with German-language sentiment analysis.

API key required. Get a free key at worldnewsapi.com/console — free plan: 50 points/day, no credit card, backlink to worldnewsapi.com required (checked 2026-08-14).

Anchor demo query: "How has the Schulamt Zürich been portrayed in the media over the last 30 days, and what is the overall sentiment?"

Features

• 🔍 Full-text search – 150+ countries, 50+ languages, Boolean queries and exact phrase matching
• 📊 Sentiment analysis – German and English only (WorldNewsAPI unique feature); scores from −1 (negative) to +1 (positive)
• 📰 Top headlines – clustered by country and language, ranked by number of sources reporting
• 📋 Media briefing – multi-topic weekly report with sentiment overview for GL / leadership updates
• 🗞️ Newspaper front pages – digital covers from 6,000+ publications in 125 countries
• 📡 Trend radar – category-based trend detection (politics, technology, education, …) per country
• 📍 Geo-search – location-specific news (Zürich, Bern, Basel, Kanton Zürich, …)
• ☁️ Dual transport – stdio for Claude Desktop, Streamable HTTP for cloud deployment

Demo

"Create a media briefing for: AI in education, Volksschule Zürich, school digitalisation"

Data Sources

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• uv or pip
• API key from worldnewsapi.com/console (free tier available)

Installation

# Recommended: uvx (no install step needed)
uvx news-monitor-mcp

# Alternative: pip
pip install news-monitor-mcp

Quickstart

# Start the server (stdio mode for Claude Desktop)
WORLD_NEWS_API_KEY=your-key uvx news-monitor-mcp

Try it immediately in Claude Desktop:

"Show me the top news from Switzerland today" "How is the Schulamt Zürich covered in German-language media this month?" "Create a media briefing on: Volksschule Zürich, AI in education, school digitalisation"

Configuration

Environment Variables

Claude Desktop Configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "news-monitor": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["news-monitor-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "WORLD_NEWS_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Config file locations:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

After restarting Claude Desktop, all tools are available. Example queries:

• "Show me the top Swiss news today"
• "What is the media sentiment on AI in education this month?"
• "Create a weekly briefing for: Schulamt Zürich, Volksschule, KI Bildung"
• "Find all German-language articles about school digitalisation in the last 14 days"
• "Show me the front pages of Swiss newspapers today"

Cloud Deployment (Streamable HTTP)

For use via claude.ai in the browser (e.g. on managed workstations without local software):

Authentication is mandatory. The HTTP transport refuses any request without a valid Authorization: Bearer <token> header. Generate a token once and keep it secret:

python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(32))"

Render.com (recommended):

1. Push/fork the repository to GitHub
2. On render.com: New Web Service → connect GitHub repo
3. Set the following environment variables in the Render dashboard:
   • WORLD_NEWS_API_KEY — your WorldNewsAPI key
   • MCP_BEARER_TOKEN — the token generated above
   • MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 — bind on all interfaces inside the container
   • MCP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://claude.ai (optional, recommended)
4. In claude.ai under Settings → MCP Servers, add the URL https://your-app.onrender.com/mcp and configure the Bearer token as the auth header.

# Local HTTP mode (binds 127.0.0.1 by default)
WORLD_NEWS_API_KEY=your-key \
  MCP_BEARER_TOKEN=$(python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(32))") \
  news-monitor-mcp --http --port 8000

# Verify auth is enforced
curl -i http://127.0.0.1:8000/mcp                                  # → 401
curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer $MCP_BEARER_TOKEN" http://127.0.0.1:8000/mcp

Scaling notes

This server is currently single-process / single-replica:

• The TTL cache lives in process memory (NewsCache). If you run multiple Render or Kubernetes replicas, each replica has its own cache — hit-rates drop linearly with the replica count.
• Alerts persist to a local alerts.json (defaults to /data inside the container). Multiple replicas mounting the same persistent volume serialize via fcntl.flock, but for true cluster operation a shared store (Redis / Postgres) is needed — see the open finding SCALE-STATEFUL.
• On Render Free Tier, the container sleeps after ~15 minutes of inactivity and loses non-persistent state. Attach a Persistent Disk for /data if you need alerts to survive restarts. For Render Free + alerts you must accept that the cache is lost on every wake-up.

The MCP_CACHE_MAX_PER_TYPE cap (default 1000 entries / type) and the background sweep (MCP_CACHE_SWEEP_SECONDS, default 5 min) prevent the in-process cache from growing without bound.

Container image