Monir Newsroom Documentation
Monir Newsroom is a WordPress plugin that runs an AI-powered editorial team inside your site. A pipeline of specialized AI agents — Source Monitor, Beat Reporter, Fact-Checker, Copy Editor, Photo Editor, and more — researches stories from real sources, drafts articles, verifies claims, sources images, and saves drafts to your WordPress drafts queue for your review.
This guide covers installation, setup, and every feature.
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Getting Started
Monir Newsroom is different from generic AI content plugins. Instead of "click a button to generate content," it works like a real newsroom:
- You define a beat — the topic area your AI reporters will cover
- The plugin reads news sources continuously, looking for stories on your beat
- When it finds a cluster of 5 or more sources covering the same story, a Beat Reporter agent drafts the article
- A Fact-Checker reviews the draft for unsupported claims
- A Copy Editor polishes the language
- A Photo Editor sources an image
- The finished draft appears in your WordPress drafts queue for your review
Every article is based on multiple cross-referenced sources, every claim is fact-checked, and you control what gets published. Your AI newsroom never publishes anything you haven't approved (unless you explicitly enable auto-publish).
Installation
- Install the plugin from the WordPress.org plugin directory, or upload the
monir-newsroom folder to /wp-content/plugins/.
- Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress.
- You will be redirected to the Setup Wizard automatically. If not, navigate to Newsroom → Setup Wizard.
The setup wizard is the fastest way to get your newsroom running. It takes about 5 minutes.
The Setup Wizard
The wizard walks you through five steps:
- Welcome — A brief overview of what the plugin does.
- Describe your beat — Tell the plugin what your site covers. This is the most important step.
- Pick an AI provider — Connect Anthropic, Google Gemini, or OpenAI.
- Image sources — Choose how images are sourced for your articles.
- First draft — The plugin starts working on your first article.
You can re-run the wizard anytime from
Newsroom → Settings → Wizard.
Custom Beats {#custom-beats}
A
beat is what your AI reporter covers. The term comes from journalism — a "tech beat reporter" covers tech, a "city hall beat reporter" covers local government. In Monir Newsroom, your beat is the topic area your AI reporters will follow.
Why custom beats matter
Most AI content plugins force you into generic categories (World, Sports, Tech). Generic categories produce generic content that doesn't match what your site is about. Monir Newsroom lets you describe your specific focus in your own words, and the AI reporters cover exactly that.
Whether you run an EV industry news site, a local newspaper in Vermont, an AI-tools industry blog, a county sports site, or a niche policy publication — your beat should reflect your actual focus, not a generic category.
How to describe a custom beat
In Step 2 of the wizard, you'll see a text area asking what your site covers. Be specific. The more specific your description, the better your AI reporters can find relevant stories.
Good examples:
- "Electric vehicle industry news — market trends, manufacturer announcements, charging infrastructure, federal and state EV policy, battery technology advances."
- "Local news for Burlington, Vermont — city government, schools, business openings and closings, weather events, community stories."
- "AI developer tools and platforms — new model releases, coding assistants, agent frameworks, open-source projects, enterprise AI adoption."
- "Bangladesh political news — parliamentary proceedings, party politics, election coverage, government policy, economic decisions affecting politics."
- "Independent music industry — record label news, streaming platform changes, artist contracts, copyright and royalty disputes, festival and tour announcements."
Less effective examples:
- "News" — too broad, no focus
- "Technology" — generic, will produce generic articles
- "Stuff happening today" — no topic signal at all
The plugin uses your description to identify which news sources are relevant and which stories within those sources match your focus. A 1-3 sentence description is the sweet spot. Longer descriptions help when your beat is unusual or has multiple sub-topics.
Source matching
As you describe your beat, Monir Newsroom matches your focus to a library of news sources (RSS feeds and news APIs). You'll see the matched sources during the wizard, and you can add your own custom RSS URLs if there are specific publications you want covered.
You can always add or remove sources later from
Newsroom → Sources.
The 5-source minimum
Every article your beat reporter writes is based on at least 5 sources covering the same story. This is intentional. Single-source articles are essentially rewrites — they look thin, hurt your publication's credibility, and risk copyright issues.
A 5+ source threshold ensures:
- Your articles are properly researched (multiple perspectives, cross-referenced facts)
- The Fact-Checker has multiple sources to verify against
- Your content stands up to search engine quality scoring (EEAT)
- You're producing real journalism, not single-source rewrites
If your beat is on a niche or fast-moving topic where 5+ sources don't always cluster around the same story, you can lower the threshold per beat in
Newsroom → Beats → Edit Beat → Advanced Settings. The minimum is 3 sources. We do not recommend going below 3.
Editing your beat later
Your beat is not locked in by the wizard. You can refine the description, add sources, change the polling schedule, or pause the beat anytime from
Newsroom → Beats.
Starter Beats (Pre-Built Topics)
If you'd rather start with a standard news category instead of describing your own, the plugin includes 8 starter beats:
- World
- Politics
- Technology
- Sports
- Business
- Entertainment
- Science
- Health
Each comes pre-configured with quality sources and reasonable defaults. You can use a starter beat as-is, or use it as a starting point and refine the description, sources, and polling schedule.
When to use a starter beat:
- You want generic news coverage in a standard category
- You're not sure what to describe and want to see what the plugin produces first
- You're using the starter beat alongside a custom beat (Free plan allows 1 custom + 1 starter)
When to use a custom beat:
- Your site has a specific focus that doesn't fit a generic category
- You want articles that match your editorial voice and audience
- You're building a niche or vertical publication
AI Providers
Monir Newsroom does not include AI models. You bring your own API key from one of three supported providers:
| Provider |
Models |
Best for |
| Anthropic Claude |
Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5, Opus 4.7 |
Highest writing quality, strong fact-checking |
| Google Gemini |
Gemini 2.5 Flash, Flash-Lite, Pro |
Generous free tier, good multilingual |
| OpenAI |
GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, GPT-4 Turbo |
Familiar to most users, reliable |
Getting an API key
Free plan provider note
On the Free plan, you can configure one AI provider. The provider you pick during the setup wizard becomes your authoritative provider. The other two slots are locked. You can change your chosen provider anytime from
Newsroom → Settings → Providers.
On Pro plans, you can configure all three providers simultaneously and the plugin will route different agents to different providers based on cost-quality tradeoffs.
Switching providers
You can change your AI provider anytime:
- Go to Newsroom → Settings → Providers
- Click the radio button next to a different provider
- Enter the API key for that provider
- Save
The old provider's key stays stored but inactive. If you upgrade to Pro later, all your configured keys become active.
How Articles Are Written
Every article in your drafts queue goes through a pipeline of specialized AI agents. This section explains what each agent does and what controls you have.
The agent pipeline
- Source Monitor — Polls your beat's sources every few hours, finds new stories, deduplicates them.
- Clustering Engine — Groups stories from different sources covering the same event. Only clusters of 5+ sources move forward (configurable per beat).
- Beat Reporter — Reads the source articles, identifies what makes this story important, and drafts the article. Reads from your beat's description to determine what angle matters.
- Fact-Checker — Reviews every claim in the draft against the source articles. Flags unsupported claims, fabricated quotes, and statements without source backing.
- Copy Editor — Polishes the draft for readability, grammar, paragraph flow, and headline quality.
- Image Prompt Writer — Reads the article and generates search keywords for stock photos and prompts for AI image generation (if enabled).
- Photo Editor — Sources the article image. Order of preference: Wikimedia Commons (for stories about named public figures with free-license photos), then Pexels (stock photos), then AI-generated images (Pro only).
- Translator — If your beat's publication language is set to something other than English, translates the article to your target language (Pro only).
Why fact-checking is mandatory
The Fact-Checker is the only agent that cannot be disabled. This is a deliberate safety design. AI language models occasionally invent facts, attribute statements to the wrong people, or conflate events. Without fact-checking, roughly 5-15% of AI-generated articles contain at least one confidently-stated false claim.
Allowing customers to disable fact-checking would expose them to defamation risk, factual misrepresentation, and the kind of "AI hallucination" incidents that have damaged other publications' reputations. The Fact-Checker is non-negotiable for your protection and ours.
What you can customize
- Image generation — You can disable image generation per beat (text-only drafts). Useful if you prefer to add your own images.
- Polling schedule — Default is every 4 hours. You can set it to 1, 2, 4, 8, or 24 hours per beat.
- Auto-publish — Off by default. You can enable it per beat, but only Fact-Checker-approved drafts will ever auto-publish. Drafts with fact-check concerns always wait for your review.
- Image source preference — Wikimedia, Pexels, AI-generated (Pro), or a specific priority order.
Timing expectations
When you finish the setup wizard, your AI newsroom starts working. Your
first draft typically appears within 4 to 8 hours. This is not instant content generation — the agents are doing real work:
- Reading sources from your beat
- Waiting for enough stories to cluster (the 5-source minimum)
- Drafting, fact-checking, polishing, and image-sourcing each article
Once your beat has accumulated source coverage, subsequent drafts appear faster — usually 15-30 minutes from when a 5-source cluster forms.
If you want a draft immediately, you can use the
New AI Draft feature (covered below) which lets you provide source URLs directly.
Editor's Desk
Once your AI newsroom produces drafts, they appear in the
Editor's Desk (the main work surface of the plugin).
Each draft shows:
- The article title and lead paragraph
- The Fact-Checker's verdict (approved, concerns, or rejected)
- Source links (every claim is traceable to a source)
- Suggested image
- AI disclosure block (legally required for AI-generated content)
From the Editor's Desk you can:
- Edit — Open the draft in WordPress's standard editor and make changes
- Publish — Send the draft live (uses WordPress's standard publish flow)
- Force Publish — Publish even if the Fact-Checker flagged concerns (recorded in audit log)
- Delete — Discard the draft
Drafts that are auto-publish-approved (Fact-Checker approved + auto-publish enabled for the beat) skip the Editor's Desk and go directly to your published posts.
New AI Draft (Manual Drafting)
The autonomous beat pipeline takes hours because real research takes hours. If you want a draft immediately on a specific topic, use
Newsroom → New AI Draft.
You provide:
- A topic description (the angle you want covered)
- 1 to 3 source URLs (articles the AI should read)
- A target word count
The Beat Reporter, Fact-Checker, and Copy Editor agents work on your inputs and produce a draft in 1-3 minutes. This is the fastest way to create AI-assisted content when you know the story and have sources.
New AI Draft uses the same provider and quality bar as autonomous drafting. It counts against your monthly article cap.
Free vs Pro
| Feature |
Free |
Pro |
| Active beats |
1 custom + 1 starter |
Unlimited custom + starter |
| Articles per month |
10 |
Unlimited |
| AI providers |
Pick 1 (Anthropic, Google, or OpenAI) |
All 3 simultaneously |
| Smart routing across providers |
— |
✓ |
| Wikimedia + Pexels images |
✓ |
✓ |
| AI image generation (Imagen 3, DALL-E 3) |
— |
✓ |
| Translation (7 languages) |
— |
✓ |
| Auto-publish |
✓ (with fact-check gate) |
✓ |
| Scheduled publishing |
— |
✓ |
| Cost dashboard |
— |
✓ |
| Multi-site license |
Single site |
5 or 11 sites depending on plan |
Pro plans are priced at $99/year (Solo, 1 site), $179/year (Pro, 5 sites), and $349/year (Developer, 11 sites).
See
pricing for current details.
Settings Reference
All plugin settings live under
Newsroom → Settings. The settings page has tabs:
Providers
Where you manage your AI provider API keys. On Free, only your chosen provider is editable; other slots are locked. On Pro, all three are editable.
Routing (Pro only)
Lets you control which AI model handles which agent. You can prioritize cost (cheaper models for routine work) or quality (premium models for everything).
Image Sources
Configure image source preferences. Default cascade: Wikimedia (for named-person stories) → Pexels (stock) → AI-generated (Pro). You can disable any source or change the order per beat.
Translation (Pro only)
Set your publication language. Available: English, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic. The Translator agent runs on every draft if the publication language is not English.
Disclosure
Customize the AI-disclosure block that appears on every AI-generated article. The block is required (a legal/ethical safeguard) but the wording is customizable.
System Status
Health checks for your AI providers, source connectivity, image services, and database tables.
License
Manage your Pro license activation, view your active sites, and access billing.
Account
Your Monir Newsroom account settings (email, notification preferences).
Insights / Cost Dashboard (Pro)
Pro plans include a cost dashboard at
Newsroom → Insights showing:
- Total API spend per day, week, month
- Cost broken down by agent (which agent is using the most tokens)
- Cost broken down by beat (which beats are most expensive)
- Cost broken down by provider
- Per-article cost average
- Token usage charts
You can export CSV reports for your accounting records.
Activity Log
Newsroom → Activity shows a live stream of every AI agent invocation across all your beats. Each row shows: time, beat, agent name, AI provider, model used, input tokens, output tokens, cost, duration, and status.
This is your transparency surface. You can see exactly what your AI newsroom is doing in real time.
Pipeline
Newsroom → Pipeline shows drafts that are mid-process or stuck. If a beat fails for any reason (API key issue, provider error, source feed problem), the stuck draft surfaces here with a recovery action (Retry, Force Publish, or Delete).
Troubleshooting
Beat shows "Waiting for sources"
Your beat needs at least 5 different sources to cover the same story before a Beat Reporter will draft. If your beat is on a niche topic, this can take longer. Options:
- Wait — give the beat 24-48 hours to accumulate source coverage
- Add more sources to the beat (Newsroom → Sources)
- Lower the minimum cluster size in beat settings (advanced) — minimum is 3
- Use New AI Draft to manually create a draft on a specific story
Beat shows "Cap reached"
You've used your monthly article allowance (10 articles on Free plan). The cap resets on the first of each month. To produce more articles, upgrade to a Pro plan or wait for the reset.
Beat shows "Failed (key issue)"
Your AI provider's API key is not working. Common causes:
- Key was revoked or expired in the provider's console
- Billing issue on the provider account (out of credits)
- Key was saved as plain text instead of being properly encrypted (re-saving it from Settings → Providers fixes this)
Open Settings → Providers, paste your API key again, and click Save. The "Failed (key issue)" status clears automatically once the key works.
Draft has fact-check concerns
The Fact-Checker flagged claims it couldn't verify against the source articles. Open the draft from Editor's Desk and review the flagged passages. You can:
- Edit the article to remove the unsupported claims
- Add a source URL that backs up the claim, then re-run fact-check
- Force publish if you have offline verification (logged in audit)
- Delete the draft
Articles aren't appearing at all
- Check Newsroom → Activity to see if agents are running
- Check Newsroom → Pipeline for stuck drafts
- Check your AI provider has API credits available
- Verify your sources are returning content (Newsroom → Sources → Test feed)
Article is in the wrong language
Your beat's publication language is set incorrectly. Go to
Newsroom → Beats → Edit Beat and check the publication language setting. Translation is a Pro feature — on Free, the language must be English.
Need Help?
Contact us at
info@monirtechsolutions.com or visit our
support page.
For feature requests and bug reports, please use the WordPress.org plugin support forum.
Ready to Get Started?
If you haven't already, install Monir Newsroom from the WordPress plugin directory and run the setup wizard. Your first AI-drafted article will be ready within a few hours.
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