Must read · Backstreets Tokyo
Yanaka after the tour groups leave
Why chosen: recent, walked in person, and it maps six blocks no guide covers.
Read everything. Miss nothing.
A tool for newsletter curators that reads every source you follow and scores each article against your standards, so you review the best out of what matters.
Follow 500 sources. Read the 20 that matter.
Start your 14 day trialNo card needed
Masthead is one product: it reads your sources and scores what it finds for everyone. On the publisher plans you describe your own standards instead of picking a topic, and every article is judged against them. Reading for yourself? Start here.
How it works
Add your links
Blogs, feeds, newsletters, event pages. Paste them in once.
We scan on your schedule
Every link, every scheduled run. Nothing is sampled or skipped.
You get one briefing
Each piece scored against your rubric, ranked into tiers, with the reason on record.
A worked example
Meet a Tokyo travel newsletter. It follows 40 sources: blogs, city guides, event feeds. Its standards: recent, local, surprising.
Here is its week, scored.
Sample briefing · weekly scan · 40 sources · 163 articles read · 18 scored into tiers
Must read (2)
Must read92
Backstreets Tokyo
Yanaka after the tour groups leave: six blocks the guides still miss
backstreetstokyo.com/yanaka
A walking route through the old shitamachi lanes, researched this week, with shop names and closing days checked in person.
| Local depth | 32 |
|---|---|
| Recency | 30 |
| Surprise | 22 |
| Reader fit | 8 |
Why chosen: your standards ask for recent, local and surprising. This was published Tuesday, walked in person, and it maps six blocks no major guide covers.
Must read88
The Transit Note
Tokyo's last tram line quietly added a night service
transitnote.jp/toden
The Toden Arakawa line runs evening services from October, which changes how an east side evening can be planned.
Why chosen: recent, the schedule change landed this week. Local, one tram line through the east side wards. Surprising, night runs on a line most riders assumed was fading.
Consider (2)
Consider71
Kissaten Diary
Three new coffee counters in Koenji, reviewed in one afternoon
kissatendiary.com/koenji
Solid neighborhood reporting, though two of the three openings were covered elsewhere last month.
Why chosen: recent and thoroughly local, but only one of the three finds is genuinely surprising. Worth a slot if the week runs light.
Consider67
Matsuri Watch
An early look at the autumn festival calendar in the western wards
matsuriwatch.jp/autumn
Useful dates, including small shrine festivals that rarely reach the English language listings.
Why chosen: local and recent, and the small shrine listings are the kind of find readers write in about. A calendar only scores so high on surprise.
Skip (14)
Skip38
Wander Global
The 15 best cities in Asia for digital nomads
wanderglobal.com/asiacities
Why skipped: not local, Tokyo gets one paragraph. Not recent, the ranking rehashes last year's list. Nothing here surprises a reader who lives in the city.
13 more skips · hotel promotions, generic itineraries and recycled top ten lists, each with its reason on record
What it does
Transparent scoring
Every article gets a score, subscores and a plain reason you can read.
Your standards, always editable
Change your scoring instructions any time. Guided questions or your own prompt, either works.
On your schedule
A weekly briefing on the day and hour you pick, plus run now scans on paid plans.
Export anywhere
Copy the whole briefing as clean markdown, or download it as markdown, plain text or a Word document.
Bring your AI
Hand your agent a ready prompt and it pulls any briefing through the API.
Deeper coverage on Pro
Roundup sources expand into their individual articles, and you control how many items we read per source.
Honest run history
Every run is auditable, including what the quick title check skipped and why.
Masthead reads everything you would never have time to and leaves the editing to you. It never drafts your newsletter, never publishes, never guesses on your behalf. You stay the editor. It just makes sure nothing worth your attention slips past.
What people end up with
Newsletters
You follow the whole beat, Masthead ranks the week, and the issue almost assembles itself.
- Built from a briefing where every pick has its reason on record.
Drafting with your AI
Your agent reads the same briefing you do, so the draft starts from the good stuff.
- Works with any agent that can make an HTTP call.
News desks
A standing watch on the outlets you cover, scored so the desk reads what moved first.
- Sources that stop answering get flagged quietly, never silently.
Research monitoring
A folder of journals and preprint feeds becomes two must reads and an honest skip list.
- The title check skips the obvious misses before we pay to read in full.
Pricing
14 days, no card, full Publisher.
Reader
Suggested$5 a month
- 200 sources
- Choose your day and time
- Send it to any address
- Our standards, chosen by topic
Reader plus
$12 a month
- 500 sources
- Up to three digests
- Daily if you want it
- Our standards, chosen by topic
Above this line you write the standards. Below it you pick a topic and we bring ours.
Publisher includes everything the reader plans have
Publisher
$19 a month
For anyone who curates for other people. Describe your own standards and Masthead scores every source against them.
- 200 sources
- 3 collections
- Write and tune your own standards
- Run a scan any time, 6 a month
- 200 articles scored per scan
- Everything in Reader plus
Publisher Pro
$39 a month
For a desk running at scale, or anyone pulling briefings into their own tools.
- 1000 sources
- 6 collections
- Everything in Publisher
- API and agent access
- Adjustable source depth, 1 to 15 articles per sourceRoundup sources expand too: when a source posts lists of links rather than articles, we open each link and score it on its own.
We never sell or share your source lists or briefs, and we never train external models on them.