If you want real-time tracking of breaking stories across dozens of source sites, the “best” platform depends on whether you need journalism/newsroom monitoring, PR/media monitoring, or general web/news alerting. Here are the strongest options:

Best overall for breaking-news monitoring

Meltwater

• Very strong coverage of news sites, blogs, and social
• Good for real-time alerts and story tracking
• Useful for teams that need dashboards, sharing, and analytics
• Better suited to professional media monitoring than casual use

Best for newsroom / investigative tracking

NewsWhip

• Excellent for tracking stories as they break and spread
• Strong at identifying early signals and trending articles
• Good for monitoring hundreds of sources quickly
• Great if you care about virality and story momentum

Best for broad enterprise media intelligence

Cision

• Large source database and solid monitoring tools
• Good for press coverage, brand mentions, and reporting
• Often used by PR and communications teams
• Can be powerful, but sometimes heavier/more enterprise-oriented

Best budget-friendly / simpler option

Google Alerts + Feedly

• Not as powerful for true breaking-news intelligence
• But useful for lightweight monitoring
• Feedly with keyword alerts + AI features can be very effective for source tracking
• Good if you want to build a custom watchlist without enterprise pricing

Best for “real-time across many sources” with less emphasis on media analytics

Talkwalker

• Strong monitoring across news, social, blogs, forums
• Good alerting and visual analytics
• Often compared with Meltwater/Cision

Quick recommendation

• Best all-around: Meltwater
• Best for breaking story discovery: NewsWhip
• Best for enterprise PR/media intelligence: Cision
• Best lower-cost customizable setup: Feedly + alerts

If you want, I can also give you:

1. a side-by-side comparison table, or
2. a recommendation based on your specific use case and budget.