It's Paul's first day. And his first task is to ascertain the 'edges of the jigsaw' - the size and shape of the media landscape FirstQuencher plays in.

He starts with the numerical part of MediaDashboard: counts and stats of articles mentioning FirstQuencher or its peers. Over 500 articles emerge for the month. He clicks three of them to get a flavour, but of more interest are the statistics.

Fewer than a tenth of sources mention his client; a much larger number are about FirstQuencher's two largest peers. Of that 10%, about a quarter feature FirstQuencher as the subject, spread among a dozen or so bylines - useful to know, as is learning that 95% of interesting coverage happens across fewer than 20 publications.

With MediaDashboard Paul's been able to narrow down 300 sources to the dozen that match his job tasks. He now knows the size of the job to be done. Great! Now he know who's talking, it's time to learn what's being said.

Next: see how Paul scored the key messages.