Build an Automated Daily News Digest Email Pipeline

Level: Real World

Your task for today is to create an automated pipeline that fetches top news headlines every day, formats them into a clean digest, and emails them to you automatically — a perfect example of “set it and forget it” automation that runs in the cloud.

Project Task

Create an automated news digest pipeline that:

• Uses the NewsAPI to fetch top headlines from a specific category

• Retrieves the latest 5 news articles with titles and URLs

• Formats the news into a clean, readable email message

• Uses smtplib to automatically send the digest via email

• Stores API credentials securely in environment variables

• Runs as a standalone script that executes the entire pipeline

• Can be scheduled to run once daily on PythonAnywhere

• Provides status messages showing the automation progress

This project gives you hands-on practice with API integration, email automation, scheduling tasks, and cloud deployment — essential skills for building real-world automation pipelines that run without manual intervention.

Expected Output

Scheduling on PythonAnywhere

After creating your script, schedule it to run daily on PythonAnywhere:

1. Create a free account at pythonanywhere.com

2. Upload your script and .env file to your PythonAnywhere account

3. Go to the “Tasks” tab in your dashboard

4. Create a new scheduled task with your script path

5. Set it to run once daily at your preferred time (e.g., 8:00 AM)

6. Save the task and it will run automatically every day!

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Skeleton and Solution

Below you will find both a downloadable skeleton.py file to help you code the project with comment guides and the downloadable solution.py file containing the correct solution.

Get the code skeleton here: