Journalists known for breaking a few big stories a year at established outlets find the independent model challenging. A subscription business demands consistent value, but the time required for sales, marketing, and administration detracts from the deep-dive reporting needed for major scoops, creating a difficult trade-off.

Andrew Ross Sorkin's best sources are often "jilted" individuals—bankers who lost a deal, executives passed over for promotion, or spurned partners. These sources have nothing to lose and are motivated to talk, providing reporters with a powerful, albeit biased, starting point for a story.

Journalist Alex Heath reveals that a primary motivation for sources to leak information isn't always a moral crusade or vindictiveness. Often, it's simply because people like to gossip. This insight into basic human behavior is a crucial, often overlooked, element of cultivating sources and getting scoops in any industry.

The post-Nixon push for government transparency didn't increase accountability as promised. While more data became available, news organizations, still reliant on source-driven reporting, never developed the infrastructure to effectively analyze it. AI is the first technology to finally bridge this gap.

Contrary to popular belief, M&A leaks are seldom strategic maneuvers by the involved companies. They are more often the product of journalists' investigative work combined with a simple principle: the closer a deal is to being finalized, the more people are involved, making information harder to contain.

Former journalist Natalie Brunell reveals her investigative stories were sometimes killed to avoid upsetting influential people. This highlights a systemic bias that protects incumbents at the expense of public transparency, reinforcing the need for decentralized information sources.

Contrary to traditional journalism where narrow hypotheses are key, AI-driven investigations yield better results from broad, open-ended prompts. This approach inverts the old workflow, allowing the AI to surface unexpected connections from the data rather than merely confirming a reporter's preconceived idea.

The century-long journalistic tradition of impartial, 'scientific' fact-gathering was allegedly dismantled by the baby boomer generation. Finding dry reporting dull, they championed an activist, narrative-driven style—seen in underground press coverage of Vietnam—which has since become the mainstream media's dominant mode.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, trading favorable coverage for access to powerful sources is no longer the best way to get a story. In the modern media landscape with diverse information channels, reporters find more impactful and truthful stories by maintaining independence and refusing to play the access game.