Sources' Alex Heath on breaking scoops, using AI as his editor, and the unbundling of tech journalism

Alex Heath, founder of the Sources newsletter, now uses Claude as his first-pass editor, training the model to write in his voice and cutting his story-writing time in half. He reinvests that time in editorial rigor rather than generating more output, ensuring the AI work is substantive rather than lazy scaffolding.

“I've been using AI a lot to leverage output — now it's my editor and it's my first pass. Training Claude to really write like me. I spend about half the time I used to spend on a story writing it. But I'm spending all that time now making sure it's not just lazy AI writing. The leverage I have now is my network, the interviews I do, the scoops I get. I just interviewed Chris Best from Substack about their Polymarket deal — basically any Substack writer can natively embed a Polymarket market in the CMS.”

His competitive edge has shifted away from writing speed. Network access, interview opportunities, and scoops are what matter now. That distinction cuts to the heart of creator economics and the unbundling of journalism.

Heath recently interviewed Chris Best, Substack's CEO, about a product integration between Substack and Polymarket that lets writers natively embed prediction markets directly into the CMS. Polymarket pays writers to embed markets, positioning writers as distribution channels for betting products rather than as traditional content producers.

The shift reflects two parallel unbundlings. One is editorial: AI handles commodity writing work, freeing humans to focus on reporting and judgment. The other is commercial: Substack writers now have a native revenue stream from prediction markets separate from subscriptions, fragmenting the monetization model that once anchored writers to a single platform or publication.