Guide · 7 min read

How to Build a Newsletter Research Desk With AI

Most newsletter time is lost before writing: hunting sources, judging which matter, and turning a pile of links into an angle. Done ad hoc, it's slow and inconsistent. A research desk turns it into a repeatable system that ends with a draft outline you approve.

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The workflow

1Collect sources into one place (manually, or via RSS/HTTP).
2Score each on relevance, credibility, and freshness.
3Summarize the top sources with your LLM.
4Assemble a ranked outline plus a repurposing plan.
5Hold the outline at the approval gate for human review.

Data inputs

A brief: topic, audience, angle, constraints
A list of candidate sources with type and date
Your LLM endpoint for summaries (optional — there's a fallback)
A sources database (Notion, Airtable, or Sheets)

The approval gate

The outline stops before it becomes an issue. You verify flagged (low-credibility or stale) sources, confirm the angle fits your audience, and check every claim traces to a source.

Example output

A ranked source table with relevance/credibility/freshness scores.
A 5-section outline, each section tied to a source URL.
A repurposing plan for LinkedIn, X, and short video.

Failure modes

Low-credibility sources ranking high — weight by source type and flag for review.
Hallucinated facts — keep a source URL on every claim.
Stale data presented as current — decay freshness over time.

Put it to work