Pulitzer

The problem

I was consuming a large volume of news, analysis, and podcasts without a reliable way to decide what deserved my attention. Summarizing everything would only create another inbox. I needed help deciding what was worth my time and understanding why it mattered.

The approach

I built Pulitzer to decide what is worth my time, not to summarize everything. It reviews a defined set of sources, ranks the strongest material, and keeps what was reported separate from its own analysis and conclusion. For podcasts, that also means separating the underlying news and useful explanations from promotion, repetition, and commentary that adds little.

How it works

Pulitzer reviews newsletters and articles I save on a recurring schedule. It filters out anything it has already covered, prepares a concise brief, turns selected pieces into audio, and remembers where it stopped so it does not repeat itself. I’ve now also added a podcast workflow that detects new episodes, retrieves and checks the transcript, extracts what is worth keeping, and produces a replacement audio briefing without processing the same episode twice.

Key decisions

• Prioritize judgment over covering everything.
• Keep reported facts separate from Pulitzer's analysis and conclusion.
• Use podcast transcripts as the primary source and reject them when they appear incomplete.
• Make the length of each podcast brief depend on the quality and quantity of the material, rather than a fixed duration.
• Have the entire experience take place over audio, which is how I prefer to consume information.

Current use

Pulitzer is in active use. It regularly filters my news, prepares deeper explanations, and creates audio briefs that let me keep learning without treating every incoming article as equally important. I am now extending the same approach to podcasts, beginning with a daily show whose source material remains useful even when I no longer enjoy the original format.

What I’ve learned

I learned that an information agent needs to decide what deserves attention and what can be ignored. Finding and summarizing articles is the easy part. The value comes from making a case for why something matters and being clear about what comes from the source and what is Pulitzer's interpretation.