Duck Times does something most publications avoid: it builds products from its own reporting. The model is controversial. It is also, we believe, the future of independent media.
Traditional editorial independence rests on a separation between the journalists and the entities they cover. That separation is important and we maintain it in our reporting. But there is a second separation — between what a publication learns and what it does with that knowledge — that we have chosen to collapse.
When we identify a need, we build toward it. CoachGPT emerged from two years of reporting on the failures of professional development. Our upcoming knowledge tools emerged from the same investigation into how information actually moves inside organizations.
This is not a conflict of interest. It is a coherent position: that understanding something deeply enough to report on it is also, sometimes, understanding it well enough to improve it.