Ken is harkening back to the old old school of journalistic credibility - “trust me that I’ve checked it out, and it met my standards of credibility and verification, but I won’t burn my source by revealing them”

The rub is discerning when a journalist/institution is lying/repackaging corporate or government press releases as “reporting”. Substack is a good way to free journalists of a corrupted editor, but they can also suffer from algorithmic/audience capture that incentivizes certain reporting - ie. hugbox news.