A generic RAG system that indexes the entire web produces mediocre results for specialist journalism beats because relevant sources are buried under millions of irrelevant ones. A vertical-specific RAG — indexing only the most authoritative sources for a specific beat — produces significantly higher-precision retrieval because every source in the index is relevant.
Designing a Politics Beat RAG
A politics beat RAG might index: parliamentary Hansard records, official government press releases, major party policy documents, key think tank publications, major court decisions, polling organisation data, and the beat's own archive of verified political reporting. Every item is from a pre-vetted authority. A query about a politician's voting record returns results from Hansard rather than a mix of Hansard records and unreliable blog posts — a precision improvement of 3–5x compared to general web retrieval.
Designing a Finance Beat RAG
A finance beat RAG indexes: SEC and FCA filings, central bank statements, major economic reports (IMF, World Bank, OECD), earnings transcripts, and verified financial news archives. Queries about company earnings return results from official filings rather than analyst estimates — a crucial accuracy difference for financial journalism.