The Food Section turns to phone calls to block AI pitches

The Food Section, a newsletter focused on food and food access in the American South, will require would-be contributors to speak with Hanna Raskin by phone before pitching stories. The change begins in September after what she described as a deluge of AI-generated and AI-enhanced freelance ideas. Raskin said the publication currently takes pitches through a Google Form. She called the new hotline a way of "re-humanizing the process" and said it should weed out supposed reporters who are not used to ringing up strangers. She founded The Food Section in 2021, and the newsletter has bureaus in Asheville and Charlotte, North Carolina. Raskin said the phone requirement is meant to screen for the reporting skills she needs and to avoid AI tools being used when contacting sources for the publication. The pressure has built over time. Raskin said she started seeing AI pitches pick up last year, and that what she was seeing was "so obviously manufactured by someone other than the writer" before becoming harder to spot each month. She estimated that about a quarter of recent pitches were "wholly AI", meaning neither the writer nor the proposed story appeared to exist in the real world. One pitch claimed there were seven new halal barbecue restaurants in North Carolina. Raskin said there were no such restaurants. She also said AI can help would-be freelancers tailor pitches to publications like hers, and that she prompted Claude for a Food Section pitch. It sounded polished, she said, but was "completely imperfectly", and could slip past editors who do not know the region well. The concern sits inside a wider problem for freelance journalism. Reuters Institute recently reported that the AI persona Margaux Blanchard did not exist and that pieces published under the name in 2025 were most likely AI-generated, while Wired and Business Insider removed stories by that name. Reuters also said another would-be journalist, Victoria Goldiee, was caught using AI, and The Local responded with more robust fact-checking, including asking authors for annotated drafts. Raskin said she had become more inclined to dismiss pitches from writers without strong portfolios or connections, a habit she said was "hardly compatible with cultivating new voices or encouraging young reporters." She plans to keep the pitchline open at designated hours and coordinate call times around writers’ schedules.