A few weeks ago, I received what seemed like the perfect Dispatch pitch.
It concerned a decommissioned mining town in Colorado called Gravemont, supposedly repurposed into one of the world’s most secretive training grounds for death investigation.
“The bodies arrive by night,” the author, Margaux Blanchard, began. “They’re rolled in on stretchers, unzipped, and placed in the mock apartments, classrooms, and bus stations.” By day, she said, scientists and emergency workers would flock there to practise forensics, disaster response, even war-crimes investigation.
“It’s a story that sits right at the edge of the map,” she concluded, “exactly where Dispatch readers like to go.”
It was a cracking story. Except for one problem: it wasn’t true. Gravemont didn’t exist — and neither, it turned out, did Margaux Blanchard.
A quick Google search showed no such town in Colorado. When pressed over email, Blanchard insisted Gravemont “doesn’t advertise itself”, and that she’d uncovered it through a retired forensic pathologist, public records requests and interviews with trainees.
Unconvinced, I looked into Blanchard herself — and her story started to unravel.
Her bylines elsewhere didn’t add up. In April, she published a piece in Business Insider titled: “I had my first kid at 45. I’m financially stable and have years of life experience to guide me.” A month later, she wrote another for Naked Politics headlined: “I was 14 when I first asked for help. Now I’m 17 and still waiting.” Both articles were oddly stilted, and cited experts and case studies with no online presence.
Then I found the Wired story.
In May, the tech magazine ran a story about real-world couples marrying in the online world of Minecraft. It went viral, but vanished two weeks later, replaced by an editorial note: “Wired editorial leadership has determined this article does not meet our editorial standards.”
A glance at the archived piece explained why: Blanchard’s sources were entirely fabricated.
Intrigued — and mildly irritated at the wasted time — I tipped off Press Gazette. Last week, their report on Dispatch’s discovery went viral in turn, picked up by The Guardian, New York Post and others. Since then, at least six publications have pulled articles by Blanchard, and several national newsrooms have circulated internal warnings.
So, why am I telling you this?
Well, there are two reasons.
The first is because this isn’t really about one fraudster. It’s about the future of journalism.
When I launched Dispatch in April, I warned about the dangers of taking AI shortcuts. I highlighted the case of one British journalist who, with the help of AI, had written 106 articles in one day. It felt like the grim, if logical endpoint of today’s media landscape, where “content” trumps storytelling and algorithms are used to gain the edge. Blanchard’s brief success shows us what that world looks like.
The second reason is because I think there’s a reason Blanchard was rumbled by Dispatch rather than any other outlet: Dispatch doesn’t do content slop, but old-fashioned reportage.
AI might be able to dash off a second-rate op-ed or scrambled news report. But AI can’t hike Yosemite, go camping with Britain’s preppers, play chess with Russian exiles, or discuss sex with Irvine Welsh. It can’t sit in a karaoke bar, interview castrated men, expose a council cover-up, or explore a troubled psyche.
In short: AI will never be able to do what Dispatch does.
But that doesn’t mean we’re immune to the fallout. There are, no doubt, plenty of Margaux Blanchards out there, submitting AI pitches to numerous outlets — she was just the first to get properly called out.
How do we push back? This is where you come in.
If you want the sort of journalism that can never be written by AI — the sort of journalism dedicated to truthful, human-centred stories — you need to support it. And Dispatch is the only UK outlet dedicated solely to long-form reportage.
In less than five months, we’ve published agenda-setting pieces, with plenty more in the pipeline. But the truth is Dispatch runs on a shoestring: I’m the only full-timer, backed by a brilliant team of freelancers. And the only way we can keep working together is with support from readers like you.
Right now, you’re a free subscriber. Maybe you’ve just joined. Maybe you’ve been undecided. But if the past few weeks prove anything, it’s that outlets like Dispatch are more necessary than ever.
So, here's somthing make that decision easier:
I’m replacing our August half-price offer with the “Margaux Blanchard discount”: 57% off monthly and annual memberships — a nod to the 57% of journalists who fear AI could replace their jobs.
That’s just £32.25 for a year, or £3.22 a month, to unlock every Dispatch article.
Yes, it’s an absolute bargain, and if you think it’s too little, that’s because it is. (If you can, please consider a standard subscription, or even becoming a super-supporter.)
When I launched Dispatch, I knew there was a need for this kind of journalism. After Blanchard, I’ve never been more certain.
~ Jacob