What happened
Raskin recapped the pilot's first live session on her own site on September 18, in The Food Section, describing roughly six real callers and genuine story brainstorming with zero AI noise. The switch followed a Nieman Journalism Lab piece from August 18 in which Raskin said she'd been deluged by pitches where neither the freelance writer nor the story being pitched actually existed — AI-generated from end to end. She told Journalism.co.uk the volume had become unmanageable: 'It just got to a point that was unmanageable. So I took one week's vacation and realised we don't have to put up with it.' The pattern isn't isolated to one small newsletter — Nieman Lab also flagged that Wired and Business Insider had to retract stories filed by a fabricated AI freelancer, and that PR firms are now deploying AI publicists to mass-pitch journalists at scale.
Why phone-only pitching is a trust signal, not a gimmick
MagnetizeX builds founder visibility systems for B2B firms.
For B2B founders chasing earned media, the AI-pitch-spam problem cuts both ways: journalists are getting buried in AI slop from vendors and freelancers alike, which means a founder's own pitch is competing for attention in an inbox the editor may already half-distrust. Editors reverting to phone lines, verified portfolios, or existing relationships as filters means founders who show up as real people — not a templated pitch blasted through a PR platform — get disproportionately more of a shrinking amount of editorial attention. Authority built on a real relationship with a specific journalist is becoming more valuable precisely because it's harder to fake than an email.
- Stop mass-pitching cold outlets with AI-drafted copyIf your PR motion involves sending similar pitches to dozens of journalists via a platform like Muck Rack or Cision, assume editors are now filtering harder for anything that reads templated — personalize each pitch enough that it couldn't have gone to five other outlets unchanged.
- Build two or three real journalist relationshipsPick the two or three publications most relevant to your buyers and invest in an actual relationship with one reporter at each — reply to their stories, send a real tip with no ask attached — before you ever need a placement.
- Lead with a phone or video call when offeredWhen a journalist or podcast host offers a call instead of email, take it; the friction that's annoying for pitch volume is exactly the signal editors are now using to separate real founders from AI-scaled outreach.
By the numbers: Raskin estimated roughly one-quarter of pitches to The Food Section were entirely AI-generated before the switch; the new phone line runs a few hours a week and fielded about six real callers in its first documented session.
"It just got to a point that was unmanageable. So I took one week's vacation and realised we don't have to put up with it." — Hanna Raskin, founder, The Food Section
What to do this week
Pick one journalist or podcast host on your target list and reach out this week with something that isn't an ask — a real tip, a data point relevant to their beat, or a short voice note instead of a templated email. It's slower than a platform blast, but it's the version of PR outreach that still works as inboxes fill up with AI-generated noise.