Welcome to this week’s Press Gazette Future of Media newsletter on Thursday, 21 August, brought to you in association with Wright’s Media – the premier global content licensing agency with 25 years of industry experience guiding publishing clients.

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Margaux Blanchard is a name you will remember.

She emerged into the world of online news in April this year and has since proved to be a versatile reporter and feature writer with articles published on everything from the child mental health services crisis in the UK to Disneyland superfans who visit the amusement park hundreds of times a year.

Blanchard has written about the persecution of journalists in Guatemala for the journal Index on Censorship and about the challenges of becoming a first-time parent at the age of 45 for Business Insider.

She wrote a 1400-word feature for Wired about couples getting married in virtual online spaces such as Roblox which was followed up by websites ranging from Mashable to Fast Company.

Blanchard’s career hit a major bump in the road, however, when she pitched a feature about a disused mining town in Colorado which has become a macabre training ground for an organisation which uses real bodies to investigate death in staged environments.

Editor Jacob Furedi thought the story sounded perfect for Dispatch. If anything, a bit too perfect.

Today Press Gazette publishes an investigation into the work of Margaux Blanchard, which I suspect will have a major impact on the way reputable online publishers operate. It is a piece which every journalist and editor should print out and pin to their office wall.

Every time you receive an email from someone you do not know the assumption now has to be that they are not real.

There are going to be huge opportunities for trusted news brands to stand out in the increasingly imaginary AI-fuelled online world. But that trust is easily lost and news publishers who don’t put in the effort to check whether their writers and sources actually exist will go out of business.

Today we also report on the spread of “consent or pay” revenue models at UK publishers.

Clear guidance from the UK Information Commissioner has enabled newsbrands ranging from The Sun to The Guardian to offer readers a stark choice: accept cookies to enable personalised advertising or pay for the privilege of reading a website without being tracked.

Nearly everyone accepts cookies given this choice and the few who don’t become subscribers. There is no evidence yet that readers are rejecting “consent or pay” news websites altogether meaning the tactic has become a win-win for those trying to provide ad-funded news on the open web.

Our report provides a full rundown of the consent or pay tactics being adopted by top UK publishers.

The full line-up of speakers for the 2025 Future of Media Technology Conference at the London Hilton Bankside on 11 September is now live.

This event is purely focused around discussing and showcasing new ways to make journalism pay in the digital age. Full details here.

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On Press Gazette

Wired and Business Insider remove ‘AI-written’ freelance articles

Index on Censorship believes article it published by 'Margaux Blanchard' was generated by AI.

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