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The Talented Ms. Goldiee · Question Everything

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: From KCRW and Placement Theory, this is Question Everything. I'm
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Brian Reid. Today on our show, an editor confronts a
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: writer who he suspects of trickery.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: I saw that you had a couple of pieces in
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: PopSugar that I was trying to read, but I think
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: they've been removed.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: Do you have any idea what was going on there?
• 0:16
  Speaker 4: Stick around.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: A little while back, I got connected with a journalist
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: who'd found himself embroiled in a bit of a mystery.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Hewn Brown is an editor at an online magazine
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: based in Toronto called The Local. Does lots of local
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: coverage to Toronto. Not long before we were put in touch,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Nick had put out a call for pitches from freelancers,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: which is something he loved to do as an editor.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Welcome new writers into the fold. Give them a platform.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: And Nick got what he was looking for. A pitch
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: came in from a journalist in Toronto that sounded great
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: at first. But then as he looked deeper at it
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: and the journalists behind it, Nick began to suspect that
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: this writer might not be who she seemed. As he
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: told us when we got put in touch, he soon
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: became obsessed with this writer and finding out everything he
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: could about her. Here's Nick.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Looking for new writers is an important part of my job.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: I want to bring in new people with new points
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: of view, young writers or people from communities who aren't
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: always represented in the media. That's not out of any vague,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: high-minded idea about diversity. It's good for the magazine. It's
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: how we find stories that others don't. It helped us
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: win awards for our tiny newsroom, punching way above our weight.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: A few months ago, in September, we put a call
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: out for stories about healthcare privatization, which has become a
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: fraught topic in Canada. And I got a pitch from
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: a new writer that seemed promising. She had a memorable name,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Victoria Goldie, spelled G-O-L-D-I-E-E. Victoria's pitch was about the rise
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: of what she called membership medicine. Healthcare is free here,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: but new companies were popping up, charging monthly subscription fees,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: and promising to help you skip the line. Victoria was
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: going to talk to the people using those services, and
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: talk to the people angry about being pushed to the
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: back of the line. It was a story about a trend,
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: she said, that could transform Canada's universal healthcare system into, quote,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: something resembling Netflix or Amazon Prime.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I liked it.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: The Netflix comparison was fun, the analysis seemed sound, and
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: the rest of the writing was sharp. She said she'd
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: written for The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Maisonneuve,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Canadian outlets that publish the same kind of feature writing
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: we do. Most impressively, she'd already done a lot of
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: the reporting. Victoria said she'd interviewed a consultant in Vancouver
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: and a 58-year-old construction worker in Hamilton, Ontario. She had
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: a great quote from a prominent Toronto physician, Danielle Martin,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: who said, quote, Membership medicine is a creeping form of privatization.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: When I googled Victoria, the author headshot that came up
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: was of a youthful black woman. According to her bio,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: she was, quote, a writer with a keen focus on
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: sharing the untold stories of underrepresented communities in the media.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: And I saw that she had bylines across a whole
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: range of publications. Victoria had written short pieces in The
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Cut and The Guardian. There were longer, more serious features
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: in publications like The Non-Profit Outrider and The Journal of
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: the Law Society of Scotland. The overall impression from her
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: publication history was ambitious young freelancer on the rise.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: I was sold.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: I brought her pitch to the next editorial story meeting.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: We'd received similar pitches before, but no one had done
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: all the legwork Victoria had. Plus, like I said, we're
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: always eager to try out new people. We decided to
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: assign the story. When I got home from the office
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: that evening, I took a final look at her pitch.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: But reading it this time, an eerie feeling came over me.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: The slick pitch suddenly seemed a little too slick. Minor
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: questions I may have brushed aside earlier, eager to just
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: get the story assigned, now nod at me. First of all,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: lots of Victoria's bylines were in New York magazines and
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: British newspapers. Was she actually in Toronto? Earlier, I'd been
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: impressed that she'd done so much reporting already, even interviewing
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: local construction workers. But as I thought more about it,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: that jumped out as a red flag. I've freelanced a
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: lot in the past, and I know from experience that
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: doing so many interviews before officially getting hired is a
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: big gamble. Now I felt like I might be taking
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: a gamble if I commissioned this story for Victoria. Before
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: sending a contract, I needed to find out more. I'd
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: already read some of her work in the U.S., but
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: now I wanted to see what her Canadian reporting was like.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: I googled her name, along with the names of the
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Canadian publications she said she'd written for.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: Nothing came up.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: It appeared she hadn't written for any of those places.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: I had one of my colleagues reach out to Danielle Martin,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: the doctor Victoria claimed she'd interviewed.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: Dr.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Martin said she'd never heard of Victoria. I had a
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: feeling of vertigo, of putting my foot onto what should
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: have been solid ground and finding nothing but air. I
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: emailed Victoria back and asked if those quotes were from
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: her own interviews and if she'd sent along the stories
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: she'd written for the Walrus and Maisonneuve. She sent a
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: lengthy reply the next day. The quotes I included in
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: the pitch are from original interviews I've conducted over the
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: past few weeks. In terms of previous work, I read
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: a regular newsletter for The Walrus, which gives a good
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: sense of my ability to balance accessibility with depth while
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: speaking to a broad audience. She attached a link to
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: The Walrus' Lab Insider newsletter. It had someone else's byline.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: So I emailed The Walrus. An editor wrote back to
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: say that Victoria had never written that newsletter, and she
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: found it odd that Victoria would say that she did.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: I re-read Victoria's stilted email. Then I re-read her original pitch.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: And I saw what should have been clear from the start.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: The pitch had rote phrasing, like, This story matters because
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: of X. It is timely because of Y. It fits
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: your readership because of Z. Hallmarks of an AI-generated piece
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: of writing.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: I was embarrassed.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: I had been naively operating with a pre-chat GPT mindset.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: still assuming a pitch's ideas and prose were actually connected
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: to the person who sent it. Worse, I could see
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: now that the reason I'd liked the pitch to begin
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: with was probably because a large language model somewhere was
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: remixing my own carefully crafted prompt and giving me precisely
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: what I was asking for. I'd put out a call
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: for pitches about healthcare privatization, stories where health and money collide,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: and Victoria, I presumed, had put my words into a chatbot.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: and told it to create a strong pitch that responded
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: to my request. The AI was just flattering me, something
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: it's good at, by sending me back what I wanted
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: to hear. I probably should have ended things right there.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Send her an email, reject the pitch, tell her I
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: discovered that she'd made up quotes and never interviewed sources.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: But once I got over that initial embarrassment, I started
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: to feel something else.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Shock.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: The boldness of the lies astounded me. Why would a
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: journalist with a successful freelance career take such wild risks
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: to pitch a small publication across the world? Did she
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: have an actual freelance career? Who was this person? Were
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: they a person at all? Since 2022, the byline Victoria
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Goldie has been attached to dozens of articles. I found
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: a handful of pieces in Business Insider where Victoria told
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: the stories of everyday people.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: A Trader Joe's sign artist.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: An Amazon delivery driver who loved his job, an actor
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: who got leg-lengthening surgery. There was an interview Victoria did
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: with actor Nico Santos in Vogue Philippines, a feature on
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Afrobeats in Rolling Stone Africa, and a product recommendation for
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: a DVD drive in New York magazine's The Strategist. At
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: this point, I didn't plan to write about this strange
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: freelancer who I was pretty sure had tried to scam us.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: But I gotta admit, I was curious. If she was
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: making up interviews in her pitches... What else was she
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: doing in these dozens of stories she'd published in reputable
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: outlets around the world? I couldn't let it go. In
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: my spare time, I found myself creating a timeline of
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: every single article published under the byline Victoria Goldie since 2022.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Like a 2024 digital story about climate change memes. That
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: piece quotes Juliet Pinto, a professor at Penn State. I
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: decided to email Professor Pinto. This is a strange question
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: out of the blue, I wrote, but had she ever
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: spoken with a journalist named Victoria Goldie? I sent Pinto
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: a link to the piece where she was quoted talking
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: about her research. She wrote back immediately, I have not
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: spoken with any reporter about that piece of research. Victoria
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: had written a couple of stories for Vox Media publication PS,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: formerly known as PopSugar, but when I tried to read them,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: they'd been taken down. and replaced by a note that
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: says the story's quote did not meet our editorial standards,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: a phrase I would come across a lot as I
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: followed the digital breadcrumbs Victoria Goldie left behind. I wrote
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: to a former PS editor named Nancy Einhardt to ask
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: what had happened. She said she remembered Victoria's pieces borrowing
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: too heavily from articles published elsewhere. She also told me
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: that she felt disappointed because she'd really liked Victoria's pitches.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: She added that I was the third editor to contact
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: her about Victoria in the past couple of months. She
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: is clearly on a pitch tour, Nancy wrote. I started
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: to wonder, how prolific was this person? In October, after
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: I'd already been digging into her work for a couple
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: of weeks, I woke up to find a new Victoria
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Goldie story online, in the design publication Dwell, with the headline,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: How to Turn Your Home's Neglected Corners into Design Gold.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: It featured a series of quotes from well-known international designers
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: and architects from Japan to England to California. The most
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: cursory read raised questions that probably should have been asked
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: by editors to begin with. Namely, had a freelancer writing
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: an article whose only purpose was to get readers to
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: buy some lamps actually interviewed 10 of the world's top
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: designers and architects?
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: She hadn't.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: I emailed them. A bunch of them responded to say
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: they'd never heard of Victoria Goldie. But one architect quoted
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: in that piece was more careful in her response. She
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: told me she didn't remember speaking with Victoria. and there
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: was no sign of her in her inbox, but she
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: couldn't be 100% sure. Either way, she wasn't particularly concerned
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: by her appearance in the article. She wrote, quote, The
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: material attributed to me sounds exactly like something that I
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: would say, and I'm fine with that material being out there.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: That blew my mind. In this current AI age, I
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: could accept that readers might not really care if stories
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: were being made up, but it never occurred to me
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: that the people being lied about might not be bothered.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: What does it say about journalism, where we're constantly working
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: our asses off to make sure every I is dotted
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: and T is crossed? That a source actually doesn't care
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: if a machine made up a quote for her, as
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: long as it sounds mostly right. And while up to
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: now digging into Victoria's old stories had felt like a
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: kind of fun puzzle, for some reason seeing this fresh
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: new story on the internet felt different. Oh my god,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Victoria can't be stopped, I messaged my colleagues, sharing a
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: link to the piece.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: She was out there.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: At this very minute, preparing a new, increasingly brazen fake story.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: And some editor was probably out there too, getting ready
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: to publish it. I don't want to sound naive. I
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: am aware that people lie on the internet. But these
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: lies bugged me. Not so much on Victoria's end, scammers
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: will scam, but on the editorial side. On how simple
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: it had been for such easily debunked lies to slide
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: their way into respected publications. Like, Was anyone out there
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: even editing these stories? Plus, let's be honest, I'm a journalist.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: If a mysterious person in some mysterious location was printing
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: AI slop in publications around the world, under the noses
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: of her editors, about such an impressive variety of topics,
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: that was a story I wanted to tell. That's how
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: I ended up on the phone with Victoria.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: Happy week!
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: So nice to meet you.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: Hey Victoria, how you doing?
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: I'm fine. That's after a quick break. Two weeks after
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: she'd first pitched me, and after spending far too many
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: hours trailing the path she'd cut through the internet, I
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: emailed Victoria Goldie, asking if we could talk about her pitch.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: I'd spent days reading everything Victoria had ever written on
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: the internet. Now I wanted to know who she actually was,
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: and I planned to write about it for The Local.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: I set up a video call for later that week.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Ten minutes before it was set to begin, she emailed
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: to change plans. I look forward to chatting in a bit.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: I'll be joining via phone, so it'll be a voice
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: call in my end.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Convenient, I thought.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Moments later, she was on the line, chipper and friendly.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Hey, Victoria, how you doing? I'm fine. I'll turn my
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: camera off as well since you're on the phone. How's
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: your day going so far?
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: I had so many questions. Was the person on the
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: line even the same person whose writing I'd been reading?
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Where did she actually live? Did she even care about
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: the corners of a living room? Mostly, I wanted to
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: know why she was doing this. Was she a writer
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: with genuine ambitions who had gotten in way over her
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: head and was now taking some truly outrageous risks? I
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: was ready to be sympathetic. Or was she a simple
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: scammer who had found easy marks in the overworked editors
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: of the journalism world? But I knew I had to
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: tread lightly, so I started with the basics.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: Whereabouts in Toronto are you? Blanc. Okay, nice.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: That's one of the city's busiest commercial streets. It would
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: be like if I asked someone in New York City
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: where they lived, and they just responded, Broadway.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: I'll admit, I was nervous.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: I did my best to sound casual, and not like
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I just spent weeks thinking about this person. I've never
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: interviewed anyone I so desperately wanted to hear the truth from.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: I had some questions, and.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: more questions about the piece and how you want to
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: move forward with it.
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: First of all, tell me about how you envision the
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: rest of the reporting process going.
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: Okay, so the piece basically is about how there's been
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: like a quiet but significant shift towards privatized like subscription
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: style healthcare models.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: She talked her way through the story using more or
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: less the same language as the pitch, as if paraphrasing
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: a document in front of her.
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: More people, like Canadians, are paying for healthcare as kind
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: of their own version of Netflix or Amazon, kind of
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: how we pay monthly subscriptions to Netflix. Now healthcare is
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: the same way.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: I asked her about the interviews she said she'd already done.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Is it right that you've done some of those pre-interviews already?
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just a few.
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: But I have a list of sources I want to get.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: In touch with. Yeah, and you said you spoke with
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Danielle Martin, is that right?
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah. I know her, or we know her at
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: the local, and she said she doesn't remember speaking with you.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Did you actually talk with her?
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I did.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: I did have my personal assistant talk to her.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: The idea of a freelance writer with a personal assistant
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: is ridiculous, of course.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: But I pushed on.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to spook her off the phone. So yeah,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: I was looking for some of those clippings, because I
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: wanted to see what your past work was like.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: And I saw that you.
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: Different things, not just like one topic. I covered multiple stories.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: If the person on the other end of the line
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: was put off by my questioning, she didn't show it.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Victoria stayed cheery and upbeat, providing quick, if implausible, answers
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: to everything. You mentioned you'd done work for The Walrus
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: and Maisonneuve and The Globe, but I couldn't find those clips.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I don't know, is there... Most of.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: Them are in print.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: What's that?
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: I said most of them are in print.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: I forgot to say.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Most of the stories are in print, Victoria told me.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: But editors from the Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve and the Walrus,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: told me they do not believe Victoria Goldie has ever
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: written for those publications. I saw that you had a
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: couple of pieces in PopSugar that I was trying to read,
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: but I think they'd been removed with a note that
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: said they didn't meet publication standards.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Do you have any idea what was going on there?
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think the editor who published the story
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: left the publication, so that's why they deleted all of
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: the pieces that she covered.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. The phone line makes it a little hard
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: to hear. but she said they deleted the pieces because
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: the editor she worked with had left the publication. Such
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: quick answers to everything. Obviously, publications don't take down pieces
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: because an editor leaves. She was lying to me, and
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I was pretending not to notice she was lying to me.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever spoken to someone who I
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: suspected was lying to me with each and every response.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: I wondered where she was based, since her work referenced
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: being in several different locations, like the US, the UK,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: even Nigeria. I saw that you've done some work in
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: the UK. Did you come to Toronto recently? Were you
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: in the UK before?
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I did.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: Recently, like this past year.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: Okay, okay, got you.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: It was surreal, because after spending weeks reading everything she'd
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: ever published on the internet, despite the lies, despite the
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: fact that much of what I'd read was surely written
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: by a machine, I still felt like I knew something
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: about this person. I saw, or at least convinced myself
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: I saw, the outlines of a real human being. She
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: seemed to be from Nigeria, based on some of her
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: earliest published writing. She was into Afrobeats and loved Korean dramas.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: She wrote about them over and over. And with that
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: image in my head, of a K-drama-loving young woman emailing
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: editors around the world from her apartment in Nigeria, I
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: felt some sympathy for her. In my fantasy version of
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: this phone call, after I'd gently led her toward more
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: and more severe inconsistencies, Victoria would be forced to admit
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: to the deceptions. And then we would really talk. I
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: started looking at some other clippings of your work to
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: kind of get a better sense of what you did.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: So I saw a piece that you did recently for
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland, I think.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Yes. And another one about climate memes for Outrider.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Yes. So I was looking at some of the quotes
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: within those stories and some of the people you spoke with. And,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: for example, in the Law Society of Scotland piece, you
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: quote this professor. Actually, I emailed and she said she
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: never spoke with you. Victoria had hung up. I see
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: now how foolish my fantasy had been. Whoever was on
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: the other end of that line, caught in a nightmarish
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: call that was transforming from a work chat into an
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: audit of their entire professional life, was not going to
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: somehow open up and offer a full explanation. I emailed
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: her back immediately. Had the phone line just dropped? did
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: she want to jump on another call no response I
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: messaged her later that day, too, explaining that I really
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: wanted to hear her perspective. Nothing. Eventually, before publishing the
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: story I wrote about Victoria for my magazine, I sent
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: a long note with every made-up quote and inconsistency I'd found,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: asking for her response. She's never emailed me back. In
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: the days and weeks after our phone call, Victoria seemed
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: to disappear from the internet. Her online writer's portfolio?
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: Gone.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Her muckrak page, which is a listing of a journalist's
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: published works?
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: That went too.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: An ex-account with her handle that had shared previous stories
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: also vanished. And as I emailed the editors of various publications,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: one by one Victoria's articles came down. The climate story
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: at Outrider was replaced by a 404 error. A story
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: she'd written for The Guardian came down, with a note
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: saying that it had been removed for editorial standards reasons.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: The story at Dwell was replaced with a similar note
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: that ends with, Our apologies to our readers and the
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: sources previously cited within. The Journal of the Law Society
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: of Scotland also removed Goldie's article and published an apology
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: to the journal's readers. I asked each of these publications
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: about their fact-checking. How had Victoria's pieces made it through?
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: And would this experience change anything in their editorial process?
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Only the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Law Society
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: of Scotland, Joshua King, answered my questions. In an email,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: King explained that the quotes in the piece raised no
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: red flags because they were, in all honesty, what I
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: would have expected those quoted to have said. He added, Sadly,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I think editors and publications are at risk from bad actors.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: And he's right. One of the academics quoted in Victoria's
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Law Journal article told me herself that the fake quote
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: sounded like the sort of thing she would say. It
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: was made up. but it reflected her real beliefs. Every
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: media era gets the fabulists it deserves. In the late 90s,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: a young journalist named Stephen Glass was caught fabricating sources
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: at the New Republic. A few years later, journalist Jason
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Blair was caught doing the same at the New York Times.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Those were major scandals. They caught the public imagination, stories
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: about ambitious strivers trying to find a shortcut to the
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: prestige and power that came with journalism in that era.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: This generation's scammers, by contrast, are scavenging in the wreckage
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: of a crumbling media environment. They're taking advantage of an
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: ecosystem uniquely susceptible to fraud, where publications with prestigious names
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: publish rickety journalism under their brands, where fact-checkers have been
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: axed and editors are overworked, where technology has made falsifying
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: pitches and entire articles trivially easy. Freelance journalism today is
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: an underpaid profession. precarious, impossible place to build a career. But,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: it turns out, it's a decent enough arena for a scam.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: On their website, Outrider says they pay $ 1, 000 per article.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Victoria would have been paid about $ 800 for her Dwell story,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: a fee that's difficult to justify if you actually want
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: to interview 10 of the top designers in the world,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: but a healthy payday if you only need to enter
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: a few words into ChatGPT. And Victoria Goldie isn't the
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: only one who's figured that out. Last summer, the Chicago
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Sun-Times accidentally published an AI-generated summer reading list filled with
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: books that didn't exist. Here in Toronto, an independent publication
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: called The Grind took a chance on some new writers
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: and were inundated with scammers trying to pawn off AI-generated
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: stories about fictional places and people. Earlier this year, at
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: least six publications, including Wired, removed stories after it was
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: discovered that the article's allegedly written by a freelancer named
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Margot Blanchard, were likely AI inventions. The suspected fraud was
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: only discovered after the editor of the independent publication Dispatch
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: received a suspicious pitch and began digging into the writer's work.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: After weeks of trudging through Goldie's online mess, I went
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: back to my inbox to deal with the rest of
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: the pitches that were still sitting there, waiting for me.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: When we put out our call for pitches, our hope
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: was to bring new writers to our publication. But in
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: a world where you don't know if the person sending
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: the pitch had actually written it, I didn't know how
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: to do that. Looking at the collection of ideas in
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: my inbox now, all I could see was the synthetic
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: sheen of artificial intelligence. There were probably some promising young
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: writers buried in there somewhere. But I couldn't bear to
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: dig through the bullshit to try to find them. I
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: idly googled the authors of a few of the pitches
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: that looked most blatantly written by A.I., I saw their
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: bylines across the internet, a web of lies and uncanny
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: half-truths entrenched so deeply in the information ecosystem that no
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: one could possibly have the energy to dislodge them. Then
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: I was struck by a brief but genuine moment of
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: bone-deep despair. Then I closed my laptop.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: That's Nicholas Hewn-Brown at The Local in Toronto. Thanks to
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Callie Anderson for connecting us with Nick, and thanks to
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Nick and The Local for letting us adapt this story.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: We'll link to the version Nick ran in The Local
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: in the show notes. If you have a second, please
• 25:22
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• 25:39
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• 25:41
  Speaker 1: among other things. Today's show was produced by Zach St.
• 25:47
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• 25:49
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• 25:52
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• 25:55
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• 25:58
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