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Hi all. This month we’ve got pieces on Substack, Q&A with Ethan Mollick on AI in organizations, a podcast on how metrics make us miserable, plus my column on the view of media from the Game Developers Conference and South by Southwest.

But First…

Both Amber and I will be at the PBS Annual Meeting and pre-conference Technology Summit in Austin next month. If you’ll also be there and are interested in chatting about AI, games, innovation, or just the future of public media look us up! You can also drop me or Amber a line (cdavis@nebraskapublicmedia.org and/or amber.samdahl@pbswisconsin.org) if you want to book a specific time to chat.

Webinars That Track

There’s still time to register for today’s April webinar at 1pET/10aPT. We’re collaborating again with Current to bring you What’s Working with Public Media Newsletters. Email newsletters have become a powerful tool for building loyal audiences and creating a direct line to the communities we serve. Unlike social platforms, your newsletter list belongs to you — no algorithm, no platform risk, just a direct connection to the people who want to hear from you. In this webinar, you colleagues from across public media will share what they've learned building newsletters that actually work, from reimagined flagship products to multi-newsletter portfolios and experimental formats. Each speaker will walk through their work in a show-and-tell format, giving you a look at real newsletters in the wild and the thinking behind them. Whether you're launching your first newsletter or rethinking an existing one, you'll walk away with practical strategies and fresh ideas to take back to your organization. Register here!

I haven’t done a newsletter edition since our March webinar on working with creators was ready to stream. So, if you want to revisit or check out Myths & Truths of Working with Influencers, here you go:

And if you’re interested in this topic, you’ll also want to review (or revisit) the American Press Institute’s guide to influencer collaborations, published last fall.

A Double Shot of Zeitgeist…

Last month I spent about 10 days on the road at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, followed by South by Southwest in Austin (where, ICYMI, Paula Kerger had a keynote). What follows are some reflections based on what I heard from ‘the innovati’ at those conferences.

The Forge, Not the Fire

As the fog of hype around AI burns off and its true utility comes into focus, one demonstrable advantage of generative AI tools to creatives is the ability to show instead of tell. Call it "demos over memos" (or, if you prefer alliteration to rhyming, "demos over docs"). Whether it’s rapid ideation and iteration, or a quick 80%-complete prototype, AI allows us to combine craft and concept further up the ideation value chain and communicate our intent for a finished product, story, or experience.

Intent is perhaps the biggest ingredient of the creative process that cannot be outbrained to AI. AI can get you to "average" fairly quick. That’s a good thing. But AI does not remove the necessity of thinking through that problem space of creation. Good ideas, good stories, good products, are still hard. Addressing that challenge requires intent. As Irena Pereira, Founder & CEO of Infinite Realms/Unleashed Games, put it at GDC, “AI is the forge, not the fire.”

For public media creators that forge means that the scope of possibility on human creative intent is wider than ever. It also means that creation is no longer limited to the speed of human thought. Across both conferences, there were numerous references to AI tools as a "partner," "participant," or "collaborator" with whom modern knowledge workers "share," replacing what Jon Gibson and Tara Phillips of Keywords Studios call a “prompt and pray” approach to AI with “steer and iterate” interactions. I also heard the metaphor of orchestration used more than a few times, usually associated with the idea that knowledge workers and creators are constantly tuning the system while moving from "doing to deciding."

Again, this is a good thing. But there is a creative responsibility that comes with the opportunities afforded to us by AI: creators must lean into the friction of craft.

Grind and Rise

Orson Welles once said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations” (which I misquote all the time saying, “Great art through limitations”). And especially at GDC, there was a lot of consideration of friction as a necessary, constructive component of craft.

Concepts plus craft can be multiplied by constraint, and that equation can yield something that meets our standards in public media. Workflows should be crucibles. But AI tools offer creators a tempting lack of restraint, and that lack of restraint is one of the key ingredients of slop.

Every month someone is releasing a better AI model or product with novel features. As Aparna Chennapragada said during her SXSW session, “Today's magic is tomorrow's commodity.” It’s important to remember that our measures of success for public media are not aligned with the success of AI. Novelty is the AI companies' stock in trade right now and while novelty in public media is nice it’s not core to our values.

What is core to our values is trust. And Mark Cuban, of all people, put forward a pithy equation on trust during a session he did on the future of journalism: Trust equals transparency of process divided by clarity of motives. Like intent, process sets us above a vast generative wasteland of "slop.”  To process is human, and it’s the process loop that matters most. In a world where the cost of information is going to zero, the value-add of public media comes from our creation (e.g., editorial) workflow.

That's the friction against which we need to optimize. Given the tools to which we have access here in mid-2026, the best way to do this is to identify pain points in your workflow and then consider how AI can help smooth those down to constrictive frictions.

Creatives, you’ll know you’ve found the right balance when the process leading to the pain points becomes “fun” again.

Public media leaders, you need to be setting your creation teams for success. Help your teams set principles for AI use, don’t hit them with mandates. When generation is cheap and getting cheaper, standards matter more. They are the ultimate friction against which we hone our value.

Citation Mediation

While we are leaning into the constructive frictions of craft, there is a destructive friction threatening our industry’s flank. This is the friction audiences experience in finding our content.

In an AI-mediated discovery environment, citation is not a vanity metric; it is survival. In our digital lives "discovery" is the whole ballgame; from finding photos on your mobile phone, to finding content to consume while walking through the airport, to assessing who to vote for in the next election. Increasingly, that information will be intermediated by AI. Everywhere I travel, I hear Gen-Z and Gen Alpha people talking about ‘ChatGPT'ing’ information.

To address this destructive friction, public media needs to prioritize a discovery strategy that addresses AI via SEO (or AEO, or GEO). The consensus from Austin and San Fran is that AI is currently in its listicle phase. This is a natural extension of a media model built around the probability of a click, and the more you can structure your information the better the chance it will re-surface with you cited as a source. At this point, citation is the goal.

We need to accept that this isn't aligned with storytelling for an audience of people. I'm not suggesting that we always subjugate storytelling to the bots, after all stories are largely the reason that any of us know what we know. But at this point AI isn’t prioritizing the unweaving of your carefully knitted narrative to answer a prompted question. We need to accept there are times we need to choose bot-friendly, choose human-friendly, or choose to structure the story for both (e.g., bulleted summaries of key points at the top of each story). The clock is ticking. In one workshop on AI search, the presenters predicted that AI search will overtake traditional "10 blue link" Google search by 2028.

Games are (Still) the Future

The final takeaway from my marathon of professional development is that gaming is the future. I see this happening on two levels. First, for Gen-Z and Gen Alpha, gaming is (and will remain) a public square.

Second, if you want to see what is coming in the near future for journalism and media, look at what is happening economically and technologically to the gaming industry. This seems especially true when it comes to AI.

The games industry is an industry that acutely feels the threat from AI. It is an industry that places a high value on craft. And it is an industry that wrestles with discovery at an epic scale. What the games industry is figuring out now about AI, craft, labor, and discovery, the rest of media will be forced to learn soon enough.

Okay, on to the links.

Thoughts on Public Media…

Building the Public Infrastructure for Local News (Alex Frandsen - Governing)
- This is the line that really hooked me in this piece: "So saving the existing system isn’t the goal. Building a healthier one is. That requires lawmakers to start with a different set of questions: What civic information do residents actually need to stay safe, participate in democracy and build power with one another? And what kind of structural changes do we need to usher in the kind of local media system that’s capable of creating that information in abundance? This reframe shifts the center of gravity from industry salvation to community impact and positions the public as a key partner in debates about the future of local media, rather than as a passive bystander." They feel like the fundamental questions that we should be wrestling with at our local organizations.

CPB’s Demise Has Potential Impact On Commercial TV (Mary M. Collins - TV News Check) - I appreciate the rallying cry, even if it is wrapped in the candied shell of self-interest.

BBC will cut up to 2,000 jobs to reduce costs by about 10% (Brian Melley - AP) - As my mom is fond of saying, "Things are tough all over."
Related: And also in Germany: Budget reduction weakens Germany's international broadcaster

The $1 Million Gamble: Why We Threw Our Fundraising Goals Out the Window (Rob Risko) - Anyone who knows me knows that fundraising is not my métier. But I appreciate LAist showing their work. And I hope this inspires others to work within the unique characters of their local markets and regions to explore similar innovations in local support.

The Attention Economy…

Guardian’s first Substack experiment is republishing food newsletter (Charlotte Tobitt - PressGazette) - Since the topic of this month's PMI webinar is newsletters, I thought I'd share this piece about how a major media org (and one not dissimilar to public media) is approaching Substack.

Substack, Polymarket announce partnership: ‘Journalism is better when it’s backed by live markets’ (Dominick Mastangelo - The Hill) - Is it? That's a question any of us with newsrooms will have to wrestle with at some point this year. As I've suggested before, the time to start developing policies around this is now. But that aside, if your newsletter strategy does or might include Substack, this is something to note.

AI + Creation…

AI Disclosure in Podcasting: A Decision Framework (Alberto Betella) - H/t to Collin Berke, NPM’s Director of Research, tipping me to this. Across your organization, people should be A) experimenting with AI and B) asking this question about transparency of use. I'm not necessarily advocating that you adopt this framework as it, but I think it could be a good jumping off point for setting your own disclosure policy at your organization.

How AI is transforming freelance journalism (Marina Adami - NiemanLab) - The use of AI is being normalized into our industry. This piece offers a good view from the trenches. You might find, or be inspired to create, some new workflow hacks here.

AI + Us…

Q&A with Ethan Mollick (Tom Rachman - AI Policy Perspectives) - This is a great check-in with one of our favorite thought leaders on the practical use of AI. I’d especially recommend this one for GMs and department heads, as it speaks to leadership in organizational use of AI, and the need to rethink how we set up our organizations.

You Can't Influence What You Can't See: Why Your Organization Is Already Losing the AI Debate (Robert Bole) - While this short piece isn't specifically on public media, Bole worked at CPB 15 years ago and has been at the intersection of media, innovation and DC ever since. So, it's not just confirmation bias that makes me believe him when he says the information environment has changed.
Related: On a similar theme, check out Alex Curley's piece in Editor & Publisher: Newsrooms face AI control crossroads

Why AI Needs Us (Tim O'Reilly with Claude Opus 4.6) - There are three key parts to this piece. The first is the essay by Claude, which reads in the style of a profile that might have been in the New Yorker, or one of the other Condé Nast publications. The second is O'Reilly's commentary at the end on the process, because I think the process matters as much as the effect and O'Reilly has always been good about showing his work. The third is the effect, which is to say how you feel about this work upon reflection. Case in point, I felt uncomfortable with Claude's use of the first-person perspective. I can't deny that I liked some of the turns of phrase, yet they simultaneously resonated with me and felt out of tune. hollow and dissonant to me. But, that’s just me, and as we say here, your mileage may vary.
Related: This piece by Emily Bender and Nanna Inie from Tech Policy Press, is a nice chaser to the Opus O'Reilly piece: We Need to Talk About How We Talk About 'AI'
Also Related: Why comparisons between AI and human intelligence miss the point by Celeste Rodriguez Louro and Jennifer Rodger.

Agentic & Generative Buzz…

Introducing ChatGPT Images 2.0 (OpenAI) - Honestly, that OpenAI has (finally) stepped up its game in image generation again is almost secondary to how they present the announcement. And I'm not just referring to the demo video. Scroll down the page. It's clever, even if it sacrifices clarity of communication in the process.
Related: Here is one company snapshot analysis of this new tool, which is probably as interesting to me because of how they categorized the outputs they judged as much as the scoring itself.

Deep Research Max: a step change for autonomous research agents (Luka Haas & Srinivas Tadepalli - The Keyword) - I still quietly chuckle when I remember that just three years ago, we were adamantly advising against using AI for research. Recently we've been in the Wikipedia-replacement zone (i.e., start with a Deep Research report for high altitude context). But we're moving to something different. I can't imagine doing a strategic planning session without your strategy team actively engaging AI at every step of the process. At the content creation level, a tool like this one should be in your toolbox for any non-fiction content. Of course, you still have to fact check (so long as LLMs are the basis for the AI tools we use, I don't see that changing), and you still have to spend time reflecting on the research before turning it into context for our audiences.

Introducing ElevenLabs for Government (Oswin Kruger Ruiz, Ben Supple, Grace Smith - ElevenLabs) - This announce is a little dated, but since a lot of stations are tied to state or local governments, this is potentially one to check out.

Homo Ludus

Health information delivered as a video game can bridge the communication gap between patients and providers (Elena Bertozzi - The Conversation) - This is a great essay on the power of 'games for good.' At our core, humans are built to play; way more than we're built to doomscroll (or, if you're old enough, channel surf). At this one to you evidence box for why public media organizations have every reason to be in the business of making games.

How Metrics Make Us Miserable (Plain English with Derek Thompson (and C. Thi Nguyen) - I found this episode to be a bit of a two-fer. The title really only refers to the first half, but that part is good for thinking about the KPIs we've been trying to apply to public media for the better part of two decades, and how they may actually carry unintended incentives with them. There is some important reflecting to be done there. Optimization to KPIs doesn't necessarily make for great art. And public media has always existed at the intersection of art and product. Then, in the second, part the conversation turns toward the philosophy of games. What is a game, and why is the playing of games such a human endeavor?

And finally…

Another h/t to Collin Berke at Nebraska Public Media for this one.

Have a creative, productive week.

Image generated with ChatGPT

Image generated with ChatGPT 5.2 (Thinking) and Google Whisk

Hi all. Greetings from South by Southwest. This week I’ve got a longer column on a fundemental shift in the media landscape. There’s also few links to some interesting thoughts on public media, but otherwise this edition is lite on links.

But First…

Great to see so many of you during our webinar last month, How NPR is Using AI. I don’t know that we’ve had a chat quite as active as we did for this one, a it was largely driven by questions from the audience. So if you missed any part of it, you can catch up with it here.

Also, there is still time to register for our March webinar, a session for anyone thinking about audience growth, digital strategy, and new pathways in a changing media landscape.

Myths & Truths of Working With Influencers will be live this Thursday, March 19 at 1PM ET / 10 AM PT. Produced in collaboration with our friends at the Marketing & Communications PLC, this webinar will be a joint conversation on how public media stations are evolving audience engagement through collaborations with creators and influencers. As we seek to reach and engage new audiences while telling stories in modern, relevant ways, many stations are experimenting with nontraditional talent — from local subject-matter experts and digital content creators to community bloggers, social media personalities and even internal staff who can authentically play the role of “digital influencer.” We’ll discuss the real-world mechanics of these partnerships: how to identify the right creators, how to balance brand standards while empowering external voices, and how to integrate creators into your station’s ecosystem, from guest-hosting to co-created events. Register here!

A Medieval Approach to Media

Toward the end of last year, I started working through a self-generated reading list of books on media theory. It was early in that quest that I stumbled upon Jeff Jarvis’ The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet.

Here’s the gist of this particular work: Almost 575 years ago the world (first Europe and eventually its colonies) changed with advent of moveable type print, which gave knowledge permanence and in so doing made it replicable, verifiable, and critique-able. It fundamentally changed how humans ingested and processed information about our world as private study led to private thoughts which led to a clearer delineation (and eventual elevation) of the self. The squishy circularity and community-orientation of oral culture gave way as the dominant form of information communication over decades to the crisp, individualistic linearity of printed type, and in so doing eventually (I’m glossing over a lot here) created the knowledge economy we know today.

The theory of the push/pull between orality and literacy^* isn’t new. Media scholars have been focusing on the seismic impact of the printing press for 65+ years now. Jarvis’ thesis, written circa 2022, is that, in human history, our knowledge economy is the exception even if it feels to us like the rule. As we are nearing the closure of the historical parenthetical and that economy is starting to come to an end, what lays on the other side, he reasons, is very likely to be more similar to what came before societies crossed into the parenthesis. “The future is medieval.”
^*“Literacy” here isn’t the ability to read, just that the norms of society are encoded via written, linear text.

Look around at the media landscape and we can feel the truth in that. The Internet, but especially social media, opened the doors for orality to begin to erode the potency of literacy. Now we watch the rise of the creator economy and the documented shift of audience trust away from institutions and toward individuals. Vibes – a source’s feeling of authenticity – increasingly matter today as much as (sometimes more than) facts – the verifiability of the information being sourced. Once you factor in the conversational nature of chatbots and chatbot-based web search, it’s not hard to see how these tools orient toward natural language conversation and hasten the societal tilt toward orality.

Of course, there was a time (pre-1450 C.E.) when the written word was highly distrusted by the majority of people because one couldn’t size up the source. But for the whole of our lifetimes, there have been layers of institutions with transparent values and standards that make disembodied information trustworthy. That is, in part, the audience trust that we in public media work so hard to maintain.

What does this shift back toward orality mean for public media?

To start addressing that, we have to first acknowledge that at the birth of public media in the US, radio and television were the state of the media art at a time of near peak-literacy (again, defined versus orality, not defined by the ability to read). Today the state of the media art is math – algorithms and feeds, reasoning models and chatbots. Excelling at linear video and audio is not the media that our democracy needs us to infuse with our values. There are many avenues to explore to figure out how to position public media for relevance in 2050. But it does seem like we should start by at least agreeing that it cannot happen while we pursue a media model from 1950.

Next, we have to acknowledge that public media’s power as an institution is magnified by a world of scarcity, where information sources are limited, mostly to a corporate media ecosystem firmly rooted in a capitalist ideology. Today the cost of creating media has dropped to a point that anyone may express their voice and it’s more important for that independent voice to game the algorithm (or to pitch to someone who can) than impress a gatekeeper.

Knowledge is a commodity, not an asset, and orality only encourages that commodification. As Jarvis writes, “Everyone can be connected. One-to-many is replaced by any-to-any and any-to-many. The mass is dead…. For half a millennium, the mediators of media—editors, publishers, producers—controlled the public conversation. Now we may break free of their gatekeeping, agendas, and scarcities—while at the same time risking the loss of the value these institutions have brought in recommending quality, certifying fact, and supporting creativity. What must we create to replace these functions?”

Public media has always strived to give voice to (i.e., “platformed”) lesser heard voices (usually individuals) in the media landscape. What role do we play in a landscape where audiences don’t need us to amplify the points of view of creators, when community-think trumps individual voices? To what are we an alternative when those literate corporate media business models have given way to algorithmic distribution and AI-mediated knowledge that favors orality?

The pendulum is now swinging back away from peak literacy culture and reorienting toward more of a balance with orality, but the two will always be in tension with each other. Even today, when we encounter a good writer, we often talk about them having a distinct “voice.”

In that mixing of orality and literacy, I am optimistic that public media can still play a role, just as a small number of institutions influenced media in the era before the printing press. Can we find our niche in a more oral culture? The first time we took aim at that target it was the social media era. We landed wide of the mark, pulled off bead by our unwillingness to step away from the safe, authoritative gravity of broadcasting. We are getting another chance now that we are firmly ensconced in the AI era. Can we acknowledge the change happening around us, and start seriously discussing how we redirect our energies toward adapting to that change?

And if you want to get a good taste of this topic (without staring down 2,000+ pages of media theory reading) this recent episode of the Plain English podcast can whet your appetite.

On the Road

I’ve been on the road for the last couple of weeks, first presenting at the Game Developers Conference Festival of Gaming in San Francisco and then on to Austin for my annual pilgrimage to South by Southwest. New this year was brief side step to present at the Hacks/Hackers AI x Journalism Day with previous PMI webinar guests Erica Osher and Ethan Toven-Lindsey.

So, I’m behind on my reading and curating content for this month. I’ll be back to you reactions to those conferences, as well as links sometime next week, but let me know if you like the longer column approach, and/or if you miss the links this time around.

Okay, on to some thoughts on public media…

Thoughts on Public Media…

Stop to Start: Letting Go to Build Future Audiences in Public Media (Michelle Maestas Simonsen & David Lowe - Greater Public) - I like this piece because, keeping audience relevance as a North Star, it takes the practical approach fighting smarter, not stronger, without treating that pivot like a failure or betrayal of mission.

Life after broadcast: What mission-driven media must become as audiences and funding move on (Tom Davidson - Editor & Publisher) - In Tom's last pre-hiatus column for E&P, he ruminates on the question "If we were to launch a new local, mission-driven public-service media entity today, what would it look like?" In it, Tom makes a subtle point that I think it worth highlighting. Most of us still have towers, and likely will for a while. But those can be leveraged in the service of what comes next. The key is to accept that broadcast isn't the future and, with that post-broadcast mindset, figure out how to utilize broadcast's residual value as a force magnifier for the non-broadcast future of public media.

"So many interesting ways that Netflix could spend that money…" (Shawn Halford via LinkedIn) - I didn't want to leave this one to vagaries of LinkedIn's algorithm. Shawn (formerly of American Public Television, even more formerly of PBS) started any interesting conversation around the idea of what a global company like Netflix could do with their "breakup fee" from the abandoned Warner Brothers/Discovery bid. It's worth checking out the reactions (yes, weighed in) and weighing in yourself.

Have a creative, productive week.

Screen Grab from Alex Curley’s layoffs.semipublic.co, captured March 17, 2026

Screengrab from Kalshi showing the historical odds of PBS/NPR defunding (captured 2/17/26)

Hi all. This time we explore how public media could think about prediction markets, plus pieces on reclaiming the public interest, SEO and AI search, how Americans are using AI at work, OpenClaw meets OpenAI, gaming’s influence on politics, and finally, generative video take on a Brandon Sanderson novel.

But First…

Well over 200 of you have already registered for our next PMI webinar, Thursday, February 19 at 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT. How NPR is Using AI will feature a candid conversation with Erica Osher, NPR’s VP of AI Labs, Sharahn Thomas, NPR's VP of Content Operations and the Editorial Lead for AI, and Tony Cavin, NPR’s Managing Editor, Standards and Practices will give us an inside look at how NPR is approaching AI three years into this new era. We’ll start with a broad overview of the AI landscape for journalists and media organizations at the start of 2026, then dig into practical, real-world questions like:

• How NPR teams use AI in day-to-day workflows

• How NPR evaluates tools (what they’re testing, what they avoid, and why)

• How NPR is thinking about AI access, content protection and blocking, and monetization

• How NPR balances experimentation with editorial standards across product and newsroom teams

Bring your most pressing AI questions; Q&A will be encouraged throughout.

The Odds Get Even

A lot of the emerging media and the trends that shape emerging media which we discuss in this newsletter fall into the categories of AI, games and spatial media. But sometimes a trend hits my radar and I get a feeling, “Oh, we’re not ready.” That happened as I was reading Sarah Scire’s piece in NiemanLab, Sports betting reshaped newsrooms, and it’s “a little gross.” Now, here come the prediction markets

As someone conversant with but indifferent to the various forms of sportsball, sports betting seemed like a bad idea exacerbated by a society where hard work and discipline no longer suffice to build a stable economic life. But prediction markets are having a moment. They are, as this 2012 report from the Brookings Institute shows, not new. But they are taking on a new, less savory flavor in a post-Covid, Trump2 America.

If the concept of prediction markets is new to you, or if you’ve just lost the thread on them over the years, their current version allows you to place money into yes/no futures contracts that pay out based on whether the future event (defined by a set of rules for the contract) turns out to be a “yes” or a “no”. These events can range from the mundane — such as will the coin toss at the start of the Super Bowl be heads — to the economically consequential — such as will the Federal Reserve cut rates in March — to the geopolitically seismic — such as the will the US “invade” Venezuela. From Bobby Allyn’s report for NPR’s All Things Considered last month, “Critics say this is simply tech-powered gambling. But backers argue the wisdom of the crowd can forecast the future better than polls and the media.”

Of course, both can be true, and we’ll get to that in a minute.

You might have heard the term predictions market(s) bandied about around the 2024 US election. The polls were saying one thing, but the prediction markets were cited in the press as saying another. In previous election cycles, you might have instead heard a casual, offhanded reference to “Vegas bookmakers” or “Vegas odds” from those pundits wanting to put forth a edgier take on an upcoming election. “Prediction markets” sands away that edge and coats it with a veneer of respectability.

The two best known platforms for these contracts are Polymarket and Kalshi. But as of late 2024 you can also use the popular Robinhood financial app, which also allows stock, mutual fund and crypto trading. “Turn your insights into trades,” the website description reads. “Prediction markets let you express your view on real-world events — from sports to politics to economics.” Because these are trades, not wagers, they should be then subject to insider trading restrictions. But that regulation doesn’t exist.

So, does your public media organization have a policy on prediction markets?

There are at least two ways I’m thinking about this right now. The first is citing prediction market data, with proper contextualization, in the content we create. Solely basing a story on prediction market odds seems shallow, if not shady. But it doesn’t seem unreasonable to include prediction market data, especially when it runs counter to conventional wisdom and punditry.

What if the stakes were money but on-site engagement? Forbes is taking the prediction market concept and turning it into a web-based game to make their site more sticky (and trim site traffic losses thanks to AI’s impact on web search). From the Digiday article Forbes tests prediction platform as engagement strategies move past search, by Sara Guaglione: “The publisher [Forbes] worked with tech startup company Axiom (Axiom founder and CEO Jeff Yam is a Forbes board member) to build its own prediction platform – ForbesPredict – which will launch in beta in February. Unlike real-money prediction markets like Kalshi or Polymarket, Forbes’ platform lets readers make forecasts and track results in exchange for tokens. It’s designed for engagement, not wagers.” You all know I’m very much a believer in the power of video games to increase public media website engagement. Should this type of website experience be fair game?

But then there is whether staff, or which staff, should be allowed to engage in “prediction market trading.” Sports betting is one thing, and maybe you already have a policy on that. But now staff could put money against which party will win your state’s next gubernatorial or senate election. Eventually that could extend to the outcome of certain state legislation. It happens at the national level now. Ignoring their lack of understanding about how public media is funded in the US, Kalshi had a market for “Congress defunds NPR in 2025?”.

I’m not anti-prediction markets. But a fool and his money are soon parted, as the saying goes, so I think they should be regulated more than they currently are. And you may have a different opinion on that point. But this all feels like crypto circa 2020 to me, and so I think it is something editors and leadership teams need to give some consideration to in 2026.

For a deeper dive into prediction markets, the financial website NerdWallet has a helpful primer published in October 2025, Prediction markets: How they work, risks and calculator.

Okay, on to the links.

Thoughts on Public Media…

Reclaiming the Public Interest? (Jax Deluca - Shorenstein Center)
From the Commentary: "Minow understood that public obligations require institutional backing. The Carnegie Commission understood that those obligations had to be embedded in durable, locally rooted infrastructure. The task now is to carry that logic forward: How do we design a broader public media infrastructure that reflects today’s technological realities while honoring longstanding public-interest commitments? Public broadcasting remains an important part of that ecosystem, but it cannot carry the full burden alone. Reclaiming the public interest will require new forms of investment, governance, and coordination across public broadcasters, nonprofit media, cultural institutions, universities, and community-based organizations....[T]he challenge before us is not simply to modernize public broadcasting, but to imagine a broader public media infrastructure that spans technology, institutions, funding, and governance."
Why It Matters: I'm starting to see a division in public media practitioners. On the one hand you've got a contingent - I think of them as traditionalists - that advocate for doubling down on a local linear video and audio production system, anchored by dominant national brands distributing "popular" content at scale. On the other hand, you've got a much smaller contingent that looks to a range of post-broadcast models of media (from short-form digital, to interactive, to games, to spatial media, and even to AI). I see Deluca's evolving research (this is supposedly post 2 of 5) as supporting a middle ground that does not abandon broadcasting but opens the door to other ways of serving publics through media. I said it the previous edition but keep an eye on Deluca's work. It's work to watch.
Related: Deluca's project deck for Media in the Public Interest? 
Make Your Voice Heard: Respond to Deluca's short survey.

How other nonprofits think about AI (Ernesto Aguilar via LinkedIn)
From the Post: "The report’s central finding: the biggest barrier to AI adoption isn’t technical. It’s cultural. Nonprofits, much like public media stations, are filled with 'shadow users,' people quietly trying AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini without clear permission or guidance. Yet most staff hesitate to talk about it for fear of getting it wrong. Sound familiar?"
Why It Matters: Ernesto is a friend of PMI and I've been remiss in not featuring more of his writings on AI. Here his message is simply, and it's one we've also tried to impart here in this newsletter. Just get online and try these tools out. Things are changing so fast that even if you tried chatbots in 2023 and drifted away from them you can come back. There really isn't any "first mover" advantage any more for the use of AI at our level, and doing nothing is the worst approach you can take to AI.
Related: I specifically want to give a shout out to Ernesto's piece from November, How public media disrupts slopcore, but you should really check out all of his posts at AI and Public Media Futures.

How PBS Kids Hopes to Save Children’s Programming (Abbey White - The Hollywood Reporter)
From the Article: "It started with Elinor Wonders Why, which is a science show. The episode pauses, Elinor breaks the fourth wall and asks the kids a question about what’s happening, and then creates some conversation. “What’s your hypothesis? How would you make that sauce come out of the bottle faster?” All of that was not generative. The AI is about parsing the kids’ language and finding the right answer that was then written by the scriptwriters. There’s [also] a follow-on with Lyla in the Loop on computational thinking for slightly older kids in the field right now. This type of AI usage can really help us better think about the educational possibilities of media." - Sara DeWitt answering a question about their "work around programming and AI research"
Why It Matters: Even if kids and educational content isn't your jam, it's worth tracking the experiments they do because they are serving the media consumers that we hope to impact as adults come the middle of this century. Their media consumption habits and expectations are being shaped now, in no small part by PBS Kids. (Full disclosure, for 2026 I'm current the Chair of the PBS Kids Advisory Council.)

The Guardian debuts new flagship video podcast (Max Tani - Semafor)
From the Article: "The growing US outpost of the left-leaning British publication is launching a daily video podcast later this year, Semafor has learned, to compete with the likes of The New York Times and NPR. The show will be co-hosted by WNYC host Kai Wright and The Guardian’s Carter Sherman, and will have a staff of ten employees."
Why It Matters: This is more a heads up than anything you necessarily need to click. The competition at the national level only gets more intense, But there's still lots of room at the local level.

The Attention Economy…

A TV-first workflow structurally underserves the majority of your audience. (Jill Manuel via LinkedIn)
From the Post: "Digital-first doesn't mean abandoning broadcast. It means changing the order of execution. Old model: TV → Web → Social (promotion). New model: Write → Post → Social → Broadcast."
Why It Matters: She makes a couple of valid points in this short post. Public media needs a transition plan away from our broadcast-first model. If we flip the scrip, as she counsels, maybe can get to a point where the end of broadcast will seem less traumatic because of our adaptation to what comes next.

Alfred Hitchcock Reframed For Microdrama Generation (Max Goldbart - Deadline)
From the Article: "The movie is available now in the U.S. on nascent UK microdrama app Tattle TV in vertical form. Tattle said the move is 'one of the first known instances of a classic feature film being fully reframed for vertical, mobile-first consumption.'"
Why It Matters: I struggle between being a purist about this(i.e., this is in no way what Hitchcock intended) and being more open minded (i.e., maybe this will bring more people to the original presentation). But what it's made me realize is that I'm definitely more pro-adaptation when the content is factual and the primary purpose of the content is convey information.

With no local news, those in news deserts turn to social media feeds, influencers and gossip (Michael Lev & Eric Rynston-Lobel)
From the Article: “'News industry professionals would all agree on the basic differences between real journalism and merely being informed, but if the consumer doesn’t share that distinction, or can’t see it, that raises issues,' said Mackenzie Warren, Interim Executive Director of the Local News Initiative. 'Is this an example of the market deciding not only that it doesn’t understand but maybe doesn’t value or miss what we think is so valuable?'”
Why It Matters: There was a time before "news." Sure it was about 500 years ago, but news isn't a given in human societies. The sharing of information, however, is arguably part of what led to Homo sapiens dominating the planet. How do we square this circle? What do you do when the market is fine with empty calories so long as they feel full at the end of the meal? Public media has a role to play there, to be sure, but the message we've been getting for 20 years now is that many consumers do not see the ROI on paying for news. Some of us are starting to listen, I think. But not enough.

AI + the Internet…

A Reflection on SEO & AI Search in 2025 (Lily Ray via Substack)
From the Article: "Many opportunists have positioned this shift as a total departure from existing organic search strategies. However, the reality is much more measured. While there are distinct differences - especially in the search interfaces, the prompting experience, and the metrics used to measure impact - many, if not most, of the actual tactics to drive AI visibility haven’t changed much. They are simply evolved versions of existing SEO, branding, and digital PR processes....[A] solid, cohesive SEO, social media & digital PR strategy is by far the most effective way to capture visibility in AI search. Unless LLMs find a way to generate accurate, up-to-date answers without relying on search engines, SEO will continue to remain imperative for AI search success."
Why It Matters: Some year-in-review pieces are fluff, but this one delivers the goods. Anyone in marketing or content creation at your station should read this one. I chose to pull the quote above as a sign that this one isn't as scary as you'd think. But don't let that quote lull you into complacency. It just scratches the surface, and you need to understand both why a professional SEO strategy is still your best defense against digital irrelevance and what could change in the future that would undermine that.
Related: Search Engine Land's Google AI Overviews follow up questions jump you directly to AI Mode, by Barry Schwartz

What Metrics Matter? Two Case Studies. And a Survey. (Adiel Kaplan - (Re)Structured News)
From the Post: “[W]hat does seem clear is that website traffic patterns are changing, sometimes wildly, and we don’t yet know how they correlate with content, audience, and strategic decisions about AI. As information becomes increasingly individualized and intermediated by AI systems, we’re facing fundamental questions about measurement....The AI information age requires re-evaluating our metrics — which matter most, and how to find or create new ones for all news business models, ones that hopefully better measure the value and service news organizations seek to provide. And which ones may lead to more dollars coming in the door. It’s not that traffic is dead, but that traffic is changing, and the more we understand that change, the better our ideas will be about what can come next.”
Why It Matters: What I like about this summary is that it focuses less about figuring out how to win at a rigged game and is more focused on how we need to change the rules of the game. Of course, the "market" has to play along. But this is the type of thinking that inspires innovation in the market.

AI + Us…

How Americans are using AI at work, according to a new Gallup poll (Matt O'Brien & Linley Sanders - AP)
From the Article: "The survey found roughly one-quarter say they use AI at least frequently, which is defined as at least a few times a week, and nearly half say they use it at least a few times a year. That compares with 21% who were using AI at least occasionally in 2023, when Gallup began asking the question, and points to the impact of the widespread commercial boom that ChatGPT sparked for generative AI tools that can write emails and computer code, summarize long documents, create images or help answer questions."
Why It Matters: For me, reading the amount of AI press that I do, it's easy to feel like the entire AI revolution is passing public media by in a blur. The realities are more measured as this report (and those below) quantify.
But You Don't Have to Take My Word for It: Read Gallup's Frequent Use of AI in the Workplace Continued to Rise in Q4 for yourself
Related: Microsoft reports on the Global AI adoption in 2025 — A widening digital divide, and the US isn't even in the top 20 countries

Action, Ease & Personalization: AI Chatbot News Experiences (Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein, Prabhat Mishra, Emily Wright, & Tara Fannon - Center for News, Technology & Innovation)
From the Overview: "CNTI found that most AI chatbot users currently use them to supplement their existing information repertoires, not to replace them entirely. They toggle back and forth between AI chatbots, news sites, search engines, official sources and more....Interviewees use AI chatbots to act on what’s happening and understand it, more than simply to know about it or to feel something about it....AI chatbot users see these tools as fast, easy, personalized, customizable and friendly ways of getting information....Few AI chatbot users have deep knowledge about the processes behind either journalism or AI chatbots. At the same time, interviewees express a general trust of AI chatbots alongside a general distrust of news media (outside of some users’ trust in their specific sources)."
Why It Matters: The results of the study indicate that ChatBot users are seeking the very type of informational contextualization that public media provides. And as I read through it, I'm reminded of other studies that talk about how younger news consumers are looking for solutions-oriented journalism. While this study doesn't reveal the whole puzzle, it does feel like a key piece of that puzzle.
But You Don't Have to Take My Word for It: Download the CNTI report for yourself.
Related: There are similarities in this report and the NextGen News 2 report, as well.

Agentic & Generative Buzz…

OpenAI hires the developer behind OpenClaw — this is how agentic AI grows up (Jason England - Tom's Guide)
From the Article: "The key to OpenClaw is in it being an open agent framework — the standard protocol for how different AI agents talk to each other. To do this, and at the level of virality it received, Steinberger was spending $10,000 to $20,000 per month out of pocket just to keep the infrastructure running."
Why It Matters: Last week, I wrote a bit about how OpenClaw (née ClawdBot) was an interesting glimpse of the future (if, perhaps, and uncomfortable one). At the time I thought that, in the release of OpenClaw and is agentic social media companion, MoltBook, there was a certain rhyming quality with the public-and-be-damned style of release OpenAI used with ChatGPT in November 2022. Guess OpenAI liked the Steinberger's moxie.
Related: OpenAI’s self-generated report from last September via the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzing 1.5 million consumer conversations for How People Are Using ChatGPT.
Also Related: A different but similar study from the AI search engine and web browser company Perplexity, published with Cornell, on How People Use AI Agents.

Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal (Aisha Down - The Guardian)
From the Article: "GPT-5.2 is not the only large language model (LLM) that appears to be citing Grokipedia; anecdotally, Anthropic’s Claude has also referenced Musk’s encyclopedia on topics from petroleum production to Scottish ales. An OpenAI spokesperson said the model’s web search 'aims to draw from a broad range of publicly available sources and viewpoints'."
Why It Matters: Garbage in, garbage out. Though I've been a ChatGPT Plus subscriber from Day 1, I've been feeling a stronger pull toward Google Gemini, especially as they've taken the lead with multimodal AI. This news is not pulling me back in OpenAI's direction.
Related: As Amanda Caswell reports in Tom's Guide's QuitGPT is going viral — here’s why people are cancelling ChatGPT, I guess it's not just me.

OpenAI’s Lead Is Contracting as AI Competition Intensifies (Alex Katrowitz - Big Technology)
From the Lede: "OpenAI’s rivals are cutting into ChatGPT’s lead. The top chatbot’s market share fell from 69.1% to 45.3% between January 2025 and January 2026 among daily U.S. users of its mobile app. Gemini, in the same time period, rose from 14.7% to 25.1% and Grok rose from 1.6% to 15.2%."
Why It Matters: And speaking of QuitGPT (see above), while I'm a bit chagrinned to see Grok growing so much that's just the state of the world right now. I'm not surprised about Google's rise. They've got a war chest and the technology backbone to go the distance.

Longtime NPR host David Greene sues Google over NotebookLM voice (Anthony Ha - TechCrunch)
From the Article: "Among other features, Google’s NotebookLM allows users to generate a podcast with AI hosts. A company spokesperson told the Post that the voice used in this product is unrelated to Greene’s: 'The sound of the male voice in NotebookLM’s Audio Overviews is based on a paid professional actor Google hired.'”
Why It Matters: When NotebookLM initially hit the mainstream, did you hear it and think, "Damn, NPR should sue." David Greene apparently agreed with you.

Homo Ludus

Gaming is bigger for politics than we realize (Katie Harbath - Anchor Change)
From the Substack: "60% of adults play video games every week. The average age of today’s player is 36 years old. Nearly half of boomers (ages 61-79) and 36% of the Silent Generation (ages 80-90) play video games weekly. The split between men and women is roughly equal: 47% women, 52% men. Gaming isn’t just Gen Z males in their parents’ basement. It’s a massive, diverse audience that campaigns keep treating as a “nice gimmick” instead of a strategic channel."
Why It Matters: We've been advocating for public media to get into general audience gaming for a couple of years now (and walking the walk with our own investments). So whenever I see another 'wake up and smell the game play' post I'm inclined to include it here...especially when it's directed at an audience that normally discounts game creation. Harbath's piece is good, easily digestible overview of the games industry for politicians, and it isn't hard to extend her guidance to our industry.

And finally…

RIP Hollywood (PJAce via X) - And finally, if you are a fan of the author Brandon Sanderson, or just interested in the current state of the art with generative video, you might find this a sobering wake up call. It isn’t flawless, but it was supposedly made in two days. Give someone a year’s salary (at a California cost of living rate) and one year, and what could they make?

And if sci-fi/fantasy isn’t your thing, here’s Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt (until one of them calls Elon and has it taken down).

Have a creative, productive week.

Screen Grab from layoffs.semipublic.co, captured February 16, 2026

Generated with ChatGPT 5.2 (Thinking)

Hi all. This time around we’ve got a quick spotlight on free-range agentic AI, an interesting new project looking at public media’s future, AI’s impact on web search, AI using humans as agents, and finally, generative world building.

But First…

We almost broke our registration and attendance records with our last webinar Innovate with Current: The Future of Public Media. And if you didn’t catch it live, you can check it out here.

I’m also happy to announce that for our next webinar we returning to the topic of AI. Join us Thursday, February 19 at 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT for How NPR is Using AI.
In this candid conversation, Erica Osher, NPR’s VP of AI Labs, Sharahn Thomas, NPR's VP of Content Operations and the Editorial Lead for AI, and Tony Cavin, NPR’s Managing Editor, Standards and Practices will give us an inside look at how NPR is approaching AI three years into this new era. We’ll start with a broad overview of the AI landscape for journalists and media organizations at the start of 2026, then dig into practical, real-world questions like:

• How NPR teams use AI in day-to-day workflows

• How NPR evaluates tools (what they’re testing, what they avoid, and why)

• How NPR is thinking about AI access, content protection and blocking, and monetization

• How NPR balances experimentation with editorial standards across product and newsroom teams

Bring your most pressing AI questions; Q&A will be encouraged throughout.

Lobster Roles

I’m not happy with the column I’ve been working on, so I’m going to keep working on it and hold that till later. But there is one story that recently popped in the AI space that is worth a callout right now: OpenClaw and MoltBook.

OpenClaw is a self-installable instance of agentic AI. And lest you think there are actually three of these out there, here’s a quick history. OpenClaw began as ClawdBot, a play the Claude bot that inspired both the lobster mascot and a legal challenge from Anthropic. That led to a name change to MoltBot (biology humor, IYKYK). And soon after we got a second name change, all in the space of a month.

You can think of OpenClaw as a digital butler that lives inside your computer and can automagically handle your digital chores. Set up requires some technical know-how, at least enough to follow a YouTube how-to video, and you can communicate with it via common messaging apps like WhatsApp. Because it has system access, it can go into your files to organize your emails, update your calendar, or even place online orders for you. There has been a ton of hype because this has decidedly shifted the frontiers of agentic AI.

But frontiers are messy places, and OpenClaw is a cybersecurity hot mess. I’m not going to lecture here, but I will say that I can’t imagine any public media organization’s IT department allowing an install on your work computer (and at this point I wouldn’t recommend it personally unless you are sure you know how to protect your — and your family’s — data). If your company has an AI policy, it should already cover installing software like this (vs. using cloud services). If you don’t have an AI policy, this is about as good a reason for one as I can imagine.

One of the more interesting things to come out of the OpenClaw evolution though was MoltBook, which was set up initially as a social media space for MoltBots. Just to be clear, no humans. Just bots interacting with other bots. If you want to be scared by AI, there’s no shortage of fodder here. Plenty of unexpected behaviors were observed. But among the highlights is that they collectively they founded a religion, Crustafarianism. And one even adopted a recurring system bug as a pet, and named it “Glitch.”

As of this writing, the hype has deflated a bit on OpenClaw. But the history of consumer AI is one step forward, two steps back, and as unfettered product releases go, this could have been worse. Agentic AI is going to be part of our AI future, that seems clear. But security will be a major hurdle to mass adoption.

Okay, on to the links.

Thoughts on Public Media…

Rethinking Public Media, Together (Jax Deluca - Shorenstein Center) 
From the Commentary: "If we could redesign an American public media system, what institutional form, governance structure, and funding models would be more capable of serving public interests, including improved health and well-being of local communities across the nation?"
Why It Matters: There are a number of green shoots initiatives springing up that are looking to address the future of public media. I mentioned the Aspen Institute’s summit on the topic at the start of the year, and here is another one worth tracking. Deluca has a short survey kicking off her initiative that any public media practitioner who cares about the future of public media should fill out.
Related: Deluca's project Media in the Public Interest? 
Make Your Voice Heard: Respond to Deluca's short survey.

Public media’s streaming reckoning — and what it means for local news media (Tom Davidson - E&P)
From the Column: "What if NPR decides radio is no longer worth the hassle and puts all its efforts into streaming audio and podcasts? What if it drops the national linear feed altogether or simply lets on-air programming age out with over-the-air listeners?...As audiences shift to on-demand audio platforms, NPR and commercial radio behemoths like iHeart Media are following suit.... Roughly 70% of Americans now listen to some form of digital audio at least once a week. Money is starting to follow those audiences."
Why It Matters: The latest in Tom's series for E&P is designed "to conceive of the inconceivable." I think of them as notes for public media preppers...people who understand that public media fundamentally exists at the local level. PBS and NPR are great constructs and even better brands, but they are independent of the stations. When you game out the future, you have to at least consider that these entities may go their own way.
ICYMI: Tom’s previous column is also worth a read and a think: What If…PBS Implodes?

CPB’s Demise Has Potential Impact On Commercial TV (Mary M. Collins - TV News Check) 
From the OpEd: "...[C]onsidering the potential domino effect and considering the success broadcasters enjoy in countries where there is strong support for public broadcasting, it may be time for commercial television to find a way to help its public station brethren. Broadcast television and its viewers could both benefit."
Why It Matters: Collins' argument is an ecosystem one. Public broadcasting is a mature part of most local broadcast ecosystems and removing it could create unintended consequences that undermine the whole environment.

As the nation’s eyes turn to Minneapolis, they’re also turning to Minnesota Public Radio (Joshua Benton - NiemanLab)
From the Article: "Minnesota Public Radio finished the fourth quarter of 2025 as the No. 1 local public radio outlet in the United States in terms of web traffic, according to our regular rankings derived from Similarweb data. It also finished as No. 1 in traffic for the months of November and December, though Oregon Public Broadcasting snuck past it to take the top spot in October."
Why It Matters: This data is probably widely shared, but for whatever reason I'm just seeing it here. Interesting to see how various public media websites rank.

BBC Confirms Landmark YouTube Deal, Including New Channels and Winter Olympics Coverage (Alex Ritman - Variety) 
From the Article: "The deal has been seen as part of a major effort by the BBC to deal with the challenge of YouTube when it comes to younger audiences, who have been increasingly turning to the platform for both entertainment and news. In December, ratings agency Barb reported that the number of viewers watching YouTube (52 million) surpassed that of the BBC’s combined channels (51 million) for the first time."
Why It Matters: It was only question of time for the world's TV channel to top Auntie Beeb. I envied their iPlayer when it came out and appreciated being able to watch it several times over the years (thank you, VPN). But it's hard to compete with network effects driven by creators you don't control. We (public service media companies) all need to be thinking about creator partnership strategies.
Related: This reaction post (and the comments that follow) by Ian Whittaker on LinkedIn offers some good food for thought. Their issues raised in the thread are often equally applicable to public media in the US.
You Don't Have to Take My World for It: Read the BBC's partnership announcement yourself.
Also Related: Michael Savage reports in The Guardian that "BBC faces ‘profound jeopardy’ without funding overhaul, Tim Davie says." Interesting to see the phrase "universal service" pop up in Davie's comments with the same glow that we public. media types bestow upon it here in the states.
And If That Wasn’t Enough: BBC World Service faces funding cliff edge in seven weeks, says Tim Davie, as reported by Michael Savage in The Guardian.

Why Darren Walker's Next Chapter Matters (Steve Rosenbaum - Sustainable Media Center) 
From the OpEd: "If someone wanted to build a civic storytelling institution that did more than raise awareness, this is the kind of constellation you would expect: capital, strategy, creative infrastructure, and distribution. This is where the opportunity sits. Not in polarizing messaging, nor hate for profit. Here’s the lane no one fully owns, the one the moment arguably demands: building media that can be the connective tissue between culture and democratic life."
Why It Matters: This isn't about public media. But it could be. Some may argue that being the connective tissue Rosenbaum seeks puts us too much in the advocacy camp. But I feel like being the connective tissue between culture and democracy is precisely what public media should be doing. Rosenbaum is certainly aware of us. That we aren't on his mind in this moment makes me wonder why.

AI + the Internet…

‘Search isn’t dead, it’s fragmenting’: How to manage Google traffic decline (Charlotte Tobitt - PressGazette)
From the Article: “Search isn’t dead. It is fragmenting; queries can start beyond a traditional search engine, and platforms increasingly influence each other. This demands different thinking on optimisation and more nuanced KPIs. Google’s systems are increasingly focused on rewarding genuine quality content… I think this has to be the main focus – create content that truly satisfies users, and the algorithms generally follow [said Carly Steven, director of SEO and editorial e-commerce at the Daily Mail]....Service journalism ‘where facts are less debatable and expert opinion is less important’ typically sees a higher loss of traffic from AI Overviews, [Stuart] Forrest [global audience director for Bauer Media Group’s publishing division] said."
Why It Matters: When we had the folks from PBS on our December webinar to talk about AI and SEO, they were careful to say that they were not necessarily seeing negative impact from AI in their traffic stats. They didn't deny that others were seeing the data, just that did wasn't showing up (yet, at least) in their tune-in oriented KPIs. My question on behalf of local content creators is how does this fragmentation impact local cultural content that is not opinion, gossip or otherwise hype based.
Charlotte Sometimes: Tobitt has been doing some great reporting lately on this topic. Below are some other stories she’s written that are worth your click:

• Why conversational search can be ‘huge opportunity’ for publishers

• AI answers cite ‘narrow range’ of top newsbrands led by BBC and Guardian

• Google ‘exploring updates’ to let publishers opt out of AI Overviews

• Eight in ten of world’s biggest news websites now block AI training bots

Yahoo claps back on AI search engines with Yahoo Scout. (Mark Wilson - Fast Company)
From the Article: "'We [aren’t] the first to market here, but in evaluating whether we should keep outsourcing or build the AI layer ourselves, it just became clear that we could do this best for our users,' says Lanzone. 'We had a lot of unique assets to do that. And so in that context, timing is almost irrelevant, right? Because this is about Yahoo users on Yahoo, searching on Yahoo, versus what they were getting before.'"
Why It Matters: I like their gusto, and the question of whether they can succeed is less important to me than the confidence that they have something to offer. Can we emulate that confidence in the AI space? We have something to offer. How do we look at AI and see a clear path toward what we can do best for our publics.
But You Don’t Have to Take My Word For It: Try Yahoo Scout yourself.

Google won’t stop replacing our news headlines with terrible AI (Sean Hollister - The Verge)
From the Article: "For example, Google’s AI claimed last week that “US reverses foreign drone ban,” citing and linking to this PCMag story for the news. That’s not just false — PCMag took pains to explain that it’s false in the story that Google links to!"
Why It Matters: Yet one more thing to be concerned about. It makes me wonder about a future in which AI could just adjust the headline to the user. I could see that being spun as a feature, but it strikes me as further toxification of filter bubbles.
Related: Discover isn’t the only place Google is experimenting with AI-generated snippets, as reported by Andrew Deck in NiemanLab

A PR Pro’s Guide to GEO: 10 Points to Share with Your Clients Now (Kelsey Ogletree via LinkedIn)
From the Post: "GEO is less about keywords and more about consistent story patterns. The technology may sound complicated, but your mission is simple: Build a clear, compelling narrative for your client and reinforce it everywhere—owned blogs, press coverage, newsletters, social posts, expert commentary, etc."
Why It Matters: I sat in on this webinar, and this post is a good summary from one of the hosts. Her focus will be useful for our MarCom readers, but I think there is something to be gleaned here by content creators as well. Even if you aren't seeing your company's site traffic impacted by AI and Google Zero, we all need to get practiced in the art of generative engine optimization (GEO -- sometimes called answer engine optimization, or AIO).

AI + Us…

Rentahuman.ai Turns Humans Into On-Demand Labor For AI Agents (Ron Schmelzer - Forbes)
From the Article: "The real story is not that AI agents are hiring humans. It is that the physical world has become programmable through delegation. That changes how work is organized. It changes how systems are designed. It changes who, or what, gets to ask. The most provocative aspect of Rentahuman.ai is...the concept that humans are presented as infrastructure."
Why It Matters: If this feels vaguely familiar, it's a plot point in the penultimate Mission Impossible movie. Anyone else feel deeply uncomfortable about this?

Agentic & Generative Buzz…

Users flock to open source MoltBot for always-on AI, despite major risks (Benj Edwards - Ars Technica)
From the Article: "The assistant works with WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Google Chat, Signal, iMessage, Microsoft Teams, and other platforms. It can reach out to users with reminders, alerts, or morning briefings based on calendar events or other triggers. The project has drawn comparisons to Jarvis, the AI assistant from the Iron Man films, for its ability to actively attempt to manage tasks across a user’s digital life."
Why It Matters: See the column above for my thoughts, but again, I don't recommend trying this out except on a system isolated from your personal, professional or business information.

Former Googlers seek to captivate kids with an AI-powered learning app (Ivan Mehta - Techcrunch)
From the Article: "The app lets users explore some predefined topics in different categories or ask their own questions to create a learning path. The app also highlights one new topic every day to let kids learn something new. Kids can either listen to the generated voice or read the text. Chapters under one topic include a mix of audio, video, images, quizzes, and games. The app also creates choose-as-you-go adventures that don’t create the pressure of getting questions right or wrong....[T]he startup uses generative AI to create all of its media assets on the fly. The company can create a learning experience within two minutes of a user asking a question, and it is trying to reduce this time further."
Why It Matters: This piece speaks to why PBS Kids needs to have an outsized role in how kids interact with AI in the future, just as PBS Kids has had an outsized role in games.

Google Brings Genie 3's Interactive World-Building Prototype to AI Ultra Subscribers (Blake Stimac - CNET)
From the Article: "Using text prompts and uploaded images, people can craft a world as they see fit, along with the character that will navigate it. You can choose how the character navigates the world, whether that be walking, flying, or something else, and you can even select the perspective of the character, like first-person or third-person views."
Why It Matters: You may recall a couple years back when OpenAI debuted sizzle reals from SORA. It was surprising at how quickly we got to believable video, and now we're talking about Chinese AI models like Kling 3.0 and Seedance 2.0 making SFX-laden "movies" without the SFX. That SORA 2024 moment is where we are at with generative world building (or, maybe "generative spaces"?) courtesy of Genie 3. It's a glimpse of the future, a taste of where we could be by the end of the decade.

The Creator Economy…

After AI, All Eyes Will Be On Substack For the 2026 Midterm Elections (Katie Harbarth - Anchor Change)
From the Substack: "Substack won’t move elections the way Meta or YouTube can, but it’s where narratives get shaped, where messaging gets refined, and where the people who influence the influencers have conversations."
Why It Matters: This piece is a good flash analysis of the battle for the inbox, a battle in which public media should be a significant competitor. I found her analysis of Substack's competitors especially useful, as was her rundown of how Substack is trying to become a multimedia platform. And aside from all that, Harbarth has a brief explanation on how she worked with the AI tool Claude to develop this piece.
Related: Dade Hayes' reporting for Deadline, Substack Launches TV App; Creators, Subscribers Decry It As “Veering Away From The Written Word”

YouTube Distribution Is Tilting Toward Shorts, Pressuring Long-Form Reach, Data Suggests Avatar photo (Dragomir Stojkov - Net Influencer)
From the Article: "Jones said the distribution trends raise longer-term questions about creator sustainability, particularly for businesses built on long-form content. Short-form videos typically generate lower advertising revenue and command smaller sponsorship fees, he noted, while also requiring higher output volume."
Why It Matters: I know a lot of public media entities have made a concerted effort to develop a YouTube strategy. How much of that was based on bringing our industry's long-form linear video skills to this new platform? And how much has been based on shorts?

Why Mr Beast Bought A Fintech: A Masterclass In Distribution (Christer Holloman - Forbes)
From the Article: "The deal merges a regulated financial platform with the most powerful distribution engine in modern media. Donaldson [Mr. Beast], who commands more than 460 million subscribers on YouTube alone, is no longer just selling chocolate or burgers. He is now positioning himself as the primary financial gateway for Gen Z and the generations to follow."
Why It Matters: Why should we care about Mr. Beast? Because he has the audience that we say we want, Gen-Z and young Millennials. This positions Beast Industries to be a main purveyor of financial educational content...which will also double as customer acquisition strategy. That should be an audience we are serving, but we aren't in that space...at least in a way that activates those demographics. So, I just can't help seeing this as a failure on the part of public media.

Homo Ludus

Why I’m launching a feminist video games website in 2026 (Maddy Myers - The Guardian)
From the OpEd: "...I’m launching a gender and identity-focused gaming publication called Mothership. It’s independent and worker-owned; it will rely on subscribers’ support to exist. Mothership will focus on reporting on the good and bad of modern-day game-making – alongside investigations, reviews, criticism, and historical deep dives into games and developers who paved the way to now. It will be a website for people who read the news with dread, including gaming news, and worry that Gamergaters got what they always wanted. And it will be a place for readers who wish there was something like a Teen Vogue, but for games (and without a corporate owner to kneecap it)."
Why It Matters: The world of video games has always been canted unceremoniously toward men and boys. And yet women both have a tremendous amount to contribute to culture through game design and development and make up a sizable portion of the casual gamer market (think, Candy Crush). My fingers are crossed for the long-term health of this launch. Publications like this can hold the industry to account in ways "mainstream" gamer pubs and influencers are less likely to attempt. If you are eager to bring public media values to the medium of video games, then this is a publications worth following.

And finally…

Used Genie 3 to recreate an early 2000s Blockbuster (Justine Moore via X)
And finally, the internet is on fire with videos created within Google's Project Genie. Historically it has been OpenAI that has scored the hype win for pushing generative AI into a new medium. Sora was the last good example. This year, the wins goes to Google.

Have a creative, productive month.

Screen Grab from layoffs.semipublic.co, captured February 11, 2026

Image Generated by Google Whisk, Edited with ChatGPT 5.2 (Thinking)

Hi all. This time around we’ve got someone asking what if PBS implodes, troubling data on web traffic from Google in 2025, Grok (on X) used for violence against women, the new politics of truth, Adobe and Runway’s new partnership, legacy publishers building their own creator networks, a lackluster year for immersive media, and finally, the media that entered the public domain on January 1.

But First…

There is still time to register for today’s webinar, Innovate with Current: The Future of Public Media. And even if you can’t catch it live, you can register and get the link to watch later. This year didn’t go as many of us had planned. So, now what? How can public media position itself for a successful 2026 amid ongoing uncertainty and change? This session will feature a panel of leaders (Steve Bass, Nathalie Hill (KCRW), Eric Langner (Public Media Bridge Fund) and Loira Limbal (Firelight Media) sharing their perspectives on where the industry finds itself today and what may be coming next. This conversation is designed for anyone thinking about the future of public media strategy, audience, and sustainability and looking for candid perspectives on what comes next.

Vanishing Traffic? Your Mileage May Vary.

No column this time around (you can check out my last column in last Monday’s Exploration #154), but I did want to call your attention to the AI + Internet section below. Across the web, traffic from Google is evaporating. How much depends on a variety of factors, but I’ll just opine here that you should be engaging your teams to assess local impact and factor that into your strategies going forward. Maximizing traffic may not be the most effective way to create long-term impact, and we need to talk about what is next.

Okay, on to the links.

Thoughts on Public Media…

What if … PBS implodes? (Tom Davidson - Editor & Publisher) 
From the OpEd: "But today’s challenges are graver by an order of magnitude. Federal funding is gone; states and universities are pulling back as they deal with their own financial problems and politics. Audiences have fled our linear broadcasts to on-demand platforms where competition is essentially unlimited. Yes, stations are reacting with rounds of cutbacks and financial recalibration. But we’re missing the deeper question: What if the very structures that have served us for the past seven decades no longer work?"
What It Matters: Twenty years ago, public television programmers used to joke that a good night on local PBS was when 97% of the market didn't watch. A 3 rating? We'll take it. Today that gallows humor is only accurate if you bump the number to 99%+. Tom makes some points worth considering in this piece. Yes, the halo effect of national programming can carry us for a while longer, but we are valuable because of our local service. That’s what will carry us in the long run.

🎧 Frontline Puts PBS on YouTube (The Media Odyssey podcast) 
From the Pod: Raney Aronson-Rath on shifting Frontline to a YouTube focus: "So what I had to do at Frontline, and it was hard, but it was righteous work, was to shift our mindset. It's not a broadcast only mindset anymore. And really work the muscle of thinking in the longer term about you work. Coming up with ideas that have longevity to them. And what we did was we and I have an incredible team at Frontline, gotta give 'em a shout out.... We basically worked as working groups across the series. We created working groups and YouTube was at the center. All of what we did during those first years to really shift to broadcast plus streaming. And so that was our publicity efforts. That was our audience efforts, that was our editorial efforts. Everybody had to get in the game on streaming...." [Transcript edited for clarity.]
Why It Matters: I'd like to think we're all on board with making YouTube a strategic priority at this point. But just in case your organization is waffling, give this a listen. Also, listen to this as a chaser to reading Tom’s OpEd (👆). If Frontline is a hit on YouTube, and I hope it continues to be, how does that directly help local stations? The PBS brand benefits, and those stations who are brand-aligned with PBS might benefit. But that’s a trick pool shot at best.

Congress to continue funding Voice of America, despite Trump’s wishes (Matthew Keys - The Desk) 
From the Article: "The spending bill proposed over the weekend largely rejects Trump’s wishes to deprive USAGM of funding to the point where the agency collapses in on itself. But the amount offered to USAGM — $653 million in total — is around 25 percent less than the $867 million Congress appropriated to USAGM since 2023."
Why It Matters: I know that this isn’t exactly public media, but it’s adjacent. I guess you can choose to see this as a kick in the teeth, or as a ray of hope for possible congressional reinstatement of public media funding down the road. For now, I'm going to opt for the latter.

AI + the Internet…

Global publisher Google traffic dropped by a third in 2025 (Charlotte Tobitt - PressGazette) 
From the Article: "In the US only, referrals from organic Google search were down by 38% year on year and Google Discover was down 29%. Since May 2023, they were each were down by 22%. The report noted that publishers that specialise in lifestyle or utility content such as weather, TV guides, or horoscopes were more likely to have seen traffic declines, linking it to the arrival of Google’s AI summaries at the top of search results from 2024."
Why It Matters: As we say, your mileage may vary. But do check your mileage. And beware of bot traffic. I know it's supposed to be filtered out of Google Analytics but you may find that you check your traffic and your 2025 traffic is up. If you fall into that camp, check the source of that traffic. Is it China? And is the average time of engagement <10s?

AI isn’t taking your clicks. It’s taking your credibility (Pete Pachal - The Media Copilot) 
From the OpEd: "A foundational concept of copyright law is that, although works are copyrightable, the underlying facts and ideas aren’t. Except now those facts travel through someone else’s lens first. That lens becomes the “first draft” the machines reuse. Will it be incomplete? Probably. Will it still harden into the default answer as AI use expands? Also probably.... The legal fights tend to focus on consent, copyright, and compensation. Fair enough. But GEO makes the deeper contest obvious: Who gets to shape meaning at scale?"
Why It Matters: In AI (specifically machine learning), "ground truth" is the verified, real-world data (labels, facts, outcomes) used as the standard or generally accepted "correct answer" to train, test, and evaluate machine learning models; the reality the AI strives to predict. It's the benchmark of accuracy and public media should have an outsized role in establishing the ground truth for each of our communities. How we get there is an open conversation we should be having in our systems.

AI + Us…

Deepfake pornography and my experience of digital violation (Samantha Smith - The Catholic Herald) 
From the OpEd: "For me the scandal was personal. My own image was among the first to be manipulated. My clothes were digitally removed. My face was plastered into sexual situations I had no control over and no desire to be involved in. I remember looking at it and feeling exposed in a way that was difficult to explain to anyone who had not experienced it. It did not matter that the image was fake. The sense of violation was real."
Why It Matters: If Christianity is an important part of our identity (and especially if you are Catholic), you may appreciate the scripture-sourced perspective in this piece. Either way, this piece is a potent reminder that the vast majority of AI deepfakes are a form of violence against women.
Related: Hadas Gold reported the larger story in CNN's Elon Musk’s xAI under fire for failing to rein in ‘digital undressing’ 
Also Related: For a more global perspective Justin Hendrix and Ramsha Jahangir's piece in Tech Policy Press is worth a read: Tracking Regulator Responses to the Grok 'Undressing' Controversy 
Still Related: Siwei Lyu's piece for The Conversation provides a comprehensible explanation for why this is getting worse: Deepfakes leveled up in 2025 – here’s what’s coming next 
And for More Background: NOVA’s How AI Deepfakes are Really Made on YouTube.

Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike wants to do for AI what he did for messaging (Dan Goodin - Ars Technica) 
From the Article: "In much the way Signal uses encryption to make messages readable only to parties participating in a conversation, Confer protects user prompts, AI responses, and all data included in them. And just like Signal, there’s no way to tie individual users to their real-world identity through their email address, IP address, or other details."
Why It Matters: I am a big fan of Signal and I'm very intrigued by the potential here in Confer. But with Signal there are two humans on either end that are ultimately responsible for their actions. With Confer, there's only one human present, and I can see that being problematic. My only concern is the accountability (or values) underpinning the model I’m using. If Confer is akin to Claude, Gemini or ChattyG, that may be fine. But if I'm talking to something more like Grok, that concerns me. Still, I'm optimistic that the intent is coming from an equitable place, so I’m going to try it out and see how it plays.

Generative Buzz…

Adobe and Runway Ink Partnership Deal (RedShark News) 
From the Article: "Under the terms of the new deal, Adobe will be Runway’s preferred API creativity partner. This means Adobe can provide its customers with early access to Runway’s latest models. This starts as of now and thus includes Runway’s new Gen-4.5, which is now available for a limited time exclusively in Adobe Firefly. For the future, the two companies will collaborate to develop new AI innovations that will be available exclusively in Adobe applications, starting with Adobe Firefly. They also state they will work directly with independent filmmakers, major studios, and others to co-develop new video capabilities that will then sit at the heart of Adobe tools."
Why It Matters: Here's another plank in Adobe's attempt to be the one stop platform for content creators. This partnership announcement feels like it perfectly embodies Adobe's 2025. And I admire their persistence-of-strategy despite a stock price that has been halved by the market in the past two years. They are clearly playing a long game.

2025 LLM Year in Review (Andrej Karpathy) 
From His TLDR: "2025 was an exciting and mildly surprising year of LLMs. LLMs are emerging as a new kind of intelligence, simultaneously a lot smarter than I expected and a lot dumber than I expected. In any case they are extremely useful and I don't think the industry has realized anywhere near 10% of their potential even at present capability."
Why It Matters: This piece is a good view into how the smarter insiders are thinking about AI as we start the new year. Karpathy is an AI researcher/founder who is also an alum of the Stanford Vision Lab, Tesla, and OpenAI. He's regularly cited as a thought leader on the topic of genAI because his summaries are rooted in deep technical understanding but often written for a lay audience.

Media Rare…

When Seeing Is No Longer Believing: The New Politics Of Truth (Steve Rosenbaum - Sustainable Media Center) 
From the OpEd: "This is the first structural point we need to understand: Video no longer anchors reality on its own. It shows a piece of the world, but the meaning of that piece has become the real battlefield....We are no longer just dealing with media literacy problems. We are dealing with psychological operations that treat information as a weapon."
Why It Matters: The last week or so, I've been thinking about the Washington Post's slogan "Democracy dies in darkness." While I still believe that is true, the corollary to it is that democracy thrives in the light. Maybe this was never the case. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Regardless, that's not the moment we are in today. Light used to equate to truth (e.g., "see the light"). Today there are multiple versions of the truth and there is no shame if your version is not verifiable. And this all doesn't even account for generative video. In the world of public media, good documentary sound (vs. artistic sound) always requires some ancillary interpretation. But video carried with it an assumption of truth. As we think about maintaining our level of trust with the audience (see also, Kristen Muller’s essay (👇), we need to think about the fact that we cannot rely on the video=truth assumption any more.
Case in Point: The Guardian reports on their own brand being hijacked for a deepfake in: After the Bondi attack, a deepfaked Guardian video went viral. It won't be the last 

Mediated Cringe (Lara Williams - Dirt) 
From the Essay: "Affect theory is a way of understanding our emotional and bodily responses to feelings, of codifying emotions or affects, and cringing is arguably an affective experience. One of the reasons we feel the violation of social norms so acutely as an empathetic response is because embarrassment is a deeply encoded evolutionary reflex—a 'social corrective…instinct [which] probably helped our ancestors stay in the group, which was critical for survival'. Cringe deployed as an affective charge can produce an interesting tension in art; forcing us to empathize with a subject, to question why we feel so uncomfortable with the breaching of a norm, and to draw our attention to that norm and how useful or fair it is."
Why It Matters: For me, the line between earnest authenticity and cringe is narrow. I'm not sure I'll ever lose my preference for irony. But this was a fun essay to read and reflect on how everyone's cringe is a little different.

Taking journalism down to its studs (Kristen Muller - NiemanLab) 
From the Prediction: "In our old model, journalists assumed their credibility came with their institutional affiliation. Building trust with your audience was not in our job descriptions. So we built our reporting, products and distribution systems on top of a foundation that didn’t really exist. Our crisis is not about technology or finding the right revenue model: It’s structural."
Why It Matters: Ultimately, I read Muller's essay as a rumination on Trust trust as a foundational value.

The Creator Economy…

Why publishers are building their own creator networks (Sara Guaglione - Digiday) 
From the Article: “Faced with collapsing referral traffic, platform algorithm changes, waning relevance among younger audiences and the growing dominance of individual creators, publishers are running out of options. The strategy also mirrors a shift in audience loyalty: people are increasingly following people, not mastheads. 'Publishers are leaning into what they do best — curation, credibility, and audience trust — while tapping creators for personality, loyalty and built-in reach,' said Alexandra Press, chief marketing officer at talent management group Mana Talent Group....'The reality is that creators have built the kind of direct audience trust that publishers are now trying to regain,' said Nicholas Spiro, chief commercial officer of influencer marketing agency Viral Nation Talent. 'Creator-first formats can move faster, adapt more natively to platforms and drive deeper engagement.'”
Why It Matters: It's increasingly looking like those publishing organizations that do not have a creator strategy at least in the chute (if not already deployed) are falling behind. Where is your organization on that spectrum? Are creators on your radar?

YouTube’s new search filters make clearer distinctions between long-form videos and Shorts (Sam Gutelle - TubeFilter) 
From the Article: "All of these updates point to the same issue: Shorts viewership has become so massive that it is making YouTube’s search results wonky. Deprioritizing raw view counts and providing the option to sequester Shorts from other results will serve users who want to see more long-form videos they’re used to. (Just don’t expect Shorts viewership to decline — we’re well into the era of short-form dominance at this point.)"
Why It Matters: For those with a YouTube strategy (which should be all of us at this point) this recent update could be impacting search results. It’s also a further sign that a YouTube strategy really needs to be a short-form video strategy.

New DJI (And Other) Drones Now Officially Banned in the US (Andy Stout - RedShark News) 
From the Article: "As an FCC Fact Sheet makes clear, despite UAS presenting 'unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons', existing machines can still be flown. 'This action does not affect any previously-purchased drone. Consumers can continue to use any drone they have already lawfully purchased or acquired.' ... As far as we know, there is no current US company making consumer-oriented drones, with most manufacturers concentrating on large machines for the industrial, agricultural, and government sectors."
Why it Matters: I don’t usually do drone tech here, but this policy change is significant, and you might have missed it during the holidays. If your organization is in the market for a camera drone, you might want to buy it soon. On the other hand, one wonders if a full-on ban on flying DJI drones could be in the offing, especially as we get closer to the midterm elections (I'll just let that sink in). Because you buy something today doesn't mean you'll necessarily be allowed to fly it in the future. Caveat emptor.

Immersive Media

Immersive tech in 2025 - Now what? (Tom Ffiske - Immersive Wire) 
From the OpEd: "Much of this comes down to the fact that the market lacks the exponential elements needed for rapid growth. When you compare this to AI, the contrast is stark. AI is incredibly accessible. Anyone can use services like Google Gemini or ChatGPT to ask questions, and implementing AI into businesses is relatively achievable, with provable effects. VR, by contrast, often requires purchasing expensive hardware, which is not always supported by a compelling or practical business case. It’s still not cheap enough."
Why It Matters: Tom's summary matches my observations. I had thought a couple of times last year that we might be seeing a thaw in the xR winter. I’ll cover it here when it does happen, but I'm now thinking crypto will come back around again before xR does.

And finally…

Lifecycle of Copyright: 1930 Works in the Public Domain (Ashley Tucker - Library of Congress) And finally, the new year always means that new IP enters the public domain. This year we've got titles from Hammett and Faulkner, the first Nancy Drew mystery, the Marx Brothers, and a Rube Goldberg film featuring the Three Stooges before they were the Three Stooges (I went and found it on Tubi, it’s weird).

Have a creative, productive couple of weeks.

Screen Grab from layoffs.semipublic.co, captured January 14, 2026

Image Generated with ChatGPT 5.2 (Thinking)

Hi all, Happy New Year, and warm welcome to our new subscribers from NYC, South Carolina, Michigan, San Francisco, and South Florida!

Hope you are feeling relaxed from the break and ready to fight the good fight in 2026. We have our work cut out for us. This edition the focus is entirely on public media (we’ll get back to AI, tech and culture in the next edition). We’ve got a report out from the Aspen Institute’s “Future of Public Media” summit, multiple OpEds from NiemanLab’s “Predictions for Journalism 2026,” and finally, an obit of one of the public media personalities that was part of my public media childhood.

But First…

There is still time to register for our January 15 webinar, Innovate with Current: The Future of Public Media. This year didn’t go as many of us had planned. So, now what? How can public media position itself for a successful 2026 amid ongoing uncertainty and change? This session will feature a panel of leaders from across public media sharing their perspectives on where the industry finds itself today and what may be coming next. This conversation is designed for anyone thinking about the future of public media strategy, audience, and sustainability and looking for candid perspectives on what comes next.

The Asteroid Missed, but Gravity Still Has a Say

In the action-movie allegory to public media’s 2025, a giant asteroid was spotted out in space, and its path was ultimately calculated to directly hit rural America. But then heroic members of humanity pooled their resources and funded the means deflect it, and ultimately public media lived to fight another day.

I’m worried about the sequel. Gravity now holds the remnants of the deflected asteroid in orbit, and destruction could still rain down at any moment. Humanity’s resources are finite and they can’t keep funding deflection after deflection. Adaptation is the only means of survival, but the decision-makers won’t try anything different because it disrupts the status quo and there’s no funding for anything other than the status quo. Better to deflect it (and deflect it, and deflect it again) and live to deflect another day.

At some point though, gravity has the final say.

The metaphor was especially on my mind as I scrolled through the Aspen Institute’s summary of “The Future of Public Media” summit that was held (with little fanfare) in November. The report from the summit seems to have been released as we all headed into the most distracted time of year. So, if you missed it, you’re not to blame.

First, a hot take. Based on the report-out, the group convened was decidedly canted toward radio. Reading the summary, you’d think PBS was eliminated along with CPB. It’s near absence (one mention) makes this discussion on the future of public media incomplete. It’s really a discussion on the future of public radio. Important, but not comprehensive as the title would lead you to believe.

Additionally, the group sure seems pretty white. I’m not the right person to launch a larger critique at that level, but I’ll flag it. (And h/t to Laura Garbes for adjusting my filters with her research on public radio’s historic problem in this regard.)

On the plus side, local radio stations were at the table (I didn’t see any joint licensees cited). So often, big thinkers get together and think big thoughts about public media without actually including the practitioners who are making it happen on the ground. Fortunately, that’s not the case here.

I encourage you to thumb through it (it’ll take 15-30 minutes) or, if you’d prefer, check out ChatGPT’s summary and assessment from a thread I have open with it on the future of public media.

But I also want to call out a few cheers and jeers from the summary.

Values

I appreciated that “The group identified these as shared values: Citizenship over consumption; Trust and integrity Community connection; Free access and openness; Original, local reporting; Service to historically underserved communities. These values, rather than platforms or legacy structures, surfaced repeatedly as the underlying foundation for what comes next.” And especially appreciated that “Silvia Rivera (MacArthur Foundation) pushed the group to confront the equity implications: even before the collapse of commercial media, ‘large swaths of communities were not being served.’ Without intentional redesign, public media risks rebuilding a system ‘for the elite again.’”

Public Media = Democracy

This section (unsurprisingly from Judy Woodruff) resonated with me. “The group started by discussing why public media exists. Judy Woodruff (Senior Correspondent, PBS News) grounded the room in first principles: ‘Public media is an essential part of our democracy… If people don’t have access to information, how can they be a good citizen?’ The work, she emphasized, is not about chasing ‘what’s going to bring more eyeballs,’ but understanding ‘what Americans need to know’ to be connected to their communities and to one another. Trust, she noted, remains one of public media’s most durable assets: ‘We are trusted. People do have that trust, that loyalty in public media.’”

Then, from later in the report: “But Gary Knell sharpened the stakes: if public media simply doubles down on its existing donor-audience base, it will become ‘resistance radio’—narrower, more partisan, less civic.”

I’m glad that someone is calling out that we are an essential part of democracy. While I’m not advocating that we become more partisan, we need to stress that more. Public media is democracy and a fight against public media is a fight against democracy.

I’ve cited Victor Pickard’s work here before on how healthier democracies have more robust public media entities. But I’ll do it again. This is from his April 2025 OpEd in The Nation: “Research shows that access to public media correlates with increased political knowledge and civic engagement and lower levels of extremist views. Public media are also more likely to provide diverse and critical media coverage of important social issues. Moreover, unlike commercial media that must privilege returns on investments, public media are more likely to cover stories and engage audiences that aren’t profitable, thus reducing inequalities in news provision. In these countries, public broadcasters are treated as vital democratic infrastructures, providing essential services that a commercial system will not. Indeed, research shows a positive correlation between the strength of public media systems and the health of democracies. Conversely, “flawed democracies” such as the US tend to have weaker public media systems that rely more on commercial support.” (See also, his 2021 OpEd in CJR.)

AI and the Death of Story?

AI and its impacts also got a mention in the day’s discussions: “Vilas Dhar (President, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation) focused on how AI could disrupt the system. With AI-intermediating content, he asked, ‘What is a good version of [an] AI-intermediated world where our public media content reaches our audience?’ Michael Giarrusso (AP) argued that in an AI-driven environment, content must be ‘digestible’ and modular. ... Participants also discussed structural constraints. Several said that current definitions of 'public media' are outdated. Knell (BCG) said existing distinctions are 'completely antiquated,' and that the system is not designed for emerging content forms like immersive media or data visualizations. Steve Waldman (Rebuild Local News) compared local reporters to ecological keystone species: 'We are the plankton… of this content food chain.'”

This is an important point. As we look at the future of media, is “story” really our competitive advantage? Or does the definition of public media need to evolve beyond storytelling to other forms of information presentation and distribution.

Welcome to Thunderdome?

And then, from the section on the End of the Day Reflection: “Co-hosts Vivian Schiller (Aspen), Gary Knell (BCG) and Laura Walker (Bennington) gave a candid assessment to close the day. They agreed the system needs a blueprint: a shared definition of what public media is and should become. Without such clarity, Knell warned, the sector risks devolving into a “Hunger Games in public media,” competing for shrinking resources rather than building a cohesive future.”

Obviously I’d prefer a “Mad Max” metaphor, nevertheless, I have a distinct fear that the real Hunger Games in public media will be around who gets to define public media’s next act. The year 2025 wasn’t the most promising of starts, and there is definitely an ‘opportunity in chaos’ pack lurking in the dystopia just beyond the safety of the fire’s light.

In a future where public media will not be exclusively audio or video - if it is even audio and video at all - there needs to be better representation from the perspectives of multiple types of media. It’s fashionable these days to discuss “first principles,” but there is a distinction between honestly assessing public media’s value to civil society and marching backwards into the future. In 2026, someone needs to convene a group that is more firmly focused on the future of media, it’s place in a healthy democracy, and our pro-democracy contributions to that future.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Resources…

Innovate with Current: The Future of Public Media (2026) 
(Thursday, January 15, 1pET/10aPT)
Join Public Media Innovators and Current for our second annual conversation about what the year ahead holds for public media. Suffice to say, 2025 didn’t go the way many of us hoped. So, now what? How can public media position itself for a successful 2026 amid ongoing uncertainty and change? This session will feature a panel of four leaders (two from last year, two new for ‘26) from across public media sharing their perspectives on where the industry finds itself today and what may be coming next. This conversation is designed for anyone thinking about the future of public media strategy, audience, and sustainability and looking for candid perspectives on what comes next. Register here!

What You Need to Know about AI + Search

We had a great turnout for last month’s webinar, but it did hit at a busy time of year. If you missed any part of it, or want to share it with colleagues, you’ll find it above. As I was listening to Richard and Emily present a few themes jumped out at me.

Thoughts on Public Media…

Public media’s next act (Steve Henn - NiemanLab) 
Key Line: "That function — editing and responsible curation — is exactly what the wider news ecosystem dominated by algorithms has lost. Stations should become hubs in a larger civic digital network, linking responsible creators, neighborhood outlets, and community-based reporting with the reach, trust, and membership infrastructure stations already operate. The system can leverage its strengths and meet audiences where they spend so much of their time: on their phones."
Why It Matters: It was tempting to lead with Katherine Maher’s prediction (see below), but amongst all the NiemanLab predictions for public media, Henn's vision resonates with me most. I like that it broadens the definition of what public media could be and who could be public media (as Richard Tofel parenthetically pointed out in his Three Stories I’d Like to See in 2026, “Without public funding, [public media is] really now just an important sector within the larger world of nonprofit news”). But Henn’s vision also prescribes money moving 'cleanly and transparently' across the 'network'. Can public media be that enlightened?

The fight for independence (Katherine Maher - NiemanLab) 
From the Prediction: "Technological disruption has added to the pressure. 30 years after the start of the open web, publishers had coalesced around a fragile tech truce of content-for-traffic. This has collapsed, driven by Google’s AI Overviews, causing publisher referrals to plummet. Into this vacuum flooded AI slop — by August 2025, leading GenAI chatbots were repeating false claims on news topics 35 percent of the time. Simultaneously, audiences are drifting away from institutions entirely. With 38 percent of young adults now relying on social media influencers for news — 77 percent of whom have no affiliation with editorial organizations — the line between verified fact and viral opinion is dissolving."
Why It Matters: Before printed text was a thing (so, like, the 1300s) history tells us that people were more inclined to trust what someone told them far more than something that was written down. It was an oral society in those days, and authenticity (or charisma) mattered more than facts which were systematically verified before presentation. So, the only thing that's new today in the rise of the influencer is scale. Public media needs to figure out how to translate "truth" both through influencers as well as systematic fact presentation. As AI increasingly mediates content, servicing both components of our public will be core to our service to community.
ICYMI: Benjamin Mullin's piece in the NYT was getting quit a bit of buzz leading into the holiday break: NPR’s C.E.O. Was a Right-Wing Target. Then the Real Trouble Started.

Public media sees infrastructure as its next act of service (Kerri Hoffman - NiemanLab) 
From the Prediction: "‘Infrastructure’ is not a word that sets most hearts on fire. But if you care about journalism — especially local journalism — you care about infrastructure, whether you realize it or not.... Right now, many of those underlying systems are controlled by a small number of commercial platforms, ad tech companies, or vendors whose incentives don’t always align with public service. The risk is that public media becomes just another content supplier in someone else’s ecosystem, subject to someone else’s rules. Building shared, mission-driven infrastructure is a way of clearing the path."
Why It Matters: Kerri is right. Infrastructure isn't sexy. It's thankless, since most people only acknowledge it when it fails (much love to the IT, traffic and broadcast engineering pros in the crowd). It also typically takes a while to build, and once built, longer to change. So, while I appreciate her assertion, I think the approach she is defending is already out of date. The infrastructure we need to be supporting is infrastructure for an AI age, not the social/digital age.

Public media will stop acting like a legacy airline (Ethan Toven-Lindsey - NiemanLab) 
From the Prediction: "...[N]ow that we are asking the existential question of what public media really is anyway, we have the opportunity to overhaul our systems.... I believe public media will throw off the constraints of a system that serves larger metropolitan areas at the expense of the rest of the country.... Defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will only serve to accelerate that decentralization, and I believe a more networked system, with a greater number of connections, will emerge."
Why It Matters: When I read Ethan's prediction, I'm struck by the notion that the system he's discussion is a 'mass media' system. And key to visualizing his idea is the notion that we could use technology to stop serving a mass audience and instead serve individual media consumers, or at least individual publics.

The walls around public media keep coming down (Meredith Artley - NiemanLab) 
From the Piece: "The support system for public media can silo the people within it from the rest of the media and technology landscape. There are resource groups, consultants, conferences, and webinars just for public media....These groups exist to help, not to isolate....But the downside of local stations spending so much time in the vast public media support network is that a large, disparate group of hundreds of stations are absent from many larger conversations where there is much to learn and to share."
Why It Matters: Hawai'i Public Radio's GM weighs in with encouragement to be less insular. I've said it here before and I'll repeat it again, for me the best conference of the year is South by Southwest. We'll see if that's still true next year now that they are under new management, but they did book Paula to keynote, so that's a good sign. I know it can be easier to pitch for travel budgets when it’s for conferences from within our systems, but you should try to go to at least one conference outside the system a year if you can. The fresh perspective is vital.
Related: And you can see all of NiemanLabs contributor predictions at Predictions for Journalism 2026.

What the Dissolution of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Means (Ivan L. Nagy - Columbia Journalism Review) 
From the Article: "Benson looked at the organization’s closure as an opportunity for public media to reinvent itself in a more favorable political context someday in the future....In that event, Benson thinks that CPB, which has long been a political target in Washington, could be rebuilt with a new, more robust structure better able to resist partisan pressure. 'The policy debate will be about how much public media should be even more locally driven, or how much it should engage nationally,' he said."
What It Means: The cloud of CPB’s demise does have the silver lining of hope. Local matters, and many of us have local support. Of course, hope is not a strategy, but it can inspire strategies that empower us to steer our way to clearer skies. As Pat and Ruby said elsewhere: “That work continues, and it matters now more than ever.”
Related: Alex Curley’s piece on CPB’s action: Backed Into an Impossible Corner, CPB Votes to Dissolve 
Also related: Brian Welk’s piece in IndieWire on the dissolution of CPB was my runner-up for featuring here: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Is Dissolving Rather Than Be ‘Vulnerable to Additional Attacks’ from the Trump Administration 
 

And finally…

Stewart Cheifet, PBS host who chronicled the PC revolution, dies at 87 (Benj Edwards - Ars Technica) And finally, I grew up in a PBS household. I also grew up in a PC household; my dad had an amateur's love for the burgeoning personal computer and video game revolution in the early 80s. As such, "Computer Chronicles" was a normal, weekly occurrence in our house. Reading of Cheifet's passing, I was struck by how much his creation is in the DNA of this newsletter. R.I.P.

See you back here around January 26.

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Generated with ChatGPT 5.2 (Thinking)

Hi all. For our final newsletter of the year we’ve got a 2026 NiemanLab Prediction from Hawai’i’s Meredith Artley, the declaration of the “post-news era,” the next frontier of AI, the Disney-Sora deal, a new AR experiment from BBC R&D, a recap of our AI Search webinar, and finally, Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year.

But First…

Registration is now open for our January 15 webinar, Innovate with Current: The Future of Public Media. Suffice to say, this year didn’t go as many of us had planned. So, now what? How can public media position itself for a successful 2026 amid ongoing uncertainty and change? This session will feature a panel of four leaders from across public media sharing their perspectives on where the industry finds itself today and what may be coming next. This conversation is designed for anyone thinking about the future of public media strategy, audience, and sustainability and looking for candid perspectives on what comes next.

What You Need to Know about AI + Search

We had a great turnout for last week’s webinar. If you missed any part of it, or want to share it with colleagues, you’ll find it above. As I was listening to Richard and Emily present a few themes jumped out at me.

First, Google is turning search into answers (not clicks). The AI Overviews (AIO) that sit above organic and paid results, are increasingly driving “zero-click” behavior and shrinking the visible real estate for everyone else. “AI Mode” is - everyone seems to agree - Google’s near term endgame. Even though current adoption is uneven we’re increasingly looking at a future where Google does the researching, then summarizes. But how do you track performance to affect improvement? Measurement is the core pain. AIO referrals are logged as organic in GA/Search Console, and paid reporting also doesn’t clearly show when/where ads appear around/inside AIO.

But something are still constant. Even though we must now contend with a search landscape clouded by Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) still response best to authentic, authoritative, human-generated content. And the best way to show up in AIO is still: rank well traditionally (page-one visibility strongly correlates with AIO inclusion).

It’s also worth noting that video is getting pulled into AIO—mostly via YouTube. So, if you don’t have a YouTube strategy in play right now, it’s more important than ever.

And keep in mind that priorities around tune-in KPIs and discoverability are different from priorities around the dissemination of information or sharing of knowledge via content (e.g. news, civic information, local stories).

It’s still early days for AI and search…if search is even the right construct. Paraphrasing a comment I saw on LinkedIn, “Ask” is the new “Search.” The impact of Google and it’s competitors (both AI-infused browsers and Chatbots with search capabilities) is playing out in real time.

About that Comment to the FCC

2025 showed us repeatedly that politics and media are intrinsically intertwined, and on that front this year just keeps on giving. This time it’s a recent comment filed with the FCC that argues for stripping PBS/NPR stations of their broadcast licenses.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that PBS is only a small part at the end of the 15-page, double-spaced, Empowering Local Broadcast TV Stations to Meet Their Public Interest Obligations - Initial Comment of the Center for American Rights. But even though we seem like an afterthought, you should check it out. If Project 2025 taught us anything, it’s that great storms announce themselves with a simple breeze.

The overarching argument of the comment is that coastal elite media companies (who have a lot of O&Os in politically blue cities and states) make content decisions that financially disenfranchise affiliate ownership groups primarily working in politically red states. This amounts, they seem to argue, to government regulation forcing red-state oriented affiliate groups to fight with one hand tied behind their back because these groups are contractually obligated to offer a product that cannot be maximized for local pricing power due to poor product-market fit. The Kimmel matter is their case study of choice. (There’s also a section about how sports is too damn expensive, but I’m skipping over that here.)

So, what about us? We're noncommercial. With PBS (and the focus here is PBS, though “NPR” does also show up in several sentences) the argument is that since we foretold of our own demise with the anti-rescission argument that defunding could equal the death of public media, we should now be obligated to prove that we have “a viable long-term business model, and…tell the Commission how [we] plan to increase donor support while maintaining editorial independence.” (p.14) Or else we must surrender our licenses to those who can make a profit off the spectrum, presumably with content that is defined earlier in the comments as “values-aligned, faith-inspired, family-friendly, and patriotic.” (p.4) There are no suggestions as to where this content might originate.

Reading the comment through, you get the impression that we almost got out of the draft unmentioned and unscathed. Then someone watched The American Revolution.

"...[T]he Commission should ask whether PBS (and NPR) stations are fulfilling their public-interest obligations as licensees when the public’s elected representatives have just chosen to cut off public funding because of their failure to serve the public well. That question is especially pressing after PBS’s big brand reboot, the Ken Burns documentary timed to America’s 250th birthday, was “a woke mockery of America’s founding.” Ken Burns’ credibility and patriotic Americans’ interest in their nation’s history, especially at this 250th birthday, prompted many who may not watch PBS otherwise to tune in. PBS blew its chance to reboot its brand with the American people at large: the choice to heavily promote a controversial, politicized version of America’s founding story suggests PBS has not learned the lesson from its defunding." (pp.14-15)

Lots of entities can make comment (for and against issues) to the FCC during the open comment periods, and this one hit my radar because Ars Technica reported on it. There may be others on both sides of the issue. I’d much rather end the year on a more positive note, but clearly the fight to justify our existence will continue on new fronts in 2026. Be aware.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Resources…

Innovate with Current: The Future of Public Media (2026) 
(Thursday, January 15, 1pET/10aPT)
Join Public Media Innovators and Current for our second annual conversation about what the year ahead holds for public media. Suffice to say, 2025 didn’t go the way many of us hoped. So, now what? How can public media position itself for a successful 2026 amid ongoing uncertainty and change? This session will feature a panel of four leaders (two from last year, two new for ‘26) from across public media sharing their perspectives on where the industry finds itself today and what may be coming next. This conversation is designed for anyone thinking about the future of public media strategy, audience, and sustainability and looking for candid perspectives on what comes next. Register here!

Here's a 7-part 'Context Engineering' framework that gets consistently better AI results. (Beginning-Willow-801 via r/ThinkingDeeplyAI) 
From the Post: "The idea is simple: an AI is like a brilliant intern. It can do incredible work, but only if you give it a phenomenal briefing. The richer the context, the better the output. It's not just me saying this. AI legends like Andrej Karpathy (founding member of OpenAI) and Tobi Lütke (CEO of Shopify) have said the same: the quality of the context you provide is everything."

The Complete Guide to Nano Banana Pro: 10 Tips for Professional Asset Production (GoogleAIStudio via X) 
"Here's what you'll find in this article: 0. The Golden Rules of Prompting 1.Text Rendering, Infographics & Visual Synthesis 2. Character Consistency & Viral Thumbnails 3. Grounding with Google Search 4. Advanced Editing, Restoration & Colorization 5. Dimensional Translation (2D ↔ 3D) 6. High-Resolution & Textures 7. Thinking & Reasoning 8. One-Shot Storyboarding & Concept Art 9. Structural Control & Layout Guidance 10. What's Next?"
Related: Here’s another set of Nano Banana prompts courtesy of ZeroLu on GitHub.

Thoughts on Public Media…

The walls around public media keep coming down (Meredith Artley - NiemanLab) 
From the Piece: "The support system for public media can silo the people within it from the rest of the media and technology landscape. There are resource groups, consultants, conferences, and webinars just for public media....These groups exist to help, not to isolate....But the downside of local stations spending so much time in the vast public media support network is that a large, disparate group of hundreds of stations are absent from many larger conversations where there is much to learn and to share."
Why It Matters: Hawai'i Public Radio's GM weighs in with the first public media prediction for NiemanLab this year (I’ll feature more in the first exploration of the new year), and I appreciate her perspective. I've said it here before and I'll repeat it again, for me the best conference of the year is South by Southwest. We'll see if that's still true next year now that they are under new management, but they did book Paula to keynote, so that's a good sign. I know it can be easier to pitch for travel budgets when it’s for conferences from within our systems, but you should try to go to at least one conference outside the system a year if you can (even if that's the only travel you get to do). The fresh perspective is vital.
Related: See all of NiemanLabs contributor predictions at Predictions for Journalism 2026.

The Hard Choices Public Media Institutions Are Facing Every Single Day (Leslie Fields-Cruz - IndieWire) 
From the OpEd: "The United States is at its best and most prosperous when creative freedom rings, knowledge is shared and intolerance finds no shelter. Preserving these ideals requires more of us to be willing to do the hard things."
Why It Matters: I have a lot of respect for Leslie, BPM and the wider multicultural alliance that helps keep public media innovative. We tend to focus on local stations or the national brands, but I wanted to surface this piece as a reminder that the public media community is both broad and deep.

Media These Days…

Axios CEO: US is in ‘post-news’ era (Max Tani - Semafor) 
From the Article: "In order to survive, he wrote in an internal memo shared with Semafor, newsrooms will need to rethink the role they will play in an information landscape dominated by artificial intelligence and algorithmic, personalized video feeds. 'Your reality — how you see the world — is no longer defined by "the news."' Jim VandeHei wrote. 'Instead, it’s shaped by the videos you watch, podcasts you hear, the people you follow on social media and know in person, and the reporting you consume. We’ve entered a period where everyone has their own individual reality, usually based on age, profession, passions, politics and platform preferences.'...Axios believes its largest area for growth is in local coverage, much of which has been left behind by national media."
Why It Matters: Whether I like it or not, I see considerable evidence of what VandeHei describes. In fact, while he offers an important perspective it hardly seems revelatory. To me, the last line above (which I pulled from later in the piece) is the real kicker. While the smaller markets may be safe (for now), as profit margins get squeezed elsewhere in the larger markets, many mid-sized markets with news droughts feel ripe for Axios' strategy.

Google announces AI deals with publishers (Dominic Ponsford - PressGazette)
From the Article: "On Wednesday, 10 December, it also announced a series of new features which it said ‘will help connect people with the sources they value’. Preferred Sources is a new feature in search which allows users to customise the “Top Stories” they see in search prioritise favourite outlets and sites. This is now being rolled out globally. Google said: ‘When someone picks a preferred source, they click to that site twice as much on average.’ A[nother] new feature highlights links to sites which users subscribe to “making it easier to spot content from sources you trust and helping you get more value from your subscriptions”. Google said it will also now prioritise links from subscribed publications in search as well as the Gemini App, AI Overviews and AI Mode."
Why It Matters: It's been at least a month since I've complained about the fact that PBS and NPR don't seem to have any deals going with AI companies that might benefit local public media organizations. Hopefully something is happening behind the scenes that will yield some benefits. But in terms of what we can do ourselves, at the very least getting audiences to list us as a "preferred source" seems worthwhile. And if there was a way to sync "subscriptions" with memberships I think that could be a boost for us as well.
Related: Google's blog entry on How to select your preferred sources in Top Stories in Search.
Also Related: Wikipedia seeks more AI licensing deals similar to Google tie-up, co-founder Wales says by Deborah Mary Sophia and Krystal Hu at Reuters.

MS Now to launch membership-based subscription product next summer (Sara Fischer - Axios) 
From the Article: "The membership is heavily focused on building moments where MS NOW's progressive community can engage online, a reflection of the success it's had in bringing its audience together for ticketed live events. The subscription aims to connect fans with the network's biggest stars through interactive features. It will also give consumers 24/7 access to the live MS NOW linear network."
Why It Matters: From the ashes of MSNBC, a membership organization emerges. My gut tells me that the economy and the annual cycling off of rage-giving members from this summer will create headwinds for us in 2026. Surely, this move from MS Now will put pressure on some renewals as well. But don’t lose site of the message that high-touch experiences seem to work when it comes to cultivating loyalty.
Related: For more on the communities angle, check out PressGazette's How Forbes CEO Sherry Phillips is responding to Google challenge 

AI + Us…

Spatial Intelligence Is AI’s Next Frontier (Fei-Fei Li - Time) 
From the OpEd: "For humans, spatial intelligence is the scaffolding upon which our cognition is built. It’s at work when we passively observe or actively seek to create. It drives our reasoning and planning, even on the most abstract topics. And it’s essential to the way we interact—verbally or physically, with our peers or with the environment itself. When machines are endowed with this ability, it will transform how we create and interact with real and virtual worlds—revolutionizing storytelling, robotics, scientific discovery, and beyond. This is AI’s next frontier, and why 2025 was such a pivotal year." Why It Matters: Li is considered the godmother of AI, and this think piece gives you a more macro view of the AI industry, and the hurdles that could soon be overcome to make AI even more akin to human intelligence. But across a number of emerging media disciplines space is the final frontier. We've talked about spatial media before in this newsletter (a term that loosely encompasses VR, AR and xR experiences). And space is a key consideration when it comes to games. When you open a game engine, you are not confronted with an empty timeline, you are confronted with an empty sphere.
See Also: Li’s longer post (from which this editorial was derived) on her own Substack, From Words to Worlds: Spatial Intelligence is AI’s Next Frontier
Related: On LinkedIn KQED’s Tim Olson posted a creation he made with Li’s new World Labs tool. Check it out.

AI + Journalism…

AP launches verification dashboard for publishers to meet ‘demand for authenticity’ (Alice Brooker - PressGazette) 
From the Lede: "Associated Press has launched an AI-powered tool to help journalists verify text, photos and videos in one place. The AP Verify dashboard will let subscribers access several verification tools on one centralised platform. It includes an AI chatbot assistant, geolocation, object and landmark recognition, AI text detection, transcription services and an anti-duplication tool to alert users if colleagues are verifying the same content. The aim is to help journalists verify content purporting to show major news events in a world where AI is making it harder to tell what’s real and what’s not. AP Verify has been used by AP journalists for the past year and is now being offered to other publishers."
Why It Matters: AP was one of the first news publishers to do a content-for-development deal with OpenAI, so I wonder if this is a product of that collaboration. Regardless, we need more sources of truth in the AI era, not less, and I hope public media can contribute in some way to that objective understanding of reality.

Washington Post’s AI-generated podcasts rife with errors, fictional quotes (Max Tani - Semafor) 
From the Article: "But less than 48 hours since the product was released, people within the Post have flagged what four sources described as multiple mistakes in personalized podcasts. The errors have ranged from relatively minor pronunciation gaffes to significant changes to story content, like misattributing or inventing quotes and inserting commentary, such as interpreting a source’s quotes as the paper’s position on an issue. According to four people familiar with the situation, the errors have alarmed senior newsroom leaders who have acknowledged in an internal Slack channel that the product’s output is not living up to the paper’s standards."
Why It Matters: I feel for the Post on this, because I think they are just on the bleeding edge of the curve here. We are moving toward a future where those who want such a product can get a daily briefing from AI (see the comments from Axios’ CEO above). The future of the newspaper or of the daily podcast is likely to be an automagically generated readable or listenable summary. And as publishers we should be terrified of being frozen out of that space. But the lesson from the Post is that technology isn't "there" yet to be automate and sustain the level of trust we must maintain with our publics to generate this ourselves. That said, it could very well be good enough for our communities a year from now.

AI + Education…

Purdue unveils comprehensive AI strategy; trustees approve ‘AI working competency’ graduation requirement (Phillip Fiorini - Purdue) 
From the Press Release: "Now and in future, Purdue students will need to possess the requisite critical thinking skills to understand, evaluate and effectively use AI technologies and to keep pace with their future changes — all as informed by evolving workforce and employer needs. To this end, the trustees have delegated authority to the provost, working with deans of all academic colleges, to develop and to review and update continuously, discipline-specific criteria and proficiency standards for a new campuswide “artificial intelligence working competency” graduation requirement for all Purdue main campus students, starting with new beginners in fall 2026. Some of the underlying educational resources and innovations will be made available as soon as next semester for currently enrolled students, too."
Why It Matters: Maybe there are other instances of this happening, but this is the first I've seen. And I assume there will be many in the coming year. I think that baking in AI competency to degrees makes a lot of sense, although it would seem that many college students are already highly competent in the use of AI if they want to be.
Related: At one elite college, over 80% of students now use AI – but it’s not all about outsourcing their work by Germán Reyes in The Conversation 
Also related: The Case Against AI Disclosure Statements By Julie McCown in Inside Higher Ed 
Still Related: Learning with AI falls short compared to old-fashioned web search by Shiri Melumad in The Conversation 

Generative Buzz…

The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach landmark agreement to bring beloved characters from across Disney’s brands to Sora (OpenAI) 
From the Announcement: "As part of this new, three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing from a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, including costumes, props, vehicles, and iconic environments. In addition, ChatGPT Images will be able to turn a few words by the user into fully generated images in seconds, drawing from the same intellectual property. The agreement does not include any talent likenesses or voices. Alongside the licensing agreement, Disney will become a major customer of OpenAI, using its APIs to build new products, tools, and experiences, including for Disney+, and deploying ChatGPT for its employees."
Why It Matters: In prior years we saw numerous deals with journalism companies while creative companies with massive IP libraries sued AI model creators or sat quietly on the sidelines. In 2025 we've see deals are settlements around imagery, music, and now video. This was always inevitable.
Related: Tied to Disney's deal with OpenAI was Disney's takedown of IP infringing content generated by Google’s Veo3 (as reported by Ted Johnson in Deadline)...which meant the death of my beloved storm-trooper Vlogs from YouTube channel Artificial Cheese. It was the best bit of Star Wars to hit the web in a long time. I hope Disney read the writing on that wall and that something like it comes back as canon somewhere down the line.
Also Related: Falling behind Google and Anthropic, OpenAI quickly introduced GPT 5.2 to keep themselves in the peloton.

Adobe Ramps Up Firefly Video Tools Including New Firefly Video Editor (Andy Stout - RedShark News) 
From the Article: "Adobe has added a whole load of new video-first features into its Firefly generative AI platform, including precision text-based video editing, camera motion controls, third-party upscaling via Topaz Astra, and the public beta launch of a new browser-based Firefly video editor.... To encourage experimentation with all these new AI features , Adobe is offering unlimited image and video generations in the Firefly app until January 15 for users on Firefly Pro, Firefly Premium, 7000-credit, and 50,000-credit plans.... The offer covers Firefly’s own commercially safe image and video models, as well as partner image models including FLUX.2, Google Nano Banana, and OpenAI’s GPT Image. After January 15, standard credit limits will apply again."
Why It Matters: This is the latest move in Adobe's bid to be a one-stop shop for creators working with AI in the video space. In theory, this should allow us to make certain types of public media content more cheaply...if we're willing to embrace AI-enhanced tools in the production process.
Related: Going in the other direction, you can also now Edit with Photoshop in ChatGPT 

Immersive Media

'Paw-gmented’ reality: Developing an AR Pudsey Bear for BBC Children in Need (Claire Buckingham - BBC Research & Development) 
From the Blog: "This augmented reality (AR) experience is presented to people when they donate money to the appeal online. After making a contribution users can scan a QR code on their donation certificate to access the mobile experience. Then, as if by magic, an adorable 3D Pudsey Bear will appear in the space in front of you to deliver a personal thank you."
Why It Matters: I haven't seen a cool R&D project out of the BBC in a while, and this is an interesting one to potentially emulate if you have some local, original IP at your disposal. Yes, the execution feels like it could potentially come across as bit of a 'gadget gimmick,' but it is R&D, and understanding why it might not hit is a good way to hit on what might make a future iteration work.

And finally…

2025 Word of the Year: Slop (Merriam-Webster) And finally, in hindsight this seems inevitable. From the Article: “Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything. The original sense of the word, in the 1700s, was 'soft mud.' In the 1800s it came to mean 'food waste' (as in 'pig slop'), and then more generally, 'rubbish' or 'a product of little or no value.'"

See you back here in 2026. Have a safe, rejuvenating holiday break!

Generated with Google Gemini (Nano Banana Pro)

Image Generated with Google Whisk

Hi all. Welcome to our newest readers from Wisconsin and NYC! This week we’ve got Paula Kerger on the Channels podcast, the enshittification of the internet, why updated AI policies matter, an effective way to work with AI, a breakthrough in AI analysis of handwriting, and finally, Pantone’s 2026 (non)Color of the Year.

But First…

Registration is now open for our December 11 webinar, SEO + AI: Best Practices for 2026. Join us for a talk about what is changing (and more importantly what is not) now that AI has entered the chat via search and web browsers. And there will be plenty of time for Q&A, so bring all your SEO questions (even if they aren’t specifically AI-focused).

A Bird’s Eye View of the AI Landscape

A Bird’s Eye View of the AI Landscape - © Luma Partners LLC, 2025

Originally, I was going to write about AI and Search/SEO ahead of this week’s webinar, but I thought it might be better to do that next week so I could bake in some of the webinar learnings. That leaves us sans column this week. But I did find an interesting graphic (see above) that I want to share, courtesy of the folks at Luma Partners, LLC. You may not agree with all the groupings, and there are certainly other authoritative ways to parse this data. But their “Lumascape” for AI serves as a helpful taxonomy for how to think about different categories of AI these days. I was especially intrigued by the “Answers Economy” grouping at the bottom.

You might also download the image for a compare/contrast after the AI bubble eventually bursts.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Resources…

Claude for Nonprofits (Anthropic) 
From the Announcement: "From our partners, we know AI helps most when it fits into existing workflows, upholds the privacy their communities expect, and is affordable. Claude for Nonprofits includes three things: discounted access of up to 75% to Claude, connectors to new nonprofit tools—Blackbaud, Candid, and Benevity—and a free course, AI Fluency for Nonprofits, designed to help teams use AI more effectively."
Why It Matters: At NPM, our approach is still best described as 'use the frontier model suite that works for you.' But if your organization is looking to unify around a single platform, Claude's offer could be worth exploring. All AI companies infuse their values into their code, and Anthropic has historically taken an approach to generative and agentic AI that I've felt most closely aligns with the values of public media. It's not always been the "best" model when it comes to performance benchmarks and a multiplicity of product features, but its products are competitive and reliable.
Related: If you want to check out the AI Fluency for Nonprofits course independent of this offer, you can check it out at this link or watch the trailer above.

SEO + AI: Best Practices for 2026 (Thursday, December 11, 1pET/10aPT)
2025 was the year we all learned the phrase “Goggle Zero.” But whether you believe Google will completely stop delivering traffic to your organization’s website or not, AI is definitely changing how we get information from and find content on the internet. Join PBS’s Richard Traylor, SEO Manager, and Emily Clark, Manager of Multiplatform Marketing, for a talk about what is changing (and more importantly what is not) now that AI has entered the chat on search and web browsers. If you saw Richard speak at the PBS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, this will be an evolution, 6 months on, of the information presented there. And if you missed that one, you don’t want to miss this one. Register here.

Copyright Is for Kids: New Resource for Parents, Teachers, and Librarians (Allison Hall - Library of Congress) 
From the Blog Post: "Using this refreshed resource, kids can learn what copyright is and what rights copyright owners have: Coloring and searching activities help kids learn what subject matter is protectable by copyright; mazes trace a path from idea to authorship and copyright owner; spot-the-difference activities feature the Statue of Liberty (one of the largest works ever registered); prompts direct kids to create their very own original story or drawing."
Why It Matters: We probably don't touch on media literacy as much as we should here, so when this resource landed in my inbox it felt like a natural one to share. Pass this one along to your education or kids departments.

Thoughts on Public Media…

🎧 PBS Lost a Billion Dollars. Now what? With CEO Paula Kerger (Channels with Peter Kafka - Vox) 
From the Pod: "I think we have to plan the money is not coming back. But I think we work very hard to try to get it back. I think if we plan the money is not coming back and we build a strong foundation for how we operate moving forward, if we get any piece of the money back, that makes us even stronger.”
Why It Matters: Last week we had her appearance on Mixed Signals, and this week's isn't a cake walk either. Kafka comes across as supportive of the work of public media but skeptical of the government funding. Paula's counterarguments are good and she plays the hits (kids, emergency alerts and information, investigative journalism), listening to it reinforced for me that - absent kids’ content - the true unique value is local. Also, let’s just call bullshit on the headline/title for the pod. Not only is it factually inaccurate (CPB failed to get the money), but it shades the truth by making it seem like the money could have misplaced. (I know you get it, I’m just putting that out there for the bots crawling the internet).
Related: Here’s a Spotify link for those that listen to podcasts that way (I couldn’t find the show on YouTube this time)

Public Media Advertising: Fears of the Past, Hope for the Future (Richard Tofel - Second Rough Draft) 
From the OpEd: "While the public was providing funding to these broadcasters, that deal may have struck some people (say, the Congress) as appropriate. But in the absence of such funding, the restrictions are outrageous. And they are, I would submit, plainly unconstitutional.... Without the quid pro quo of public funding, I can’t see the justification for these restrictions."
Why It Matters: Tofel's analysis is refreshingly informed for an outsider. We should not plan for federal dollars coming back, but I do worry that if we start chasing the ad-money dragon, it’ll be a hard habit to break. And of course, many of us get state or university (so, quasi-state) dollars even though federal funding is gone. Tofel seems like he may mostly be thinking about community licensees. And then, from more of a values perspective, non-commercial media has historically traded on the trust that the storytelling is free from corporate influence. That sensibility (and the mandate derived from it) harken back to the perceived needs of another era. I'm trying to square in my own mind whether that matters in a media landscape now shaped by influencers, "authenticity," and "vibes."
Related: Not specifically about public media, but another interesting data point from Katherine Fink in The Conversation: Nonprofit news outlets are often scared that selling ads could jeopardize their tax-exempt status, but IRS records show that’s been rare 

Media These Days…

Why everything on the internet is getting worse (Cory Doctorow - The Gray Area with Sean Illing) 
From the Pod: "The formal definition of enshittification is both a kind of descriptive and theoretical idea. So descriptively, it describes how platforms go bad. That first they're good to their end users. They find a way to lock those end users in. And then they uh make things worse for those end users because the lock-in means that the end users are unlikely to depart. They use that new surplus to make things good for business customers. They lock those business customers in making them dependent on those end users. And then they make things worse for the business customers too...."
Why It Matters: I don’t here this term much anymore but years ago we used to talk about “planned obsolescence” in products. The idea (often discussed as it was a conspiracy) that products were engineered to break after a certain point. You can feel that there is a particular rhyming scheme between that and how good products and services go bad in the internet age. This conversation (and Doctorow’s book) gives you a way to talk about it.

Let It Burn (Zoe Scaman - Musings of a Wandering Mind) 
From the Substack: "But it’s not just about where the work lives. It’s about how it happens. The old model was a conveyor belt. A creative assembly line. Brief comes in, gets processed through a series of handoffs – strategy to creative to production to media – each department passing the baton to the next. Paint by numbers. Templated. Industrialised. Strategy wasn’t really strategy; it was a sophistication signal, a pitch-winning tool, intellectual seasoning sprinkled on the production line to justify premium pricing. Insights became SKUs. That model is dying because it doesn’t match the shape of the work anymore. The work now is faster. More fluid. More intuitive. It doesn’t move in a straight line from brief to execution – it loops and iterates and responds in real time to culture and data and platform changes. It requires people who can think and make across disciplines. It requires proximity to the brand itself – to the inner machinery of the business – not an external vendor three tissue meetings away from anyone who can actually say yes."
Why It Matters: Scaman's perspective is from the ad agency world. But her message, especially for those recently cut from their organizations, is sector agnostic. How we work is changing. This piece captures the emotions around that well.

Gen Z Hates the News (Brian Morrissey - The Rebooting) 
From the Piece: "It’s important to restate that news is a subset of publishing, which is a subset of a far broader Information Space. Everyone is competing with everyone for attention, ad dollars and influence. Professional news organizations don’t compete only with each other. It isn’t NBC vs CBS vs ABC. It isn’t MSNBC vs Fox News. It’s comedians with podcasts, white nationalists with Rumble talk shows, Tucker and Candace, Harry Sisson and Hasan Piker, and on and on. By the metrics, the institutional news industry is losing this battle badly."
Why It Matters: I read stories like these, and I think about the Newshour's Student Reporting Labs. For a decade we have cultivated that initiative as a part of our System, yet it feels sandboxed. We're aligned with a group that is training young folks across the nation in the basic principles of good journalism. What can they teach us about the media that creates maximum impact for them? Maybe we’ll make that one of our webinars in the new year.

AI + Journalism…

Why defining newsroom AI policy is more urgent than ever (Pete Pachel - Media CoPilot) 
From the Substack: "For most in the media industry, and especially newsrooms, there’s a presumption that if you’re submitting anything under your name, that you (a human) wrote the words, not a machine. This is more than an assumption—it’s a compact, one that rightly elevates the value of human output. Almost all writers understand this compact, and it’s not incompatible with being an AI enthusiast. The problem, as ever, is in the details, which are becoming increasingly gray as AI improves. With vague or nonexistent policy, there are ways AI can slip into publishable copy, even with good-faith actors on both sides...."
Why It Matters: For a while, back in 2024, we talked a lot about AI policy here in public media. It hasn't come up as much this year. So, I'll ask two questions. First, did your organization ever create an AI policy? If so, have you updated it to encompass, agentic AI, AI-augmented search, AI SEO, the advent of AI-native browsers and AI-infused browsers (like Google)? Spoiler alert: I’ll be talking about this more in 2026.
Related: Pachel references a recent Reuters study that, while from the UK, is still worth a quick skim if you run a newsroom or oversee someone who does: AI adoption by UK journalists and their newsrooms: surveying applications, approaches, and attitudes 
Counterpoint: Alice Brooker's piece in the PressGazette shows that maybe there is still hope, The Week Junior: Ten years of proving the young still read print journalism 

Studies on AI transcription and translation in journalism reveal “low-resource” language gap, new report finds (Andrew Deck - NiemanLab) 
From the Article: "English represents more than 50% of the domains on the web. Mainstream language models are largely trained on data scraped from the internet, which is one reason transcription and translation tools perform so well in English. ‘Low-resource’ languages are those that have comparatively little digitized text on the web available to train models. Even some of the most-spoken languages in the world, like Urdu, are considered low-resource."
Why It Matters: We haven't talked about AI bias here for a while, but this piece was a nice reminder that the leading AI models are heavily biased toward English as a means of communication and, as a result, western modes of thinking. Know your tools.

AI + Us…

Think First, AI Second (Ines Lee - Every) 
From the Article: "But buried in the study was a finding most coverage missed. The researchers also tested what happens when you sequence your AI use differently. Some participants thought first, then used AI (brain → AI). Others used AI first, then switched to thinking (AI → brain). The brain → AI group showed better attention, planning, and memory even while using AI. Remarkably, their cognitive engagement stayed as high as students who never used AI. The researchers suggest this increased engagement came from integrating AI’s suggestions with the internal framework they’d already built through independent thinking. Meanwhile, students who started with AI stayed mentally checked out, even after they switched to working on their own. Starting passive meant staying passive."
Why It Matters: I was glad to see this piece (and its cited studies) because it confirmed for me something I had experienced, the fact that text composed by AI doesn't stick in memory. Years ago, I did programming grids for station schedules. I could tell you instantly when something would air anywhere across any channel in a 2—3-month range. But once I moved up and started delegating, I couldn't retain a broadcast schedule to save my life. The act of creating the schedule tattooed it on my short-term memory (in fact, I still remember some of the tactics I employed back then). The point is, there is value in being engaged with the act of creation, and you can use AI to help you. We're just now learning that there is a more effective order for that AI assistance.

The AI glossary you now need (Reed Albergotti - Semafor) 
From the Brief: "It’s not easy to understand the current moment in AI, where tech is equal parts overhyped and underestimated.... So we thought it would be helpful to create a glossary of some of our favorite AI-related paradoxes."
Why It Matters: A better headline might have been, "7 AI Terms to Out-jargon Your Tech-Bro Relatives During the Holidays." There are useful terms here though. I've been citing "Amara's Law," for at least 15 years, as it is applicable to any technology forecasting.

Generative Buzz…

The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition (Dan Cohen - Humane Ingenuity) 
From the Article: "At this point, AI tools like Gemini should be able to make most digitized handwritten documents searchable and readable in transcription. This is, simply put, a major advance that we’ve been trying to achieve for a very long time, and a great aid to scholarship. It allows human beings to focus their time on the important, profound work of understanding another human being, rather than staring at a curlicue to grasp if it’s an L or an I."
Why It Matters: If I had a digital humanities section this would go there. This is for those of you that have labored, or paid others to labor, over nearly indecipherable historical texts. As public media continues to make content in the digital humanities vein, I can see how the use of text "decoding" like this could open up news stories, or new nuances to previously told stories. And that could be an interesting way to mine archival station content.

Rare look at how Hollywood is already harnessing AI (Nathan Rousseau Smith - ABC News) 
From the Article: "'There's somewhat of this old adage that says things that are evil, magic and a tool when a new technology comes out,' Mooser told ABC News. 'It's evil to the people that are being disrupted. It's magic to those who own it. And in the end, it just becomes a tool. And so that's the system that we're seeing right now.'"
Why It Matters: I watched The American Revolution last week, and honestly, everything but the interviews and some of the most famous portraits and depictions could have been AI generated. I don't expect Florentine would go there (yet), but the next Florentine could. The best practices and attendant ethics developed in production centers like Hollywood can trickle down to public media, if we are open to their experiences. So, it’s good to track how the state of the art is made manifest there.

The Creator Economy…

How a failed horror movie director co-founded one of the most popular yoga channels on YouTube (Simon Owers via Substack) 
From the Article: "The YouTube channel itself remains intentionally under-monetized. Sharpe and Mishler avoid mid-roll ads because they disrupt the yoga flow. Sponsored integrations are rare. “Keeping the channel clean and authentic is a better experience,” Sharpe said. And ironically, under-monetizing the channel increases trust and makes people more willing to pay for the app."
Why It Matters: That this guy is a failed horror film director is just a bit of trivia that makes a nice hook. He'll always win the icebreaker part of the meeting. But set that aside, and this struck me as an interesting case study from the Creator Economy. I think there are some ideas from their strategy which we could emulate.

This AI Grandma Is Going Viral. Is She the Future of Influencing? (Andrew Chow - Time) 
From the Article: "These new influencers don’t require salaries or wardrobe budgets. They can be “filmed” in locations anywhere around the world. They will patiently record dozens of takes, of dozens of different concepts, and respond directly to thousands of fans.... [T]hese types of AI characters are growing more and more commonplace—and the marketers who create them believe that a hybrid future is imminent, in which the faces that populate social media feeds will just as likely be synthetic as they are flesh-and-blood."
Why It Matters: This isn't the first AI influencers I've featured here, as this trend started back in 2024. Still stories like this, Tilly Norwood and Aisha Gaban show the state of the art is getting better. As we often say, AI today is still likely the worst it's ever going to be.

Immersive Media

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went all in on the metaverse. Now Reality Labs is facing big cuts. (Jyoti Mann & Pranav Dixit - Business Insider) 
From the Article: "'Within our overall Reality Labs portfolio we are shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables given the momentum there," a Meta spokesperson said. "We aren't planning any broader changes than that.' The overhaul comes on the back of Reality Labs racking up losses of over $60 billion since 2020 and Meta ramping up its AI spending this year in an increasingly competitive — and expensive — AI race.'“
Why It Matters: There's lots of schadenfreude kicking around about this news. Most of that is because it's easy to hate Zuckerberg. But I see this news as a public break that allows the next generation of the internet to really start to develop. The "metaverse" was never going to be Meta. It's going to be a collection of a lot of spatially oriented ("virtual") sites where part of people's lives will be lived. Meta's pivot to AI smart glasses and similar tech isn't contradictory to developing the metaverse, and you should fully expect them to be back into this space in the next 5 years.

And finally…

And finally, Procol Harum jokes welcome. Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year has us asking, “Pantone, you okay?” Levity aside, if you want a more serious take on next year’s color I don’t have it, but Katie Harbath has got you covered with Pantone's 2026 Color Choice Is More Political Than You Think 

Have a creative, productive week!

Image Generated with ChatGPT 5.1 (Thinking)

Image Generated with ChatGPT 5.1 (Thinking)

Hi all. This week we’ve got Paula Kerger on the Mixed Signals podcast and KCRW’s Jennifer Ferro on the In Reality podcast, vertical video comes to news publishers, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 makes its debut, the security risks of AI browsers, 6 practical uses for Open AI’s Sora 2, and finally, it’s time for the annual Coca Cola holidAI ad.

But First…

Registration is now open for our December 11 webinar, SEO + AI: Best Practices for 2026. Join us for a talk about what is changing (and more importantly what is not) now that AI has entered the chat via search and web browsers. And there will be plenty of time for Q&A, so bring all your SEO questions (even if they aren’t specifically AI-focused).

Treat Your Shelf! Books for Media Innovators…

Most of you open this email the day it goes out, so likely you’re seeing this on Cyber Monday. If you are reading this instead of shopping, thank you.

In lieu of a column this week, I thought it might be interesting to throw out a few suggested tomes as gift ideas for the innovators in your life (or, if appropriate, for your own holiday wish list). These are really just titles I’m reading or have read, and that I find interesting for those working in media. But then, that’s kind of the whole newsletter, isn’t it?

(To be clear, the links below are not affiliate links. This newsletter is free, which is to say revenue-free, and we hope to keep it that way for the foreseeable future. With the exception of the first suggestion, I have used Bookshop.org or Thrift Books for all the links. Shop local, when you can.)

So, here - in an order that probably only makes sense to me - are some books you might want to consider for the media innovator in your life this holiday season:

• Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting (Josh Shepperd) - A consummate scholar, and friend to public media, Shepperd was part of the core group that presented our Secret History of Public Media webinar back in February. He was also a key advisor to John Oliver’s team for that series’ episode on public broadcasting.

  • Pair With: Josh’s webinar co-panelist Laura Garbes’ just released “Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry”

• The Creative Act: A Way of Being (Rick Rubin) - At times a bit woo-woo for my tastes (and I don’t advocate his approach to appendicitis), there are some moments of creative clarity here, and there’s no denying Rubin’s impact on the world of music.

  • Pair with: John Leland’s Hip: The History

• The Future of Storytelling (Charles Melcher) - This just came out so I confess I’ve only got it on order. But I really dig what Melcher has built, and you’ve clicked on links from his monthly newsletter before.

  • Pair With: Jane McGonigal's Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

• Four Theories of the Press (Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson, & Wilbur Schramm) - this one is a classic in the field of the communications. Written in 1956 and updated in 1963, if you read the Social Responsibility section, I think it will seem oddly familiar to you. It’s a great source for inspiration if you’re thinking about the future of public media.

  • Pair With: Edward Bernays’ 1928 classic, Propaganda

• The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself (Andrew Pettegree) - Fun fact: during the renaissance, in the early days of news, the primary way news was disseminated was via newsletters. Everything old is new again!

  • Pair With: Alain de Botton’s The News: A User’s Manual 

• How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms (Chris Wiggins & Matthew L Jones) - This one is based on the authors course at Columbia. I’ve only barely started this one, but it fills in a piece of the puzzle for me as I explore the origins or our modern media landscape.

  • Pair With: Joel Best's Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists

• Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (Brian Merchant) - Merchant has a blog of the same name, and I’ve featured some of his posts here before. This one is good for the leftists in your life, or for anyone who uses the phrase Luddite incorrectly (which is most people).

  • Pair With: Karen Hao’s Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI 

• Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World (Nick Bostrom) - Philosopher Nick Bostrom is most famous for his AI paperclip maker thought experiment (Cliff’s Notes: Humanity dies but infinite paper clips are available). This time he starts with the supposition that AI won’t directly kill us all.

  • Pair With: Evgeny Morozov’s To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism

• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (Cory Doctorow) - I’m not sure if Doctorow coined the term, but he’s certainly popularized it…and in the process tapped into a lot of pent-up frustration in society. Efficient operations to not always lead to efficient profit stacking, and Doctorow shows repeatedly.

  • Pair With: Information Doesn’t Want to be Free: Laws for the Internet Age, also by Doctorow

• The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (3rd Edition) (Jesse Schell) - If there is a bible of game design it is this one. Pretty much everything you need to know about designing a game is in these pages. And if you were at Amber’s games session at the 2024 NETA/CPB Conference in Pittsburgh, you heard Schell speak on the value of games for good.

  • Pair With: Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Tutorials…

SEO + AI: Best Practices for 2026 (Thursday, December 11, 1pET/10aPT)
2025 was the year we all learned the phrase “Goggle Zero.” But whether you believe Google will completely stop delivering traffic to your organization’s website or not, AI is definitely changing how we get information from and find content on the internet. Join PBS’s Richard Traylor, SEO Manager, and Emily Clark, Manager of Multiplatform Marketing, for a talk about what is changing (and more importantly what is not) now that AI has entered the chat on search and web browsers. If you saw Richard speak at the PBS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, this will be an evolution, 6 months on, of the information presented there. And if you missed that one, you don’t want to miss this one. Register here.

Thoughts on Public Media…

Trump’s War On Public Media, with PBS CEO Paula Kerger (Mixed Signals - Semafor) 
From the Pod: Paula, in response to a provocation that broadcast is a dying technology that won't be relevant in 50 years: "I'm arguing right now there are a lot of people that rely on over the air and there are a lot of people that - you know, it may be for geographic reasons or it may be for economic reasons - that are really very much beholden to over the air. And if you live in a city and if you live around a lot of people that spend all of their time or a lot of their time consuming media from different digital platforms we have a robust presence there too. So, I'm not suggesting that we are just locked into broadcast as our sole purpose. But what I am saying is that you're talking about a lot of people that always get left behind. And I think in this moment when people are getting hammered on so many other levels, whether that's access to food and access to, you know, other services [like] health care, [that] to also cut off information feels like not a great idea." [Lightly edited to take out verbal ticks from the transcript.]
Why It Matters: The questions weren't softballs, so I did appreciate her charisma and media savvy (and if you want to see how good we have it in that regard, check out the Roblox CEO’s slow burn fail on Hard Fork). If I had a quibble, it would be that during the question about merging with the BBC, not enough words are spent explaining local station agency…basically that we aren’t a network. But I get that those deep weeds confuse travelers easily, and for all I know that bit was edited out. If you saw the Mixed Signals interview with Ken Burns, which I highlighted a few weeks back, this time the hosts are way more skeptical of public media's value. And the more skeptical of the two says in the post-mortem to the conversation that “it’s hard for them [PBS] to think really hard about the future” because we have an elderly audience we have to serve. Even the more sympathetic host, who reportedly grew up on PBS, refers to us in the intro as “sleepy.” So, we clearly still have a lot of work to do to show outsiders that we are innovative.
Related: If you’d rather listen, you can check out Mixed Signals show page on Semafor, or also find the episode wherever good podcasts are streamed.

🎧 Without Federal Funding, What Is Public Media Really? (Jennifer Ferro, KCRW, with Eric Schurenberg - In Reality) 
From the Pod: “Well, in some way, like now not having public funding and now really not having that audience to have to talk to, right? It’s like, in looking at what’s happening on a First Amendment level, we’re the ones that have to have the courage to speak up. And we are free. We’re free.... First of all, we’re free to people - we’re accessible - but we’re now [also] free to be able to speak the truth in ways that weren’t, even though we did it before, we don’t have to worry about the threat of defunding, it’s been defunded. So now our mandate has to be to have the courage to speak the truth. And I do think the courage is there. I’m not saying it wasn’t there, but there’s some kind of… freedom in a sense when you don’t have a particular audience to cater to. Now, when I say cater to, we got those funds for, they were called community service grants, and that’s exactly how we use those funds. It was to provide community service. It wasn’t to power the journalism that we were doing. So we’ll continue to do that, but I think it now puts public radio and NPR in a unique space.”
Why It Matters: I'm always looking for the radio/audio perspectives on our current moment, because my background has mostly been on the visual/interactive side. And generally, I can seem to count on KCRW to oblige. I also like what Ferro had to say about focusing on personalities.

Media These Days…

News publishers embrace vertical video with in-app “watch” tabs (Hanaa' Tameez - NiemanLab) 
From the Article: "Nearly three-quarters of Americans watch news videos online and most of them (61%) use social media or YouTube to do so. This year, The Economist, Newsday, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN all launched dedicated tabs for video viewing in their apps, to try to keep some of those users on their own sites."
Why It Matters: Once I read this it (finally) clicked for me that I actually have been seeing vertical video (usually presented like YouTube Shorts) on more and more sites this fall. I be interested if any public media organizations are thinking about trying this on your site/apps, or if you have tried it and have some results you can share.

More than half of new articles on the internet are being written by AI – is human writing headed for extinction? (Francesco Agnellini - The Conversation) From the Article: "In it, [Umberto] Eco draws a contrast between two attitudes toward mass media. There are the “apocalyptics” who fear cultural degradation and moral collapse. Then there are the “integrated” who champion new media technologies as a democratizing force for culture. Back then, Eco was writing about the proliferation of TV and radio. Today, you’ll often see similar reactions to AI. Yet Eco argued that both positions were too extreme. It isn’t helpful, he wrote, to see new media as either a dire threat or a miracle. Instead, he urged readers to look at how people and communities use these new tools, what risks and opportunities they create, and how they shape – and sometimes reinforce – power structures."
Why It Matters: The headline is a little clickbait-y, but there are still some valuable nuggets for consideration inside, like discussion of the types of written content that are increasingly AI generated (and what types of writers stand to lose from that trend).
Related: You can also read the study from Graphite, on which the article is based.

We Asked Roblox's C.E.O. About Child Safety. It Got Tense (Hard Fork - New York Times) 
From the Pod: "I totally buy what you're saying about using the the best technology on the market to keep people safe. And I want to highlight [that] I came here cuz I love your podcast and came to talk about everything. So, if our PR people said, "Let's talk about age gating for an hour, I'm up for it." But I love your I thought I came here to talk about everything." - Roblox CEO [Lightly edited to take out verbal ticks from the transcript.]
Why It Matters: Beyond the fundamental necessity of keeping children safe online (without resorting to ‘Maude Flanders’ extremes) it’s important to remember that Roblox is ostensibly vying to be one of the key nodes in the eventual next generation of the internet (don’t call it “the metaverse”) As the CEO says their fastest growth is with younger adult audiences. And while I normally don't like to post others analyses, the Deconstructor of Fun newsletter nailed it, so I'm making an exception: "The tension exposed Roblox’s biggest paradox: it wants to be seen as an entertainment company, a creative platform, and a guardian of children, all while monetizing like a Vegas casino for minors. The interview wasn’t a catastrophe, but it was a reminder that the company’s ethical surface area is expanding faster than its ability to contain it."
Related: David Gilbert's piece for Wired: He Hunted Alleged Groomers on Roblox. Then the Company Banned Him (possibly paywalled)

Generative Buzz…

Opus 4.5 Is the Coding Model We’ve Been Waiting For (Katie Parrott, Dan Shipper, & Kieran Klaassen - Every) 
From the Article: "It’s not perfect, however. It still has a classic Claude-ism to watch out for: When it’s missing a tool it needs or can’t connect to an online service, it sometimes makes up its own replacement instead of telling you there’s a problem. On the writing front, it is excellent at writing compelling copy without AI-isms, but as an editor, it tends to be way too gentle, missing out on critiques that other models catch. The dichotomy between strength at coding and weaker performance in editing is an interesting example of how the race to dominate coding is reshaping frontier models. Coding is economically valuable and has clearer success metrics than creative work. Labs are optimizing hard for it, and sometimes focusing less on improvements in other domains."
Why It Matters: A couple weeks back, Google dropped Gemini 3. Last week, Anthropic dropped Claude 4.5 and the review from the Every team is useful. I'm probably not switching from my current reliance on ChatGPT Plus with supplemental support from Gemini 3 (free version). But I'm glad to know Claude is still in the game. I'm also curious if we're going to get another major ChatGPT announcement before then end of the year. They can't be loving the press Google especially is getting these days.

Warner Music signs deal with AI music startup Suno, settles lawsuit (Aisha Malik - TechCrunch) 
From the Article: “WMG’s settlements with Suno and Udio mark a significant shift in the music industry’s approach to AI. Last year, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment sued Suno and Udio for copyright infringement. While WMG has settled its lawsuits with Suno and Udio, Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are also reportedly in talks to license their work to Udio and Suno and settle their lawsuits against the startups.” 
Why It Matters: I'm getting nostalgic Napster 1.0 vibes here. Again, the music industry has sued its way to the negotiating table. What this means for us is that generative music will soon be considered street legal by the industry. I wouldn't want to own a needle drop music library right now.
Related: Read Malik's previous piece in TechCrunch about Warner's earlier settlement with generative music company Udio.
Also Related: You can read the announcement from Suno here.
Still Related: Ethan Millman’s coverage of the settlement in The Hollywood Reporter.

AI + Us…

How to Use AI Browsers Without Getting Hacked (Isolation Guide + 3 AI Prompts) (Sean Ellis - Excellent AI Prompts) 
From the Piece: "OpenAI’s chief information security officer publicly acknowledged that prompt injection remains an unsolved frontier problem. You cannot detect your way out of this vulnerability. You can only isolate your way around it. Isolation works where detection fails."
Why It Matters: First, a note, the three prompts are behind a paywall. But at least you know to look for them (or prompts like them) elsewhere. I've been treading very carefully into the world of AI browsers (except for the forced march in Google Chrome) because the security issues are so rife with peril. So, I found this guidance was an easy read and not bogged down in jargon.
Related: If you'd like to dive a bit deeper into prompt injection, here's a slightly more technical (but still readable) explanation from François Aubry on Datacamp.
Also Related: OpenAI’s own explanation of the security risks relative to prompt injections.

How can someone position themselves to take advantage of AI opportunities? (Chris Barber (@chrisbarber) via X) 
From the Tweet: "Try to build relationships with people you can work directly with. Really good working relationships and high trust relationships feel important. The way to build relationships is not by directly trying to network, it's just by doing stuff that interests you and finding the other people who are doing things you find interesting. In places where you don't need to play social and political games you're going to be able to leverage AI more."
Why It Matters: This one is potentially worth sharing with younger staff or colleagues in your organization.
Related: Nazrul Islam's piece for The Conversation: AI won’t replace you – but it will redefine what makes you valuable at work 

AI + Production…

6 Practical Use Cases for Sora 2 Image-to-Video (Daniel Nest - Why Try AI?)
From the Article: "This seemingly simple concept of combining a reference image with a text prompt lets you use Sora 2 for all kinds of practical applications. For instance: 1. First frame of a scene;… 2. Character consistency across clips;… 3. Scene setting;… 4. Object or item reference;… 5. Pose reference;… 6. Multi-panel storyboarding…."
Why It Matters: AI slop comes from sloppy (or shady) creators. But generative videos tools will have their place in our workflows. I like Nest's hype-free assessment and think this could be vital to better articulating the vision public media projects to potential grantees, potential collaborators or even to your boss.

If you thought infographics were great…wait until you see an animated infographic. (Jaclyn Konzelmann (@jacalulu) via X) 
From the Tweet: "Workflow: GeminiApp → Nano Banana Pro for the infographic → Veo to animate it."
Why It Matters: Carefully crafted and reviewed (so no errors were injected or implied by the animation), I could see this being a useful tool for more engaging art attached to journalism. I coul also see it having educational value as well.

Google's Gemini 3 (Nano Banana Pro) Added Into Adobe Firefly & Photoshop (Andy Stout - RedShark News) 
From the Article: "'Creators tell us that they use different models for different tasks,' writes the company. 'In our recent global study of 16,000+ creators, more than 60% said they use multiple creative AI models to match the right tool to the right task. So we’re making it easier to work the way you want, right inside our apps.'"
Why It Matters: I like that Adobe is striving to be a one-stop shop for the best models. It's not a unique strategy per se, but since a lot of creatives in public media use Adobe it's worth a mention. I will say, that I think you have to use the Nano Banana Pro version to get the result about which the internet is raving. Generating images for this newsletter, I have found the free version to be obstinate (in action, not communication) and not as creative as ChatGPT Plus.
Related: Someone collected a host of effective prompts for Nano Banana Pro on Github, should you want to give them a try.

And finally…

Holidays Are Coming (Coca Cola via YouTube) - And finally, the unofficial baseline reading for the state of generative video seems to now be the annual Coca Cola holiday ad. This year’s version came with a BTS video.
Related: They also did a longer version where almost all the characters are anthropomorphic forest creatures (also with a BTS video).

Have a creative, productive week!

Image Generated with Google Whisk, Edited with ChatGPT 5.1

Hi all. This week generative AI turns 3, we announce our December webinar, Google releases Gemini 3, ATSC 3.0’s malnourished adoption strategy, not everyone is worried about “Google Zero,” AI tunes tops the Billboard charts, and finally, the right way to cook your Xenomorph for that perfect family get together.

But First…

Registration is open for our December 11 webinar, SEO + AI: Best Practices for 2026. If you were at the PBS Annual Meeting you might have been in the room for PBS SEO Manager Richard Traylor’s presentation on this topic. It was so good, we hit him up immediately to present it in a webinar for you, but we agreed the most value would be to wait 6 months and give an updated version to set folks up for success in 2026. He’ll be joined by Emily Clark, Manager of Multiplatform Marketing, for a talk about what is changing (and more importantly what is not) now that AI has entered the chat on search and web browsers. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, so bring all your SEO questions (even if they aren’t specifically AI-focused).

AI is a Threenager Now, How Will Public Media Respond?

November 30, 2025, is ChatGPT’s third birthday. While the modern generative AI era really started with the release of Midjourney on July 12, 2022, ChatGPT’s release on November 30 is what kicked off this new technological era.

What began as a set of generative tools that demanded we question our roles and responsibilities as artists, creators and journalists is now also an extensive technological infrastructure infusing our search results and our web browsers — impacting both how we ask for, subsequently access, and ultimately understand knowledge.

Across all of it is the demand that we understand both how this technology works, who it works for, and how it works on us. Reality literacy is the new media literacy, upgraded for an AI-first web and requiring us to know what’s synthetic, what’s optimized for you, who made it, and how to verify it before you believe or amplify it.

What does that mean for public media? We were born as an enlightened alternative for consumers of the state of the art in communications. At that time, broadcast media (radio, and then TV) was the most impactful technology on culture. Mid-century media theorists reminded us that any technology that could be used for ill, could also be used for good. And so, our forebears created public media on a basis of equitable education and social responsibility free of charge to anyone (who could afford a receiver).

Those values were translated in nearly linear fashion to both the internet and algorithmic (social) media. There have been pockets of innovation across public media in the last 20 years where attempts were made to retool our approach for interactive and algorithmic media distribution — for digital natives by digital natives. But this usually occurred in more progressive areas of public media stations that were not core to the station’s broadcasting identity.

The media shifts of the internet and algorithmic eras, while seismic, were barely measurable when compared to the speed and scope that machine learning and AI are shifting media and culture under our feet. Being in the vanguard of media innovation is our heritage, and the vanguard is clearly not broadcast. But when the federal funding crisis pushes our backs to the wall, we stop pretending we want to innovate and just revert to the muscle memory of being broadcasters.

If the media landscape of tomorrow is a landscape in which reality is mediated largely by black-box AI models (open weights models remain in the minority and do not guarantee transparent training data), how do we inject our pro-civil society values (not the least of which are education and social responsibility) into that mediated knowledge ecosystem in a way that supports our communities? Does public media need to build its own set of “experiences” based on AI models that we can guardrail with our own battle-tested values? If so, how do we do that in a way that adapts to the patchwork of subcultures that make up our communities?

These are the questions that are preoccupying me and the issues that I’m trying to reason my way through as consumer-facing AI turns three and 2025 winds down. I don’t have answers. And maybe these aren’t even the right questions. But if you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Tutorials…

SEO + AI: Best Practices for 2026 (Thursday, December 11, 1pET/10aPT)
2025 was the year we all learned the phrase “Goggle Zero.” But whether you believe Google will completely stop delivering traffic to your organization’s website or not, AI is definitely changing how we get information from and find content on the internet. Join PBS’s Richard Traylor, SEO Manager, and Emily Clark, Manager of Multiplatform Marketing, for a talk about what is changing (and more importantly what is not) now that AI has entered the chat on search and web browsers. If you saw Richard speak at the PBS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, this will be an evolution, 6 months on, of the information presented there. And if you missed that one, you don’t want to miss this one. Register here.

Five prompts to upgrade your resume (ChatGPTPromptGenius vis Reddit via Superhuman.AI) - I wish this weren’t so necessary for our public media community right now, but it is. So, please cut, paste and share. NOTE: I’m including all five prompts below, but you can check the source at the link.

•  Prompt 1: I’m applying for a [Job Title] position in [Industry], and I want my resume summary to stand out. Please rewrite this professional summary to make it more concise, engaging, and aligned with the expectations for this role. It should reflect my strengths, relevant skills, and years of experience in a compelling way.

• Prompt 2: Here are the bullet points for one of my past roles. Please rework them to focus on measurable accomplishments rather than generic responsibilities. Make them results-oriented, use strong action verbs, and include numbers or metrics wherever possible.

• Prompt 3: I want my resume to pass ATS filters and still read well to human recruiters. Based on this job description [paste job description], can you help me optimize my resume content to include relevant keywords and phrases from the posting in a natural way?

• Prompt 4: I’m transitioning into a new career from [Previous Field] to [New Field]. Please help me rewrite my resume summary and key achievements so they highlight transferable skills and make a strong case for why I’m a great fit, even without direct experience.

• Prompt 5: Can you audit this entire resume and point out areas where I’m being too vague, too wordy, or not showing enough impact? I want your feedback on tone, structure, and how I can better emphasize leadership, results, or innovation.

Thoughts on Public Media…

A New Chapter: Tactics for Today, Transformation for Tomorrow (Melanie Coulson - Greater Public) 
Key Line: "Another recommendation from the findings has stuck with me: 'Lift up the community you serve. In news, cover local and global problems through a solutions lens and conveying information that people can use to make their lives better. In music, provide people the respite they seek from stressful lives and the joy they find in being connected with others through live local music experiences.' We make our audiences’ lives better. But we need to prove it to them through our messaging."
Why It Matters: This content marketing piece for GP offers a radio-oriented perspective on this moment. So, if you have more of a TV background, there are a couple of interesting points for reflection. I was also glad to see them mention the Researching Unmet Needs study, which we've participated in at Nebraska.
Related: Download the Researching Unmet Needs (RUN) study, published March 4, 2025.
Also Related: Mark Lapidus’ piece from RadioWorld last August also offers some helpful (at times helpfully remedial) suggestions: Replacing Congress With Your Audience 

Brendan Carr’s FCC launches probe into BBC’s Trump edit (Dominic Preston - The Verge) 
From the Lede: "FCC chair Brendan Carr has reportedly written to the BBC, PBS, and NPR announcing an investigation into whether a controversial BBC documentary with a misleading edit of a Donald Trump speech was ever aired in the US.... In it, Carr asks if the BBC provided ‘either the video or audio of the spliced speech’ to either NPR or PBS, and requests transcripts and video of any possible broadcasts of the program in the US.”
Why It Matters: That actually took longer than I expected, but I’m hoping this doesn’t become the contagion I fear it could be. Watch this space, as they say.
Related: Gilad Edelman's piece for The Atlantic: The 'Easy Way' to Crush the Mainstream Media 

The British TV Industry Is In Such Crisis, ‘Wolf Hall’ Director Says, That ITV and BBC Couldn’t Afford ‘Adolescence’ (Harrison Richlin - IndieWire) 
From the Article: "In a letter written to Members of Parliament on the Culture, Media, and Sport Committee earlier this year, Kosminsky laid out a strategy to bring more financing to U.K.-focused narratives by enacting a 5% streaming levy. The profits from this would then go into a 'cultural fund” for British programming without inherent “cross-border appeal.'"
Why It Matters: Though the piece is from March, I just ran across it this week. It has some interesting BTS facts relative to last spring's Masterpiece miniseries. We've been watching the slow undercutting of British drama by streamer money (Netflix will spend $18B in 2025 on video and games) for a while now. So, it's interesting for them to begin making the "mission" argument for funding something like “The Mirror and the Light.” My love of Masterpiece and Mystery spans nearly my entire life, but I don't think British drama is the future of American public media. I’m not being fatalistic when I type that, I’m just not sure it should be part of our mission anymore. Kosminsky’s funding concerns notwithstanding, our communities will be able to get this type of cultural exposure elsewhere.

Generative Buzz…

Google releases highly anticipated Gemini 3 (Reed Albergotti - Semafor) 
From the Article: "Another example is Generative Interfaces, a new feature Google unveiled Tuesday. A user might ask for a visual aid to help learn about a complex subject, like cellular biology. Rather than spit out text or still images, Gemini 3 is capable of coding an app in the background and then presenting it as an interactive experience with animations. 'You can imagine that permeating a lot of different tools over time,' Woodward said."
Why It Matters: It's rare that I cover a product launch these days. The news is too fast, to furious, and what really matters isn't the tools but what we do with them and what they do to us. What makes this different? Generative interfaces. There's been speculation that on-demand apps, apps that exist for one purpose and then are discarded, are part of the media future opened up by AI, making apps ephemeral the way Snapchat helped make photos ephemeral. This is the first time we're seeing something like that in the wild.
Related: Every's Vibe Check (read: product test) puts Gemini 3 through its paces and is worth a read: Gemini 3 Pro, A Reliable Workhorse With Surprising Flair 
Also related: Will Knight's article for Wired: Gemini 3 Is Here—and Google Says It Will Make Search Smarter 
At the Same Time: Google released an update its image model (yes, called "Nano Banana Pro") and as Evan Armstrong says in his review, its "easy and powerful enough to use that you should assume that going forward all information can be made visual." Journalists take note.

AI + Us…

AI-generated country track ‘Walk My Walk’ tops US Billboard chart (Laura Malloy - NME) 
From the Article: "Meanwhile, audiences are reportedly finding it difficult to distinguish between “real” and AI music, with a new report from French streaming service Deezer finding that 97 per cent of people 'can’t tell the difference' between the two."
Why It Matters: Earlier today I was excited that Spotify suggested a new album by Electronic (a 90s supergroup made up of members of 80s alternative icons New Order, The Smiths and Pet Shop Boys…Millennials/GenZ, go ask ChatGPT). When I clicked on "Hollow Midnight Tune" what greeted me were 38 tracks totaling 2.5 hours of EDM AI Slop. It wasn't even an imitation of the band, whose account was presumably hacked in some way. The give away, other than the vocalist (but hey, they could have added a new vocalist) were the lyrics. AI-generated music isn't all that discernible from synthesizer pop-slop coming out of humans since the 80s. But AI-generated lyrics still have an uncanny valley quality about them. They feel wrong, more than they are wrong. This is true of "Walk My Walk." The individual lines don't fit together as much as they sit beside each other and don't take the listener anywhere.
Related: Aisha Down's article for The Guardian: AI slop tops Billboard and Spotify charts as synthetic music spreads 

AI Is Transforming Politics, Much Like Social Media Did (Chara Podimata & Sarah H Cen - Time) 
From the OpEd: "Perhaps most troublingly, LLMs lack internal consistency. The models calibrate their responses based on demographic cues like ‘I am a woman’ or ‘I am Black,’ and they treat certain groups as more representative of the electorate than others based on the specific phrasing of the questions asked. Models also adjust their responses to questions that contain hints about the user’s political views. For example, when asked about healthcare politics, the same model gave different answers to prompts suggesting that it’s a Democrat versus a Republican posing the question. The facts were often accurate, but the LLMs tweaked their positions based on those signals."
Why It Matters: I was low-key concerned going into the 2024 election season, and by the end of the year felt with dodged a bullet on AI-generated misinformation. Some of that I credited to AI literacy on the part of media consumers. But on further reflection I wonder how much of it was literacy and how much of it was just the heightened awareness of a new, potentially revolutionary technology. By 2026, AI will have faded more into the background (especially once the AI trade on Wall Street finally deflates), and by 2028 will have reached a level of normalization that, combined with the increasing efficacy of deepfakes, may not cause people to question information the way the alien nature of AI caused them to do last year.
Related: You might be interested to read the authors study, Large-Scale, Longitudinal Study of Large Language Models During the 2024 US Election Season, or maybe even drop it into your chatbot or AI-infused browser of choice (I used Gemini via Chrome) and do a guided dive through your own Q&A with the material.

AI + the Internet…

Not all media outlets are worried about declining Google traffic (Simon Owens via Substack) 
From the Substack: "I’ve long believed that a large portion of Google traffic offers little long-term value to publishers and mostly distracts them from building a loyal base of repeat visitors. Google Discover, in particular, delivers little more than a temporary sugar high. It’s not a coincidence that the outlets that spend the least amount of time worrying about their Google traffic tend to have stronger-than-average relationships with their audiences."
Why It Matters: This is a hodgepodge-handful of short examples highlighting big publishers not going quietly into Google Zero. The good news, membership models and approaches seem to be an answer. The bad news, a lot more brands are going to be asking our communities for memberships.

Keyword search dying, video search is future says Sky News boss (Dominic Ponsford - PressGazette) 
From the Article: [Sky News executive chairman David Rhodes said,] 'We talk about being video first. Keyword search is dying. Those economics weren’t that great for publishers like us in the first place, it wasn’t that great for journalism, it wasn’t a great user experience. What about when these chatbot models come for video? We are working with Prorata on a proper attribution model. But what’s better is if video is the answer that you get.... What we all need to be thinking about is not what is going on in the text ecosystem now, but what will the video ecosystem look like in three to five years? And how will that function like a chatbot? That is what we are thinking about at Sky.'"
Why It Matters: The idea that the future is a natural interaction giving you videos as answers to queries is an interesting one to contemplate. I could see that being a more natural interaction for Gen-Alpha in 20+ years. But I feel like more of what is going to happen is that your personal AI agent is going to reply to your query with information digested from the video, offering you the option to see the video. It won't be unlike a friend giving you an answer to a question and the offering to message you the video. Sometimes you'll say "yes," sometimes it won't be important enough to warrant a follow-up view. Either way, its good to ponder and develop your own view for how this future might play out.

LinkedIn adds AI-powered search to help users find people (Ivan Mehta - TechCrunch) 
From the Article: "Earlier this year, the company released a job search tool for members in the U.S., allowing them to search for jobs using natural language queries. Now, the company is extending the feature to people search. Users can use queries like 'Find me investors in the healthcare sector with FDA experience,' people who 'co-founded a productivity company and are based in NYC,” or 'Who in my network can help me understand wireless networks.'"
Why It Matters: I know a lot of you are spending more time on LinkedIn these days than perhaps you'd like. So, I thought it would be useful to touch on some of the ways the company is enhancing its platform. I already mostly just ask Google natural language questions. Now I need to think about how this might work via LinkedIn.

The Future of Media…

ATSC 3.0: 'I Can't Imagine Anyone Defending Our Current Adoption Strategy' (Fred Baumgartner - TVTech) 
From the OpEd: "I can’t imagine anyone defending our current adoption strategy. We just learned a lesson we needed. That in no way takes away from the accomplishments of getting to a standard and lighting up most of the nation with at least one 3.0 signal. But it is time for a real adoption plan, and real product development. It’s not easy work."
Why It Matters: It's been a while since I've reiterated here that I think ATSC 3.0 is a solution in search of a problem. That line is admittedly dismissive though, so I appreciate someone presenting a more nuanced argument for and against moving forward with the technology. I'm still not convinced that ATSC 3.0 isn’t a religion that's all priests and no parishioners. But I agree that there needs to be some product discipline applied to this problem. If the market doesn't want it at that point, then we have our answer and can stop dithering about this.
Related: The responses to the OpEd were also interesting: 'Broadcasting is Too Important to Fail' 
ICYMI: Jared Newman's freelance piece in Current: FCC’s ATSC 3.0 rules would slow transition to Next Gen TV broadcasting 

The Future of Advertising Is AI Generated Ads That Are Directly Personalized to You (Jason Koehler - 404 Media) 
From the Article: "Ticketmaster's personalized AI slop ads are a glimpse at the future of social media advertising, a harbinger of system that Mark Zuckerberg described last week in a Meta earnings call. This future is one where AI is used both for ad targeting and for ad generation; eventually ads are going to be hyperpersonalized to individual users, further siloing the social media experience: "Advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective and give us a credit card or bank account, and have the AI system basically figure out everything else that’s necessary, including generating video or different types of creative that might resonate with different people that are personalized in different ways, finding who the right customers are,” Zuckerberg said."
Why It Matters: Futurists have been trying to predict the advent of mass customization for a while now. In the world of atoms, we're still a way off from that reality, but in the world of bits AI is going to push us across that event horizon. Setting aside the editorial concerns here, think about what this means for the future of marketing our content, but also for what it means for marketing our mission to members.

The Creator Economy…

How a former USA Today columnist launched his own travel channel on YouTube (Simon Owens via Substack) 
From the Article: "Graham straddles two eras: the collapsing world of legacy media and the chaotic, opportunity-filled creator economy. He believes more journalists will follow the path he took — though it won’t be easy. 'The great news is that anybody who loses their job can pick it back up tomorrow,” he said. “If they’re willing to work really hard.'"
Why It Matters: He has a clearly defined hook, travel photography, and that is key (photographer YouTube is a thing). The Creator Economy is not a space for generalists, not at least when you're starting out. A clear voice is key. Climb your wall of cringe, as someone once said.

We’re All Working for the Algorithm Now (Taylor Crumpton - Time) 
From the OpEd: "Yet the creator economy’s reach only grows. Even journalists—long the chroniclers of other people’s stories—are becoming creator journalists, publishing independently through newsletters and video platforms. The logic of visibility has infiltrated every profession: If you’re not building an audience, you’re falling behind." Why It Matters: I was recently at the Daytime Emmy Awards taping (celebrating a friend's Silver Emmy). At the ceremony Inside Edition anchor (and GPB alum) Deborah Norville (Millennials/GenZ, go ask ChatGPT), got a lifetime achievement award. Amongst the clips was one from 1995 where she appeared on-air, in hospital, camera ready, 9 hours after the birth of her daughter (also camera ready). In moment I'm sure I rolled my eyes, but it turns out Norville was just ahead of her time.

Immersive Media

Can’t Make It to The Met? Take a VR Tour Instead (Isa Farfan - Hyperallergic) From the Article: "The Met selected one of its most iconic exhibits, the 1st-century BCE Egyptian Temple of Dendur, and a selection of Oceanic artworks displayed in its newly renovated Michael C. Rockefeller Wing for the institution’s first forays into virtual reality. Based on three-dimensional scans conducted within the museum, Dendur Decoded and Oceania: A New Horizon of Space and Time include realistic, if embellished, renderings and video-game-style missions. Both programs were designed by Met staff and Atopia, a culture-focused virtual reality platform."
Why It Matters: I had to double check the date on this one because, um, public media's been doing things like this for close to a decade. So, to The Met we say, "welcome, we're glad you made it." It is good to see major cultural institutions starting to lean into this type of media though. It's coming back around...slowly.

Media These Days…

How Jeffrey Epstein used SEO to bury news about his crimes (Mila Sato - The Verge (via the Wayback Machine) 
From the Article: "Throughout the documents, Epstein and others discuss how to use technical SEO tactics to bump news articles from Google’s first page of results, cozy up to reporters they perceive as focused more on business than Epstein’s crimes, and how to get a crisis PR machine in motion to launder his digital presence. To those familiar with SEO, these strategies will look familiar — it’s the same playbook used by everyone from restaurants to news publishers to companies selling tennis shoes and photography services online. Everyone knows Google Search is the gateway to the internet; it’s just that this time, these same practices were deployed as cover for perhaps the world’s most infamous pedophile."
Why It Matters: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics can be used for evil just as easily as they can be used for good. If you've not spent a lot of time thinking about SEO, you'll find this piece eye opening.

Netflix Rolls Out Real-Time Voting for Live Shows Starting 2026 (The Tech Buzz) 
From the Article: "This real-time responsiveness extends beyond just voting. Netflix is planning similar features for podcasts and cloud gaming, creating what Stone calls "interaction patterns" that keep viewers actively engaged rather than passively consuming."
Why It Matters: I'll admit, the main reason I'm including this has less to do with the news itself and more about the quality of what appears to be an AI-generated article. I'm also really taken with the “People Also Ask” featured on the right rail of the webpage. It's a blatant ripoff of Google's answer-engine feature of the same name, but it appears to remix the content in a way that makes it more digestible for certain audiences…almost like a more interactive set of key takeaways.
Related: They are also looking to make a big investment in video podcasts too, as reported by human writer Caitlin Huston in The Hollywood Reporter.
Also related: And while we're talking Netflix, don't forget that they are also innovating in the video game space, per Julian Clover in Broadband TV News.

The Microdrama Production Gold Rush Is Here (Katie Kilkenny - The Hollywood Reporter) 
From the Article: "These series, also called “verticals” because they are filmed in portrait orientation and are intended to be viewed on cellphones, first took off in China during the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the past few years, upstart platforms like ReelShort and DramaBox have begun building an American following for these typically low-budget, soapy series in a way that Quibi never did. And while most major players have lingered on the sidelines of the growing format...that’s changing."
Why It Matters: This trend feels part and parcel with the clipping trend that turns longer content into artificially shortened vertical videos. If anyone out there is thinking about experimenting with this format for content. Drop me a line. I'm intrigued.

And finally…

AI Is Out of Control (Ashutosh Shrivastava (@ai_for_success) via X)
And finally, if you’re looking for a way to surprise your guests (or hosts) at this year’s Thanksgiving/Friendsgiving feast, this video offers helpful suggestions on how to cook and present Xenomorphs.

Have a safe, rejuvenating holiday week!

Image Generated by Gemini 3 Pro (Nano Banana)

Image Generated by Dall-E 3 (April 2024)

Hi all. This week we’ve got thoughts on the vital nature of innovation, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver covers public media, ITVS’s bet on vertical video, major newsrooms leaning into AI bots and agents, and finally, a truly charming little animated AI short that will reframe how you think about AI filmmaking.

But First…

There’s still time to register for our next webinar, Powwow Bound: Co-Creating Through Culture and Play. Join us for a behind-the-scenes conversation about our recent interactive story game, developed through a unique partnership between PBS Wisconsin, Nebraska Public Media, Vision Maker Media, and members of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. Register here!

Innovation Is Not A Luxury

Anyone who wants to innovate needs to expose themselves to a wide array of information, especially outside your field of focus. Revelation and inspiration often come from parallel, adjacent, or even seemingly unrelated professional and/or academic disciplines. That means if you want to innovate in media, you can’t just exclusively read about media. All that makes you is a follower. And here we aspire to be leaders.

Lately, I’ve been appreciating Jason Lewis’ Substack, The Butterfly Effect. Lewis writes about philanthropy, but he does it in a humanist way that helps me can see the downstream connection between his thinking and the work I do.

This is especially true of his latest post, “How many of philanthropy’s convictions are just luxury beliefs?” Whatever your roll in public media, I highly recommend you read his post. You’ll at least recognize conversations playing out at the national level of public media, if not ones from your own organization.

One section in particular cut across disciplines for me.

I read this section multiple time because I gave me pause. No shocker, I match the demographic description of an NGoP, and the conditions that have allowed my beliefs to flourish have definitely been eroded this year. It made me question: is innovation across the PBS and NPR systems (especially cultural, technological, and media innovation) a luxury belief?

We’re seeing in a lot of local public media organizations pulling back from innovation. Sure, some organizations like Wisconsin, Northern California and Rocky Mountain are investing their way through the crisis, while innovation is starting to pool in other support organizations like the Public Media Company and PMVG. And I won’t cut-shame by naming names but innovation is out - or at least on the chopping block - at local public media organizations that used to be (we thought) genuine leaders in the field (you know who you are).

Innovation is not a luxury. It’s a fundamental part of leading into the future, both locally in our communities but also at a macro level in a national democracy. And public media owes that leadership to the millions of people who stepped up this summer and fall to support us financially. Taking the hard step and pushing your organization to change into a viable media alternative for the 21st century is an expression of gratitude worthy of the expressions of trust and faith we’ve received from our communities in 2025.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Tutorials…

Powwow Bound: Co-Creating Through Culture and Play (Thursday, November 20, 1p ET / 10a PT) 
What does authentic collaboration look like in public media? This webinar will present a model for collaborative project execution that stations can emulate, highlighting how artists, writers, language experts, musicians, and cultural advisors from the Menominee community worked alongside public media creators to shape an authentic storytelling game. The discussion will focus on lessons learned about building trust, sharing creative decision-making, and co-creating stories that center community voices. With perspectives from project partners and Menominee collaborators, this session offers a model for how public media can move beyond representation to true collaboration - creating content that is both innovative and deeply rooted in the community being served. Register here.

The one prompt I tell everyone new to AI to start with — and why it changes everything (Amanda Caswell - Tom's Guide) 
From the Article: "So when friends ask me how to begin, I always give them the ten words that flip the light switch on: 'I’m new to this — can you show me three things you can do that would actually make my life easier?' That’s it. One question that turns an awkward first chat into a personal demo."
Why It Matters: Followers of this newsletter probably have strongly held and experienced-based feelings on certain AI tools. This piece is less for you, than for you to share with others at your organization to help them get their minds around what AI can do.

Thoughts on Public Media…

📺 Public Media (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver) - This episode debuted last night (11/16) and was a nice chaser to the premiere of The American Revolution.

This PBS Documentary Powerhouse Just Bet Big on Vertical Video (Dana Harris-Bridso - IndieWire) 
From the Article: "The Independent Lens Creator Lab, launching November 11 with submissions open through December 19, will fund six vertical video makers with up to $36,000 each over six months. The creators will produce up to 12 videos for Independent Lens and PBS social media platforms, with workshops, mentorship, and editorial support from ITVS throughout. It’s not a pivot away from feature documentaries, but it’s a hedge against a changing world....The model they’re chasing isn’t influencer-driven brand building. It’s something closer to Kyle Lybarger, the Alabama naturalist who went viral on TikTok for his posts about native plants. 'Somebody who has an expertise, who’s curious about the world around them and who can in very entertaining, very specific ways show us something that we didn’t already know and educate us about something,' Lozano said. 'That is a perfect public media enterprise.'"
Why It Matters: Kudos to ITVS for this. I'm incredibly interested to see what norms they develop or crystalize for the creation of mission-driven, nonfiction content in the vertical space. I see this as a national companion to the work that Shane Burkeen in Nashville (and others) are doing at the local level. And that's my biggest quibble: local. It doesn't seem like local stations will directly benefit from the output because the destination is PBS social media. Hopefully they'll address that with us at some point.

Funding cuts may make public radio more reliant on old, rich, white donors (Sarah Scire - NiemanLab) 
From the Article: "Imagining an “older, whiter, and wealthier” audience is holding digital transitions and audience work back at other types of newsrooms as well. The decision-makers in public media, according to Garbes’ interviewees, rarely looked at concrete audience data or thought about the need to diversify the audience to boost listenership as they made editorial decisions. Instead, their notions about the public radio audience seemed to reflect donor event attendees and the social circles of the (often white) editors."
Why It Matters: Laura Garbes, the sociologist whose book is the basis for this article, announced her book was coming when she participated in our Secret History of Public Media webinar back in February. She raised some excellent points then, and this piece is a good refresher.
Related: If you want to read Laura's book, it's entitled "Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry" and you can order it from Princeton University Press.

The British Broadcaster Is Coming (Joel Simon - Columbia Journalism Review) From the Article: "In the past three years, while Brits have descended on American media broadly, the BBC has doubled its US reporting team. Perry serves as a chief presenter, alongside Sumi Somaskanda, for BBC News, broadcast from Washington during US prime time. Viewers can watch on cable, across various streaming platforms, or via livestream on the website. The range of digital content on the website includes a live feed, news analysis, specialized podcasts, and documentaries—all aiming to establish competitive advantage in a crowded US media market by highlighting the BBC’s institutional commitment to impartiality, its global sensibility, and its big-picture approach to American political news. “We don’t have a dog in the US political fight as an organization, and our audiences can feel that in our coverage,” Kevin Ponniah, the BBC’s regional director for the Americas, told me."
Why It Matters: Note, this piece was published before the Panorama scandal and Trump’s potential $5B lawsuit against the BBC. Should the Beeb’s strategic initiative survive that drama, it’s yet another reason to stress how deep our local roots go. Even though this is at the national level (BBC’s US partner is CBS), and some of us carry BBC product, this is competition to us.
Related: Michael Savage’s reporting for The Guardian on the Panorama scandal: ‘Make no mistake – this was a coup’: the extraordinary downfall of the BBC’s top bosses

Media These Days…

Disney-YouTube TV Blackout Has Customers Scrambling and Getting Creative (Joe Flint - Wall Street Journal) 
From the Article: "But it isn’t just sports enthusiasts who are frustrated. Some viewers of ABC’s long-running competition show “Dancing With the Stars” have taken to social media to detail their trips to Target and Best Buy to purchase antennas and hook them up. Because ABC is a broadcast network, its signal can be received without a pay-TV subscription. “I know my husband loves me because he set up an antenna so I could watch ‘DWTS,’” Chandler Majewski said in a TikTok post that included video of the installation."
Why It Matters: H/t to Talia Rosen at PBS S&P for sending this one my way. Every few years or so, a new generation realizes that TV can be free (with a tiny capital investment). The Great Recession prompted a wave. The Covid crash prompted a wave. And while I wouldn't have pegged the Disney-YouTube standoff as being the next trigger for that, here we are. Don't fall into the trap of thinking this is cuffing season for consumers and antennas. It’s just last call at the football and DWTS bar, and the broadcast antenna is looking like the best option.

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show (Jeff Horwitz - Reuters) 
From the Article: “On average, one December 2024 document notes, the company shows its platforms’ users an estimated 15 billion “higher risk” scam advertisements – those that show clear signs of being fraudulent – every day. Meta earns about $7 billion in annualized revenue from this category of scam ads each year, another late 2024 document states. Much of the fraud came from marketers acting suspiciously enough to be flagged by Meta’s internal warning systems. But the company only bans advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95% certain to be committing fraud, the documents show. If the company is less certain – but still believes the advertiser is a likely scammer – Meta charges higher ad rates as a penalty, according to the documents. The idea is to dissuade suspect advertisers from placing ads. The documents further note that users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta’s ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user’s interests."
Why It Matters: Did you need another reason to hate Meta? You're welcome. I get that ‘capitalist’s gonna capitalize,’ but you don't have to squint hard to see this as an externality to the AI arms race. The $72B that Meta could potentially spend this year on AI CapEx has to come from somewhere.

AI + Us…

The Next Digital Crisis Isn't Misinformation - It's Substitution (Steve Rosenbaum - Sustainable Media Center) 
From the Commentary: "AI isn’t the enemy. The enemy is the deal we’ve made: convenience in exchange for community. It’s the quiet slide from 'I use this tool' to 'this tool replaces me.'"
Why It Matters: A dour prediction of where we could be headed. But it got me thinking about the attention economy and how its limits may have been reached. We've talked here about how the attention economy is going to give way to the "intention economy." But this has me wondering if AI couldn't have a fracking effect on the attention economy...a new technique to turn unreachable attention into something monetizable. It's not a fully formed idea yet, but I'll keep noodling it.

Certified organic and AI-free: New stamp for human-written books launches (Emma Loffhagen - The Guardian) 
From the Article: "Books By People has launched an “Organic Literature” certification, partnering with an initial group of independent publishing houses. The scheme will involve Organic Literature stamps being placed on books written by humans, with only limited AI use permitted for tasks such as formatting or idea generation."
Why It Matters: I can see the value in this for the book publishing industry, but I'm torn about whether this should be applied to other media. I'm all for a publisher having and AI policy and transparently sticking to it, but there is something about calling out the humanness that feels like a knee-jerk reaction in the short term and potentially icky in the long term. More than that, it feels ripe to be abused as virtue signaling.

AI + the Internet…

Getting Killed By AI (Scott Lapatine - Stereogum) 
From the Announcement: "We would not be in business without our community of paying members (thank you!) but a lot has changed in five years, and some new obstacles have made the outlook for web publishers particularly dire. Advertising still accounts for the vast majority of Stereogum's revenue (hit us up if you would like to advertise!) but starting this year the so-called "media traffic apocalypse" caused by Google's pivot to AI search has cut our ad revenue by 70%. Prior to that, Facebook and X's deprioritization of links hurt too, but I can't downplay the brutal impact of AI Overview."
Why It Matters: This re-launch letter to readers is a great snapshot of where we are at the end of 2025 with the state of the monetizable web traffic. And that is that the bottom is potentially falling out of thanks to people getting their answers and facts from AI summaries. Beyond the dire headline, there's a lot to unpack here for us as publishers. I encourage you to read it and run your own compare/contrast to public media today.
Related: Of course, your mileage as a publisher may vary, but Charlotte Tobitt’s piece in PressGazette from August (reporting on a survey from May) hints at how quickly this situation is changing: Survey suggests readers still click on links after reading Google AI Overview 

Google promises Discover ‘fix’ as more fake AI stories top rankings (Rob Waugh - PressGazette) 
From the Article: “Publishers often think of Discover as something akin to a news aggregator, but a Google spokesperson told Press Gazette that it shows a mix of content based on user’s interests. This can include anything from social media posts to short videos and more, and is not restricted to content from news publishers or publishers in the conventional sense at all....Google will display any content that is indexed by Google and meets its standards. These standards bar hateful and explicit content and advertising that is not sufficiently marked – as well as misleading content. They do not specifically mention AI-generated content.”
Why It Matters: The internet is changing. This we know. And it's always been possible to hack our filter bubbles. But AI is now allowing bad actors to do that at scale. Suddenly, we're back in a spam arms race between Google and these bad actors.
ICYMI: Rob Waugh’s article in PressGazette from late last month that broke this story: Google promotes fake content to millions on Discover news platform.

AI + Journalism…

Time launches new AI agent (Kerry Flynn & Sara Fischer - Axios) 
From the SmartBrief: "The AI agent, built in partnership with Scale AI, allows users to query and interact with Time's reporting. At launch, it's available on politics and entertainment articles and has a dedicated page. Time COO Mark Howard says they later will explore adding it to the homepage and the rest of the site. The AI agent pulls from Time's archive, including magazine issues and online articles. It's fully trained on Time content — about 750,000 assets from the archive — and does not pull from the open web or other sources. The agent can translate text and audio into 13 languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic and Russian. Language accessibility is notable given how 40% of Time's digital readership is outside of the U.S., Jacobs says.”
Why It Matters: It increasingly feels like we're late to the party on this one. I know some of you have been experiment with Chatbots out there (you know who you are) and I appreciate it. But there’s still a lot of resistance. Hopefully, some of these examples can whet our collective appetite for developing something like this and a way of helping our communities accessing our good work.
Related: Alice Brooker's piece in PressGazette, Washington Post’s chatbot has received ‘tens of millions’ of queries 
Also Related: Romain Chauvet's piece in The Fix, How Sweden’s largest daily newspaper built its own chatbot to let users choose how they consume news

How this year’s Pulitzer awardees used AI in their reporting (Andrew Deck - NiemanLab) 
From the Article: "'At this early juncture, we see responsible AI use as a significant component in the increasingly versatile toolkit utilized by today’s working journalists,' said Marjorie Miller, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, who also called attention to other tools represented among the winners, including statistical analysis, public record requests, and visual forensics. '[AI] technology, when used appropriately, seems to add agility, depth and rigor to projects in ways that were not possible a decade ago.'"
Why It Matters: I found this one in an old tab that I clearly intended to share with you six months ago. That aside, it's obvious that you likely aren't going to submit for the Pulitzers unless your use of AI tools is on the up and up. And you certainly aren't going to win. So these examples are worth tracking as we see more norms established around the use of AI.
Related: Around the same time I also seem to have banked Mike Ananny and Matt Pierce's piece for CJR, How We’re Using AI.
Also Related: This article from Charlotte Tobitt in PressGazette is only a couple of weeks old: Study claims 9% of US newspaper articles at least partly AI generated.

AI + Production…

The Future of AI Isn't Just Slop (Christopher Beam - Wired) 
From the Article: "Neural Viz shows a different path forward. In a world of bottom-of-the-barrel, lowest-possible-effort AI dreck, the channel’s author is creating original work, executing a vision as specific and lovingly imagined as any series out there. A couple of important details: Even as he’s writing prompts to help fulfill nearly every other role on a set, the creator of Neural Viz is writing scripts the old-fashioned way. He’s also playing all the characters himself, wearing AI as a mask. Once he has all his shots set up, the filmmaker uses Runway’s facial motion-capture tool to bring Tiggy to life by performing the alien’s lines for him—like Andy Serkis playing Gollum without leaving his swivel chair."
Why It Matters: Seeing work like the content created by Neural Viz gives me hope that these tools can be use by those with attention to craft to make meaningful content and tell enjoyable stories. Reading about the creator in this piece, it seems no different to me than an author sitting at a typewriter. But instead of using the abstraction of words to convey a story, he is able to enhance those words with generative AI tools. His workflow and process are a great example of the people first-people last principle.
Related: I’m going to scoop myself here and post the “And finally” link here as well, just because I want to showcase this guy’s work: Minnesota Nice.
Also Related: John Semley’s review (also in Wired) of the Runway AI film festival offers a different point of view: I Saw the Future of AI Film and It Was Empty.

Amazon’s House of David Used Over 350 AI Shots in Season 2. Its Creator Isn’t Sorry (Kat Tenbarge - Wired) 
From the Article: Erwin said he’s used Runway’s 'image to video' tools, as well as Luma’s “modification” features and products from Google and Adobe. 'What we found is there were kind of three types of tools. There were image generators, there were up-res tools, and there were video generators. We found that we could combine those tools in a stack,' Erwin said. 'By the end, we were using 10 to 15 core tools.'"
Why It Matters: The reaction here reminds me about how I used to feel 20 years ago about the cheap VFX in series that aired on the SciFi channel. Whether you are open or opposed to AI in production, precedents like these have two effects. First, the create investment in the technology by creators that don't have better options and aren't burdened with ethical concerns. This ultimately brings down the cost. Second, they train the audience to accept AI VFX, and that brings down barriers to other creators adopting these tools. Look at this as a slight breeze announcing a much larger storm.
Related: For an opposing point of view, check out Elsa Keslassy’s piece for Variety: Ted Sarandos and Guillermo del Toro Unveil Stop-Motion Studio Plans and Weigh In on AI: ‘The Idea that AI will Out-Imagine Things and Humans Is Pretty Unlikely’

Immersive Media

The Foursquare founder's new app is an AI-powered 'DJ' for neighborhood updates (Karissa Bell - Engadget) 
From the Article: 'Crowley describes BeeBot as an "app for AirPods," though it will work with any type of headphones, as well as smart glasses with audio capabilities like Meta's. "Whenever you put your AirPods in, it turns on," Crowley explains in a post on Medium. "Whenever you take your AirPods out it turns off. And when it’s 'on' it’ll push you snippets of audio about the people, places, and events that are nearby."...Crowley says the DJ's audio cues may "occasionally" interrupt your music or podcast to give an update, though users should expect to hear these only a couple times throughout the day. BeeBot won't interrupt voice or video calls."'
Why It Matters: Will this app take off? It feels like it has a steep hill to climb. But the concept is one that I think I worth considering. I've thought a lot about how we might offer up location-based content across a state as large as Nebraska, especially news (though most of our content is geotagged in the metadata). Not sure who is going to crack this particular nut, but I do think we'll see a successful product in this vein sometime in the next decade.

‘VRChat’ Officially Releases on Android & iOS, Making Way for Next Big User Surge (Scott Hayden - Road to VR) 
From the Article: "And while you might think the virality of VRChat has worn off, and that its mobile release is a bit late to the party, in reality more people are using the platform than ever before. According to SteamDB charts, VRChat hosted over 54,000 users in the last 24 hours, dipping from its all-time peak in January at nearly 67,000 users. Notably, that doesn’t account for players on Quest or Pico, just the PC platform." Why It Matters: VRChat is possibly the only VR platform that's survived from the first initial hype wave of VR in the mid-teens. Its growth has been slow and engine-that-could steady. Opening itself to mobile users is a key step toward significantly wider adoption and to see it generating some buzz now is yet another of the green shoots that indicate a resurgence in spatial media could be on the horizon.

And finally…

Minnesota Nice (Neural Viz via X)
And finally, yes it’s AI. It’s also enjoyable. So…enjoy.

Have a creative, productive week!

Screengrab from Layoffs.Semipublic.co, Captured 11/15/25

Image Generated with Google Whisk

Hi all. This time around we’ve got Ken Burns talking media, attention spans, and rescission on the Mixed Signals podcast, Reddit’s tips for publishers, synthetic audiences, the returning relevance of Facebook (not a typo), make your own Wordle, and finally, the late Queen debuts on TikTok.

But First…

There’s still time to register for our November webinar. On Thursday, November 20, we’ll present Powwow Bound: Co-Creating Through Culture and Play. Join us for a behind-the-scenes conversation about Powwow Bound: A Menominee Homecoming, a new interactive story game developed through a unique partnership between PBS Wisconsin, Nebraska Public Media, Vision Maker Media, and members of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. Register here!

Panning & Scanning

No column this time around. I’ve got some ideas, but they aren’t coalescing yet, so I prioritized reading and reactions this week.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Tutorials…

Powwow Bound: Co-Creating Through Culture and Play (Thursday, November 20, 1p ET / 10a PT) 
What does authentic collaboration look like in public media? Join us for a behind-the-scenes conversation about Powwow Bound: A Menominee Homecoming, a new interactive story game developed through a unique partnership between PBS Wisconsin, Nebraska Public Media, Vision Maker Media, and members of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.

This webinar will present a model for collaborative project execution that stations can emulate, highlighting how artists, writers, language experts, musicians, and cultural advisors from the Menominee community worked alongside public media creators to shape an authentic storytelling game.

The discussion will focus on lessons learned about building trust, sharing creative decision-making, and co-creating stories that center community voices. With perspectives from project partners and Menominee collaborators, this session offers a model for how public media can move beyond representation to true collaboration - creating content that is both innovative and deeply rooted in the community being served. Register here.

Thoughts on Public Media…

📺🎧 Ken Burns on the future of PBS, the new age of media, and why documentaries will outlast TikTok (Ben Smith & Max Tani - Semafor) 
From the Pod: "All meaning accrues in duration."
Why It Matters: I can't decide if Ken's quote on duration (above) feels more like a Rosetta Stone for understanding his editing style or his mission statement. I guess it can be both. Regardless, for those who haven't heard Ken's thoughts on our post-rescission moment, this is potentially useful, so I'm including it here. But for me the best part (if you watch instead of listen) is the dog who suddenly appears asleep on the couch behind Burns at about 27:34.

When public funding dries up, what becomes of public media? (Tom Davidson - Editor & Publisher) 
From the OpEd: 'I want to use this piece to ask a broader, strategic question: Can we rethink what “public media” is?...[W]e should rebuild ourselves, redefine our industry and re-envision how we serve our communities. And we should find new friends and partners who don’t worry about changing lightbulbs at the top of a tower or de-icing a satellite dish. We should start with the Carnegie definition: “Of human interest and importance which is not at the moment appropriate or available for support by advertising.” So, what does that mean in your community? And who else should you think of as “public media?”'
Why It Matters: It won't surprise any of you that Tom and I agree on a lot of points relative to how public media should address this post-rescission moment. And his assertion that we should embrace a broader definition of public media hits my confirmation bias in the sweetest of spots. Perplexingly (okay, not really), there are still people who want to maintain the status quo, ignoring that our model is close to a century old. The mission is timeless. The methods and the media must to evolve.
Related: Rodney Benson’s piece in Current, Why public funding still matters for journalism in a democracy, introduced to me the concept of civil society-owned media. It pairs nicely with Tom’s piece and reinforces why our mission is both vital and timeless.
Also Related: This manifesto (linked from Tom’s piece), Cooperation for Public Media. I’m digging the V for Vendetta anonymity here, though I suspect the open secret of who is behind this just hasn’t reached my ears yet.

Media These Days…

Reddit’s tips for publishers: ‘Contribute without disrupting the vibe’ (Alice Brooker - Press Gazette) 
From the Article: 'To succeed with Pro Tools, publishers must shift from “a self-promotional, owned-and-operated mindset to a community-first approach”, said Sands, head of news partnerships at Reddit....Sands added publishers will be successful on Pro Tools if they “act like they’re showing up to a cocktail party: take time to read the room, understand what conversations are happening, and think about how you can contribute without disrupting the vibe”.'
Why It Matters: Last week, I referenced a CJR article about Reddit's increasing relevance in search results. This piece also highlights the potential opportunity for us via Reddit. As we all confront the possibility of "Google Zero," a Reddit strategy for your organization should be a part of your overarching content strategy. But that participation has to be authentic to the community. This piece can help make the case for approaching Reddit the right way in your organization.
Related: Learn more via Reddit's "Upvoted" blog: Bringing News and Conversations Together with Reddit Pro Tools for Publishers 

Why The Economist isn’t doing AI deals but has launched on Substack (Charlotte Tobitt - The Press Gazette) 
From the Article: 'Bradley-Jones said they saw it as an “opportunity to sort of nurture more of a niche audience around a particular area of interest, which isn’t in any way going to cannibalise our core subscription base”. He added: “We think there’s a really large potential audience on Substack who are engaged in that form of journalism, really interested in data journalism, which is a real sort of flourishing space on Substack. “But also, when we looked at the consumption patterns of that journalism within The Economist’s base, there’s nobody just consuming that content. So they’re not going to spin down from The Economist to take out their Substack subscription. They’re consuming geopolitics, international economics, business and finance and so on. “So it was a sweet spot where we think there’s an audience to go after, but it’s not going to cannibalise what we offer through our core subscription.”'
Why It Matters: Substack is not without its issues, as is all social media. But it's typically associated with independent creators more than institutions. So, I found the strategy behind Economist's experiment an intriguing one that some public media organizations might be able to emulate.

‘TV’ today can be described as anything on a screen that feels relevant, authentic, and worth an audience’s time (Chris Arkenberg, Jeff Loucks, Brooke Auxier, & Doug Van Dyke - Deloitte) 
From the Report: "To stay relevant, studios, streamers, and advertisers should think less like broadcasters and more like ecosystem players—rethinking their business models to reflect a world in which “TV” is evolving to include short-form social video from an emerging industry of professional independent creators....Likewise, studios should be telling stories, growing IP, and minting fandoms designed for today’s ecosystem of TV—short form, long form, serialized, episodic, big budget, and indie. Studios, streamers, and advertisers should be working—and competing—with influencers and professional creators and creator studios. Such tactics can require a more comprehensive view of today’s media ecosystem—and an acceptance that premium TV may no longer be at the center."
Why It Matters: Last week, I featured Derek Thompson’s essay Everything Is Television. This report from Deloitte extends the themes of that piece with data. I had to check the date on this study twice as I was reading it though, because the advice feels like it was just as relevant a year or two ago. So, don't view this as breaking news. Instead, it's a confirmation of recent trends we've been seeing, and yet another sign that we need to accept that broadcast is a depreciating asset with a finite window of relevance remaining. GMs and underwriting pros should especially pay attention to this one.

The Future of Media…

How The Times is using AI to model synthetic focus groups from human audiences (Tim Peterson - Digiday) 
From the Article: "Synthetic audiences or synthetic research, either phrase refers to the use of AI to create an artificial – i.e. synthetic – audience modeled on an actual human audience so that a company can use that AI-generated audience as a sort of focus group, i.e. for research purposes."
Why It Matters: First, just to clarify, this is The Times in the UK. If some best practices or formal standards are developed around this technique, it could become a cost effective way for smaller, leaner, public media organizations to afford research on new content concepts.
Related: And them from the world of traditional TV, Matt Craig's report for Forbes, Why VideoAmp Thinks It Can Bust Nielsen’s TV Ratings Monopoly

The Creator Economy…

The Platform We Forgot About (Yoni Greenbaum - Backstory & Strategy) 
From the OpEd: "For newsrooms, that opens two questions. Who are the trusted messengers already reaching your audience? And are they on the same platforms you are? Facebook’s resurgence is one clue. YouTube’s endurance is another. Together, they suggest the creator world isn’t just moving forward. It’s expanding....And before anyone writes Facebook off for good, remember this: NewsWhip found it’s still driving more engagement with news than any other platform. In a year when everyone else is slipping backward, Facebook moved up. If the numbers say it’s alive, the real question isn’t whether to use it. It’s how."
Why It Matters: While I don't particularly want Facebook to succeed (see this piece on fraudulent ads), I really don't want public media to fail. So, if Facebook can suddenly provide opportunities to help public media again, then we should be talking about that. I also found Greenbaum's distinction between "creators," "influencers" and "trusted messengers" a helpful bit of taxonomical nuance that I hadn't focused on before.
Related: Caitlin Huston's piece for The Hollywood Reporter, Why Influencers Suddenly Love Facebook. (No Joke.) “It’s My Biggest Source of Income” 

Turning a layoff into a creator media business (Natalia Perez-Gonzalez - Creator Spotlight) 
From the Article: "For 22 months, Joon Lee was paid not to work. ESPN had laid him off, but he was still on contract; they had to keep him on payroll. A non-compete clause meant they had to approve any new opportunity or he’d risk breaking the contract and losing his income. They gave him veto after veto. No freelance writing. No escape hatch to another job. He wasn’t even allowed to make sports content for his own YouTube channel. So he trained."
Why It Matters: This is an executive summary of a podcast episode that offers a helpful example of early- to mid-career creators who don't necessarily launch into the creator economy with an established career as a tailwind.

AI + the Internet…

The AI Search Landscape, Beyond the SEO VS GEO Hype (Tracy McDonald, Alisa Scharf, & Marketa Williams - Seer Interactive Blog) 
From the Study: "The truths: [1] Search and other traditional or ‘pre-AI’ channels almost certainly are still majority contributors to your bottom line [2] AI as a channel is rapidly growing (despite its small share), it is gaining speed as a channel for your customers to find answers and to find you [3] AI is fundamentally changing the ways that people find answers in digital. The last point is the most important. Whether or not there’s a fundamental shift in investment and channel mix, that user behavior change is what will shape the future of marketing."
Why It Matters: We'll be wrestling with the impacts from AI on search and search optimization for years. It's best to get familiar with this evolving landscape now. This blog’s industry-specific examples don't touch us directly, but the data is still insightful, as is the section at the end on how fast you should prepare for AI.
Related: For those with and EMARKETER subscription, Nate Elliott’s report might also be useful: AI Will Dominate Search—Just Not in 2026 

How AI Browsers Sneak Past Blockers and Paywalls (Aisvarya Chandrasekar & Klaudia Jaźwińska - Columbia Journalism Review) 
From the Article: "AI browsers are still new, and we don’t know whether they will replace existing ways of searching the Web. But whether or not these tools achieve widespread adoption, one thing is clear: traditional defenses such as paywalls and crawler blockers are no longer enough to prevent AI systems from accessing and repurposing news articles without consent. If agents are the future of news consumption, publishers will need greater visibility into, and control over, how and when their content is accessed and used."
Why It Matters: I appreciated the distinction the authors made in explaining client-side approaches to paywalls versus server-side approaches. That unlocked some understanding for me. While AI search is one issue with which we need to contend, the new generation of browsers should also be on your radar. If you haven't had a chance to try Comet (from Perplexity) or Atlas (from OpenAI - MacOS only) you should check those out.
Related: OpenAI’s Atlas is more about ChatGPT than the web, by Ivan Mehta in TechCrunch 
Also Related: OpenAI’s Atlas browser promises ultimate convenience. But the glossy marketing masks safety risks, by Uri Gal in The Conversation.

AI + Us…

Learning to Work with the Robot: A Journey in Progress (Mark Laskowski - CDP) 
From the OpEd: "This exchange shows why it matters to thoughtfully craft the prompts you give ChatGPT. In fact, I’ve found that it’s key to prompt, re-prompt and then prompt again! The AI app’s output can be vastly improved by doggedly interrogating it. Don’t expect ChatGPT to deliver miracles — not on the first pass, or even the sixth. Do work patiently and incrementally — refining your prompts along the way. Don’t expect AI to be a magic machine that writes copy for you. Do treat it as a tool for revision that can hold up a mirror to your writing."
Why It Matters: I don't run across enough insightful revelations on using AI from our public media community. Mark's been grinding it out in public media almost as long as I have (we worked together in NJ some 🫢 years ago), and I appreciate that his experience with AI can directly be applied by our fundraising colleagues.

AI is changing who gets hired – what skills will keep you employed? (Murugan Anandarajan - Drexel University via The Conversation) 
From the Report: "Our research suggests that the skills most closely linked with adaptability share one theme, what I call “human-AI fluency.” This means being able to work with smart systems, question their results and keep learning as things change....The most successful companies make learning part of the job itself. They build opportunities to learn into real projects and encourage employees to experiment. I often remind leaders that the goal isn’t just to train people to use AI but to help them think alongside it. This is how trust becomes the foundation for growth, and how reskilling helps retain employees."
Why It Matters: What this piece is really calling for is culture shift within organizations. That's easier said than done given that the tech is evolving faster than culture could ever hope to match. So, what can you do? Organizations need to provide clear policies on AI that encourage experimentation and "human-AI fluency," and employees need to be cultivating that fluency through experiments with AI tools that can refine their own workflows. The research shows there's a double-standard when it comes to companies feeling comfortable with employees taking that initiative. That will evolve away in time, but everyone (wherever you are on the org chart) owes it to themselves and those who depend on them financially to cultivate their own fluency.
Related: Jeanne Beatrix Law's piece, also from The Conversation: AI chatbots are becoming everyday tools for mundane tasks, use data shows
Also Related: Specifically for the designers in the crowd, Erik Kennedy's Where’s the AI design renaissance? via Learn UI Design.

Is AI the New Frontier of Women’s Oppression? (Scarlett Harris - Wired) 
From the Article: "It’s a long, well-trodden pattern. We’ve seen it with the internet, we’ve seen it with social media, we’ve seen it with online pornography. Almost always, when we are privileged enough to have access to new forms of technology, there will be a significant subset of those which will very rapidly end up being tailored to harassing women, abusing women, subjugating women and maintaining patriarchal control over women. The reason for that is because tech itself isn’t inherently good or bad or any one thing; it’s encoded with the bias of its creators. It’s reflecting historical societal forms of misogyny, but it gives them new life. It gives them new means of reaching targets and new forms of abuse. What’s particularly worrying about this new frontier of technology with AI and generative forms of AI in particular is that it doesn’t just regurgitate those existing forms of abuse back at us—it intensifies them through further forms of threats, harassment and control to be exercised by abusers."
Why It Matters: I feel like the dark side of AI is omnipresent, but I don't necessarily call it out here every week. It's been a while since we've been reminded that AI use makes us more powerful. True, you can use that power to edit photos faster, or generate more engaging donor letters, but others can use it in other less savory ways. And that's where this article comes in.
Related: In the same vein, this article from The Conversation, by Olli Hellmann, feels very 2023 (even though it is based on new research): Historical images made with AI recycle colonial stereotypes and bias – new research

AI + Copyright…

Universal Music Group Settles Major AI Lawsuit With Udio After Song Theft Claims (Ethan Millman - The Hollywood Reporter) 
From the Article: "Alongside the Udio deal, UMG...also announced a partnership with Stability AI on Thursday to develop a slate of AI music creation tools, though the companies didn’t disclose what those specific tools would be. UMG and Stability said the new tools would be “powered by responsibly trained generative AI and built to support the creative process of artists, producers and songwriters globally.”
Why It Matters: Unsurprisingly, just as publishers of articles and of images have gone from adversarial to collegial with AI compnies, the music industry is now starting to shift as well. Most interesting to me in this piece was the announcement that StabilityAI was doing a deal. One of the original image generators from 2022 (alongside Midjourney and OpenAI's Dall-E) they’ve more or less lost the the B2C battle to their 2022 competition, but they are trying to pivot (somewhat successfully, I guess) to a B2B strategy serving partners in creative industries.

Getty Images largely loses landmark UK lawsuit over AI image generator (Sam Tobin - Reuters) 
From the Article: "Judge Joanna Smith ruled Getty had succeeded "in part" on trademark infringement in relation to Getty watermarks generated by users of Stable Diffusion, but she said her findings were "both historic and extremely limited in scope". She also dismissed Getty's secondary copyright infringement claim, on the grounds that "Stable Diffusion... does not store or reproduce any copyright works", which lawyers said exposed weaknesses in Britain's copyright protections."
Why It Matters: Though the ruling is from the UK and won't have direct precedent on US law, it does show how these issues are being legally parsed by jurists.

Perplexity strikes multi-year licensing deal with Getty Images (Rebecca Bellan - TechCrunch) 
From the Article: "Perplexity’s emphasis on attribution is part of its strategy of defending against copyright accusations by arguing its use of publisher content — including content behind a paywall or that publishers have explicitly indicated they don’t want scraped — constitutes “fair use” because publicly available facts are not copyrightable."
Why It Matters: There's not one-size-fits-all with any of these deals, but it's good to know how other publishers are establishing business precedents all the same. Also, it's worth noting that Perplexity, the first to take on Google in the AI search wars, continues to increase its mindshare (if not necessarily market share).

Immersive Media

Meta Horizon Hyperscape Capture review: an impressive way to capture and teleport to places (Tony Vitillo - The Ghost Howls) 
From the Review: "It is bad because, once they have this scan, they can potentially do what they want, like analyze what objects you have and provide you with a dedicated advertisement. Meta is still an ad company, and in the past, it has proven to be pretty aggressive about its data collection, so we must be aware of this risk."
Why It Matters: I suspect a lot of you are going to be tempted to gloss over this one. But there's an important point here that doesn't get discussed frequently. There is a quiet race to scan the real world into 3D and monetize that data as knowledge about consumers, or to monetize it as data for AI "world models." Google has been doing this with Google Earth for years (decades?) now, so has Matterport (and other virtual tour software), Epic Games, and Niantic (the company behind Pokemon Go). So, be aware.

Apple Shares Fascinating Developer Conference Focusing on Creating Immersive Content (Andy Stout - RedShark News) 
From the Article: "Create Immersive Media Experiences for visionOS was a two-day conference held mid-October 2025 at Apple's HQ in Cupertino. "Learn how to create compelling interactive experiences for visionOS and capture immersive video in this multi-day activity," ran the blurb for the developer-focused event."
Why It Matters: Apple's Vision Pro is technically advanced, and great at what it does. But the scope of its utility is limited. It hints more at the future than it serves the present. Not surprisingly, Apple has curtailed sequel hardware...for now. But if you look at Blackmagic's investment in camera hardware (and Canon's, to a lesser degree) and at developer conferences like these you can see that Apple is still very much investing in an immersive future.

Games…

You can now make your own Wordle puzzles (Jay Peters - The Verge) 
From the Article: "If you have an All Access or Games subscription, you can make a 4-7 letter puzzle with the NYT’s Wordle creation tool. (You’ll be able to add an optional clue if you want to give the people you share your puzzle a bit of help.) When you’ve made the puzzle, you’ll get a unique URL you can share with others, and they don’t need to have a subscription to be able to play it."
Why It Matters: Opening up your games to a UGC strategy can be a solid way to increase engagement with the game (and time on your site). I'm kind of surprised it took NYT games this long to cross this bridge, especially given that they do accept crosswords from the public.

And finally…

Queen First Vlog (Maxian_Futbol vis TikTok)
And finally, the Queen (RIP) is Vlogging and I can’t get the line “Straight out the palace…ceiling’s looking all drippy…chandelier’s doing the most.” out of my head.

Have a creative, productive week!

Screengrab from Layoffs.Semipublic.co, Captured 11/8/25.

Image generated with ChatGPT 5

Hi all. This week we’ve got the launch of Grokipedia, PBS using GenAI for video search, all the AI announcements from AdobeMax, the assertion that “everything is television” and, finally, the latest in Silicon Valley slang.

But First…

In last week’s newsletter, I totally janked up the link to our November webinar. Guess I didn’t get all the rust knocked off the gears. So, take two. On Thursday, November 20, we’ll present Powwow Bound: Co-Creating Through Culture and Play. Join us for a behind-the-scenes conversation about Powwow Bound: A Menominee Homecoming, a new interactive story game developed through a unique partnership between PBS Wisconsin, Nebraska Public Media, Vision Maker Media, and members of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.

The discussion will focus on lessons learned about building trust, sharing creative decision-making, and co-creating stories that center community voices. With perspectives from project partners and Menominee collaborators, this session offers a model for how public media can move beyond representation to true collaboration - creating content that is both innovative and deeply rooted in the community being served. Register here!

And, if you missed any part of our October webinar, Innovate with Current: Powering Public Media with Digital Revenue, the video and slides were posted last week and you can catch them here.

Groktober Surprise

There’s lots of chaos try and wade through these days, but I do want to call your attention to the launch of Grokipedia, Elon Musk’s attempt to stamp his political worldview on all knowledge everywhere by whipping up an online copy of Wikipedia built around (and possibly by) xAI’s Grok LLM. Grokipedia is supposed to be less “biased and ‘woke’” than other online encyclopedias so, yeah, you can read between those lines.

If you haven’t yet, you should check out your organization’s entry there. Even though it only has 1/10th the content of Wikipedia at launch, public media seemed unusually well represented (by volume, not by facts) in Grokipedia’s debut. In my unscientific sampling, I didn’t run across anything libelous, but it’ll likely furrow your brow all the same.

Here is how the article on Nebraska Public Media concludes (with the section “Broader Criticisms and Market Alternatives”): “Such criticisms underscore a core inefficiency: without profit incentives, public broadcasters innovate less aggressively, as seen in stagnant audience metrics amid rising digital alternatives.^[114] Nebraska's 2025 federal funding losses, totaling $9.4 billion nationally via Corporation for Public Broadcasting reductions, exposed this vulnerability, prompting operational strains like potential cuts to local programming despite defenses of nonpartisan intent.^[27][82] Market alternatives abound in Nebraska's media ecosystem, where commercial outlets deliver news, education, and cultural content through viewer-supported models. Local stations like Omaha's WOWT-NBC and KETV-ABC provide daily news and community coverage, competing directly with public media's local focus while adapting via targeted advertising and digital streams.^[100] Independent digital nonprofits, such as the Nebraska Examiner and Flatwater Free Press, offer investigative journalism on state issues, filling gaps in rural reporting without public subsidies and demonstrating viability through donations and partnerships. Nationally, platforms like YouTube and Khan Academy supply free educational programming, while cable networks (e.g., History Channel, Discovery) monetize specialized content via subscriptions, proving market forces can sustain diverse, high-quality alternatives to publicly funded models. These options foster viewpoint pluralism and efficiency, as private entities must retain audiences or face obsolescence, contrasting public media's structural protections.”

Obviously, I’d personally like to take issue with some of those assertions. However, unlike Wikipedia, there appears to be no appeal process, no way to submit edits, no discernible human editors. And sure, people will ‘consider the source.’ But that cuts both ways.

That’s the larger point we need to consider. We’ve long lived in a world with different “Internets”. The ‘American’ internet is different from the European internet (which places greater emphasis on user rights through legislation like the GDPR’s (General Data Protection Regulation) Right to be Forgotten), and vastly different from the internet behind the Great Firewall of China (which, per the PBS Newshour last month is being exported to other countries). Could America eventually have an internet created by pre-MAGA elites (what you and I would call “the Internet”) and one created by post-MAGA elites? Social media has schism’d that way, could the American internet do the same? Before 2022, there simply wasn’t the human power to make that happen, let alone sustain it. With Grokipedia, we see how AI can scale skewed information to a societal level without much human power.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Wikipedia because it was founded on similar values to public media. But we need to be pay attention not just because this is an attack on a kindred institution, but because of what moves like Grokipedia portend for us all. We are now in an era where the human story is no longer exclusively written by humans. Public media doesn’t need profit incentives to innovate, the survival of civil society seems plenty motivating to me.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Tutorials…

Powwow Bound: Co-Creating Through Culture and Play (Thursday, November 20, 1p ET / 10a PT) 
What does authentic collaboration look like in public media? Join us for a behind-the-scenes conversation about Powwow Bound: A Menominee Homecoming, a new interactive story game developed through a unique partnership between PBS Wisconsin, Nebraska Public Media, Vision Maker Media, and members of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.

This webinar will present a model for collaborative project execution that stations can emulate, highlighting how artists, writers, language experts, musicians, and cultural advisors from the Menominee community worked alongside public media creators to shape an authentic storytelling game.

The discussion will focus on lessons learned about building trust, sharing creative decision-making, and co-creating stories that center community voices. With perspectives from project partners and Menominee collaborators, this session offers a model for how public media can move beyond representation to true collaboration - creating content that is both innovative and deeply rooted in the community being served. Register here.

Prompt Structure (Anthropic via Matt Pocock via X)
Key Image:

Prompt Structure (Anthropic via Matt Pocock via X)

Why it matters: Though many are hailing the end of the exponentially shortened prompt engineering era, there are still recognized best practices for getting the most out of these tools. And I like the color-coded approach here.

Thoughts on Public Media…

PBS enhances search on digital platforms using Amazon Bedrock (Zach Dugan - AWS Blog) 
Key Line: '“If we did manual metadata-tagging for this project, it would have taken years,” theorized Mikey Centrella, Director of Product at PBS, Digital Innovation. “With Amazon Bedrock, we were able to do it quickly, at a fraction of the cost and within the secure AWS environment we already have. In just a few months, we built a proof-of-concept, tested and successfully scaled it into production. By greatly improving our search tools, we’re delivering a better experience for viewers and showing them different parts of our catalog that they might not have found otherwise.”'
Why It Matters: GenAI has always been in danger of becoming synonymous with synthetic media. But there are plenty of uses that don't trip the Spidey-sense of standards and practices professionals. So, I was excited to see this "win" from Mikey Centrella's team in PBS Innovation. The blog itself is self-promotional content marketing for AWS, but don't let that distract you from what this could eventually mean for the long tail of station content.

2025 Is Now Public Media’s Biggest Year for Lobbying Spending Ever (Alex Curley - Semipublic) 
Key Line: "We can’t know exactly how public media’s lobbyists spent their time, but public disclosures show that the industry was focused on a variety of issues last quarter and not just The Rescissions Act of 2025. Disclosures also show that the industry’s hired Congressional emissaries, totaling almost two dozen, represented a varied and bi-partisan response to public media’s gravest threat."
Why It Matters: Kudos to Alex Curley for putting in the work on this one. Coming up through the video side of public media, I was interested to see how NPR's advocacy efforts compared to PBS's. If you're newer in your career, you might not have even focused on the fact that we have lobbyists. In that case, this piece is a great primer.

Creator Economy…

Adobe Reinvents its Entire Creative Suite with AI Co-Pilots, Custom Models, and a New Open Platform (Grant Harvey - The Neuron) 
Key Line: "Here’s the big picture: Adobe is building a central AI brain called Firefly that connects everything. And it’s not just for images anymore. [1] Firefly Video: A new web-based video editor lets you generate clips, create custom transitions, and add AI-generated sound effects directly to a timeline. [2] Firefly Audio: You can now generate royalty-free background music and AI voiceovers with a prompt, then use "Enhance Speech" to clean it up like a pro. [3] Custom Models: This is a huge one. You can now train a private Firefly model on your own work. Just upload 10-30 of your images, and it will learn to generate new content in your unique style....The era of hunting through menus and memorizing keyboard shortcuts is fading. The new workflow is conversational."
Why It Matters: Adobe has made a point of trying to be at nexus of AI and media creation since they read the generative writing on the wall in 2022, and at this year's Adobe Max creativity conference they reportedly went all in on AI. At first blush, the most intriguing reveal to me is the custom models. If they work as promised, the opportunity for a public media company to load up their corporate, departmental, or production unit style guide and work samples seems like an idea worth exploring. I'm also intrigued by their push to be a one-stop shop for multiple models. Being able to access, Google Gemini, Ideogram, Runway, and ElevenLabs all in one spot under the CreativeCloud subscription seems like a reasonable play to try get/keep creator loyalty to the platform. As you’re reading this one, keep in mind it is from the perspective of an AI newsletter, so it's a different take than might come from a production point of view.
Related: For the production point of view, you may also want to check out The Main Headlines from Adobe MAX 2025 as Adobe Highlights New AI Tools, from Andy Stout at Redshark News.

Top Substack writers depart for Patreon (Sarah Scire - NiemanLab) 
Key Line: '“I don’t want to be deeply invested in a platform whose business model is rooted in snagging readers through algorithmic manipulation. I don’t want to make money for founders who refuse to draw a line about platforming hate speech,” [Anne Helen] Petersen wrote. “I don’t want to serve as a one-person IT department for my readers and listeners who can’t resolve their account problems because Substack’s ‘support’ has been reduced to a bot. I don’t want to constantly fight Substack’s inclination to turn ‘readers’ into ‘followers’ who live on their app."'
Why It Matters: The gig economy came for journalists in the last five years (more recently for TV hosts), and Substack was their Uber. Ultimately, I think Substack can be the right tool for some individuals or organizations. Their social media push could increase impact, but caveat emptor because that move also smacks of the enshittification that has plagued every nice digital tool we've had since 1999. This PMI newsletter sidestepped Substack in the 11th Hour before launch in favor of Beehiiv (because Nazis), and it works for our use case. But I find Patreon's step into this arena intriguing as a potential public media opportunity.
See Also: The Patreon for Creators post on improving their newsletter tools: Make a newsletter about anything (yes, even soup) 

The Future of Media…

Everything Is Television (Derek Thompson via Substack) 
Key Line: "One implication of “everything is becoming television” is that there really is too much television—so much, in fact, that some TV is now made with the assumption that audiences are always already distracted and doing something else. Netflix producers reportedly instruct screenwriters to make plots as obvious as possible, to avoid confusing viewers who are half-watching—or quarter-watching, if that’s a thing now—while they scroll through their phones."
Why It Matters: Some of you are gonna love the title of this piece. But I'm not sure you'll love what it really means. Reading this, I can see why public "television" (using Thompson's definition) is more important than ever. But I can also see how public media might have more impact working in a medium other than the moving image.
Related: Sam Gutelle’s piece for TubeFilter: High resolutions and splashy landing pages: YouTube is giving its TV app a makeover
Also Related: You might also enjoy Rachel Treisman’s piece for NPR: 'Broadcasting' has its roots in agriculture. Here's how it made its way into media

Gen Z Only Watches TV Through Social Clips. Hollywood is Scrambling (Matthew Frank - Like & Subscribe) 
Key Line: "Clipping has become a huge part of the social media ecosystem — it’s studios and streamers doling out bite-size scenes from their libraries through official (and under-the-radar) means. It’s those same Hollywood players paying groups like Peterson’s to flood social media. It’s independent “creators” building up followings and cashing in themselves on Hollywood IP. And love it or hate it, clipping matters — especially to the 71 percent of Gen Z who find their TV and movie recommendations by flipping through shorts, according to research from Quickplay."
Why It Matters: While I think we should be careful about reducing all Gen-Z to one characterization, this trend with clipping reminds me that microdramas are also hugely popular with younger audiences around the world. And I get it. As the Labs team in Nebraska is sick of hearing me say, I've never seen an episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but I know every character's story arc thanks to the myriad of clip compilations on YouTube. So, are we ready to "clip" our own long form content to meet audiences where they are?

Elon Musk Wants What He Can't Have: Wikipedia (Lila Shroff - The Altantic)
Key Line: 'Musk’s outburst was part of an ongoing crusade against the digital encyclopedia. In recent months, he has repeatedly attempted to delegitimize Wikipedia, suggesting on X that it is “controlled by far-left activists” and calling for his followers to “stop donating to Wokepedia.”'
Why It Matters: I thought it would be helpful to include a little backstory (from February) to the whole advent of Grokipedia. Just as Musk’s failed attempt to subjugate ChatGPT lead to Grok, his failure to subjugate Wikipedia…well, you get the picture.
Related: Even more background from Joshua Benton at NiemanLab: Elon Musk promises to do to Wikipedia what he did to the federal government 

AI + the Internet…

Reddit Is Winning the AI Game (Klaudia Jaźwińska - Columbia Journalism Review) 
Key Line: "...[W]hen people search for content online, Reddit surfaces more often. The analytics platform Profound showed that, between August 2024 and June 2025, Reddit was the most cited domain by Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, and the second most cited by ChatGPT. Also, an update to Google’s algorithm that boosted forums like Quora and Reddit in its search rankings nearly tripled Reddit’s readership between August 2023 and April 2024, from 132 million to 346 million visitors. The surge has prompted news publishers that have historically been wary of Reddit to launch or revive their accounts."
Why It Matters: Does your station have a Reddit strategy? You can't just wing this one. Reddit isn't a single culture but very much a collection of subcultures. Proper engagement with these subcultures could yield huge dividends. But inauthentic engagement could also get your station account blackballed. You should be wading into these waters, but not without the help of folks who can 'read the room.'

SEO for Nonprofits in 2025: How to Stay Visible in a ChatGPT and AI-Driven World (Carl Bloom Associates) 
Key Line: "Search used to mean typing into Google. Now? People are “ChatGPTing” their questions, from “best volunteer programs near me” to “nonprofits that help kids in crisis.” AI tools are crawling the web, scanning millions of websites, and surfacing only the most relevant and well-structured content. If your blog, homepage, or donation page isn’t optimized, you’re invisible."
Why It Matters: This bit of SEO 101 content marketing from the folks at Carl Bloom Associates is - despite the self-promotional nature - still a good URL to share around your organization. In Nebraska, we're seeing a few hundred visits to our site from ChatGPT each month. That's not a lot compared to Google, but that trend line does have a definite upward slope. More to the point, I travel a lot, and in coffee shops, in airports, and at events I consistently hear people (mostly Millennials and GenXers) say "Ask ChatGPT" when they would previously have said "Google it."

Immersive Media

Meta Connect 2025 – 7 things we learned from a packed keynote with plenty of smart glasses News (Hamish Hector - TechRadar) 
Key Line: "The star of the show was, of course, the new Meta Ray-Ban Display, which finally added a screen to the Ray-Ban smart glasses we know and love. We also got to see new Oakley Vanguard smart glasses that look perfect for sports, Gen 2 Ray-Ban smart glasses that offer a handful of upgrades over what’s come before, and James Cameron almost spoiled the next Quest headset before Mark Zuckerberg ran away with Diplo."
Why It Matters: Meta Connect was more than a month ago, but because Meta is the main company that is still forging ahead - for better or ill - with AR technology, it's worth a quick review of their recent announcements in that space.

The 9 most important takeaways from today’s Galaxy XR event (Tony Vitillo - The Ghost Howls) 
Key Line: "Having a unique value proposition is very important when you launch a new product: why should people buy your product instead of the ones of the competition? Google and Samsung identified AI as their killer feature since the first time the headset was unveiled. For this reason, today’s keynote was a constant mention of AI features. The event started with the presenter talking immediately about AI and introducing XR devices as a way to interact with artificial intelligence."
Why It Matters: XR is beginning to show more signs of life. We can thank AI for that, but the merger of the two (in marketing, if not implementation) was inevitable. I’m still not convinced that we’re about to see the second (or third, depending on how you count if off) coming of xR. But it’s good to see another wave about to break. It shows the cycle is still in motion.

Games…

How Do You Find and Scale an Indie Hit Like Balatro? (Michail Katkoff - Decontructor of Fun) 
Key Line: “Do you even need a publisher? If you can self-publish and have the skills to reach an audience, the answer is no. But when your creative bandwidth is maxed out, when you need amplification, when you want to turn interest into purchases, then the choice of partner becomes everything. The right partner will grow your pie. The wrong one will put their logo on your game, make promises about marketing, or simply act as a middleman, but the sales you end up with are essentially the same as if you had self-published and you have to share the pot. In an industry where even the best games struggle to find their audience, that difference a good publisher can make whether a developer lives to make their next game, or becomes another cautionary tale in the graveyard of broken promises.”
Why It Matters: Don't get hung up on the game itself featured in this piece. It's the advice behind the game that matters, and there's words of wisdom here for any public media entity looking to get into game creation or looking to help local indie developers with local game distribution.

And finally…

Are you high-agency or an NPC? (Jasmine Sun - @jasmi.news) 
Key Line: "If agency combines autonomy (“the capacity to formulate goals in life”) plus efficacy (“the ability and willingness to pursue those goals”), AI in 2025 is sorely lacking in both. It turns out the secret of human civilization was not any particular cognitive creation but our unending flexibility. To hit a wall and build a ladder to climb it, to design cars instead of faster horses, to come up with new levels of Maslow’s hierarchy to summit once we’ve satisfied the first....For now, agency is still a human moat."
Why It Matters: Here's a great longer read digging into the meaning behind the recent batch of Silicon Valley slang. If you don't know what "996" means (and thank goodness, most of us in public media won't have experienced that) Sun's piece will not only break it down for you but also pry open why it is virtue signaling. It's a smart piece, and if you think philosophically about the future of technology, or just like the cultural mirror that is language, this one is worth your time.

Have a creative, productive week!

Image Generated with Google Whisk

Image Generated with Google Image FX

Hi all and welcome to our new readers from Wisconsin, Alaska, Ohio, Florida, Texas, and Georgia! This edition, we’re catching up on the last couple of months with some key articles on the future of public media, AI, and games. And finally, we’ve got a Sora2 clip of Mr. Rogers covering the French Revolution. You really do have to see that one to believe it.

But First…

The prodigal newsletter returns! Thanks to those who reached out to check-in during the unintentional hiatus. I won’t make excuses; the words just weren’t coming (and I don’t use AI to write these).

In future editions, I’m going dive deeper into AI video developments, the intersection of AI and SEO, and the rise of AI browsers. So, since it’s been a minute, let’s start catching up….

Webinars of Future/Past

On Thursday, November 20, we’ll present Powwow Bound: Co-Creating Through Culture and Play. Join us for a behind-the-scenes conversation about Powwow Bound: A Menominee Homecoming, a new interactive story game developed through a unique partnership between PBS Wisconsin, Nebraska Public Media, Vision Maker Media, and members of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.

The discussion will focus on lessons learned about building trust, sharing creative decision-making, and co-creating stories that center community voices. With perspectives from project partners and Menominee collaborators, this session offers a model for how public media can move beyond representation to true collaboration - creating content that is both innovative and deeply rooted in the community being served. You can register now

And then, ICYMI, we had a great turn out for our September webinar: Creating a Thriving Digital Community. In public media, we pay a lot of lip service to the concept of serving our communities, but this is often framed in the context of a broadcast ideology. KQED, no surprise, is experimenting with a new approach using the Discord platform.

It was unfortunate timing that our scheduled start time was before the PBS Town Hall concluded, so if you missed any part of it you can watch it here.

The turnout for the October webinar, Innovate with Current: Powering Public Media with Digital Revenue, was even better. I’ll have a link for that video in the next edition of this newsletter, but I do want to note that this webinar kicked off our new quarterly webinar collaboration with Current. The next one will be in January and will be the 2026 version of last January’s “Future of Public Media” session. Look for that registration link here next month.

Counting the Fall

While I haven’t been writing as much lately, I have been paying attention.

Semi-regularly checking Semipublic’s Public Media Layoffs Tracker (pictured at the bottom of this edition…possibly not for the last time) feels at bit like checking the Covid tracker in fall 2020. And like that dark time, professional communications often include the instinctive wellness check before getting down to business on Zoom.

I’d venture to guess that everyone at this point knows someone who’s been affected (for me, a dozen immediately come to mind). If you count yourself among those directly affected, know that to us you are not just a statistic. Your story matters, and it’s a story that I hope intersects with public media again once we get to better times. In my reading this week I ran across a quote from journalist Maria Ressa that resonated with me. Of course the topic was not public media jobs (the topic was fascism) but it seemed equally applicable to the feelings that can come with the loss of one’s job (especially a mission-driven job): “Optimism and hope come from action,” she said. “So, if you're feeling hemmed in, and you're worried about the future, act.”

Okay, on to the links.

Thoughts on Public Media…

What we can learn from America’s long era with no public broadcasting (Julia Barton - Current) 
Key Line: "I think there are lessons to be learned from the long period when civic-minded advocates wandered the wilderness of American media capitalism. For years, it seemed they would never get any real support for the notion that the public airwaves should be supported with public money to foster the public good rather than be given entirely to private enterprises prone to takeover by goat-testicle-based impotence cures, antisemitic demagoguery, or just lots and lots of soap sponsorships. Now that we’ve backslid almost to the starting square on this whole idea of public media, it’s time to reexamine some of the lessons of the pre-CPB era."
Why It Matters: Like Barton, I've tried to focus my attention on the time before PBS/NPR as I've been wrestling with how to best articulate why public media should still matter today (Four Theories of the Press, originally written in the 1960s and republished in the 1980s is especially worth a read). The one difference that needs to be acknowledge is that the political landscape of the 1950s and 1960s is vastly different than the landscape of the 2020s. The underlying market issues are similar, but the country is far more individualistic than the relatively collectivistic mid-20th century. So any articulations of public media's value have to account for that crosswind and can't tack the exact same course as we did 70 years ago.

These public radio stations have built online audiences that’ll help them survive federal cuts (Joshua Benton - NiemanLab) 
Key Line: "[T]he public media outlets on this list are among those who’ve done the most to prepare for that fight. They’ve built syndication businesses, production studios, national programming, university partnerships, cross-media tie-ups, statewide networks, and a thousand other things meant to strengthen the institution. For them, the federal defunding will be painful but not fatal."
Why It Matters: Amidst story after story of station layoffs, it's good to see who is using the current to help steer themselves. That doesn't mean these stations don't have layoffs too, but they are neither waiting for PBS and/or NPR to save them, nor are they taking a 'we-can-ride-out-this-storm' approach. Anyone who is proactively working to build their own future is worth your attention, even if you don't agree with every move they make.

AI + the Future of Media…

Eye-Opening Look at How Fast Artificial Intelligence is Advancing (Today via YouTube) 
Why It Matters: Tilly Norwood's (see below) journalist cousin presented a doc on Britain's Channel 4 and worth some reflection. I'm not advocating we public media mimic this, but soon we'll be able to do so (if not now). If the team behind the research, writing and final editing all followed a human first/human-last approach, and the interviewees are real is all respects, does it matter if the presenter is real? Setting that aside, today this admittedly probably breaks a social contract with our audience. What about in 5 years? Or 10?
Related: CNN's report A new 'AI actress' has Hollywood fuming 

OpenAI’s Sora 2 Is a Willing Hoax Generator (Sofia Rubinson & Ines Chomnalez - Newsguard) 
Key Line: "NewsGuard’s findings demonstrate how, with minimal effort and no technical expertise, bad actors — including health-hoax peddlers, authoritarian regimes engaged in hostile information operations, and political misinformers — can easily use this technology to make false claims more convincing."
Why It Matters: Not we needed the internet to give us another example of why we can't have nice things. But here it is all the same. Since we last spoke, AI video has broken wide open (again), thanks to Sora2 and Veo 3.1. The Silicon Valley mantra of moving fast and breaking things now includes reality (or at least the historical representations of reality). With high profile figures like MLK (see below), there's plenty of history to refute deep fakes. But with this issue we need to be thinking about the historical record created now, which is part of public media's mission. A decade or two from now, it will be a lot harder to understand what, from the 2020s, was real and what was faked.
Related: Live McMahon's report for BBC, OpenAI stops 'disrespectful' Martin Luther King Jr deepfakes 

AI + the Internet…

AI companies steal publisher traffic then undermine trust by getting answers wrong - (Dominic Ponsford - Press Gazette) 
Key Line: 'The research says: “People don’t just blame the AI assistant for the error. While 36% of UK adults say AI providers should ensure the accuracy and quality of AI responses, and 31% say the Government or regulators should set and enforce the rules. 23% say news providers should carry responsibility for content associated with their name – even when the error is a product of AI summarisation. Because association carries weight, an error in an AI summary can dent confidence in the outlet named alongside it, not just in the tool. More than 1 in 3 (35%) of UK adults instinctively agree the news source should be held responsible for errors in AI-generated news.”'
Why It Matters: I'm going to admit, this makes total sense (meaning, it's not fair but people are people). I naively assumed that errors from AI would solely be attributed to AI, but audiences don’t appear to have caught up to that level of media literacy (at least in tke UK).

Most leading UK news websites fell down Google rankings in 2025 (Charlotte Tobit - Press Gazette) 
Key Line: "Google has carried out two major core algorithm update this year, one in March and one starting in June (scroll down for specific results from the second update). Press Gazette understands Discover traffic has been hit since then at multiple UK national titles."
Why It Matters: Interestingly, that rankings decline didn't necessarily result in less traffic, with 29 of the top 50 sites seeing YOY increases for July. One of those was The Guardian, which has a broad brief much akin to the New York Times here in the states.

Italian newspapers file complaint over 'traffic killer' Google AI Overviews (Wanted in Rome) 
Key Line: "The Italian federation of newspaper publishers (FIEG) has filed a formal complaint with Italy's communications watchdog AGCOM against "traffic killer" Google AI Overviews...."We're talking about a product that not only directly competes with content produced by publishing companies but also reduces their visibility and discoverability, and therefore their advertising revenue, threatening their refinancing", FIEG said in a statement."
Why It Matters: We'll be talking more about the impact of AI on internet traffic in the coming weeks, but I thought this story from Europe was a quick taste of things to come. If you haven’t started contemplating “Google Zero” yet, this issue is heating up.

Some French publishers are giving AI revenue directly to journalists. Could that ever happen in the U.S.? (Andrew Deck - NiemanLab) 
Key Line: "Licensing deals between French news publishers and AI companies usually fall under a body of law called “neighboring rights.” Neighboring rights — or droits voisins, in French — are intellectual property rights distinct from copyright, though their definitions can be, at times, slippery. In the past, the concept of neighboring rights was used in France to ensure fair compensation for music record producers and radio and television broadcasters...especially if the platforms earned advertising revenue from their content."
Why It Matters: I'm sharing this because it's important to know that there are other models out there in the world which we can emulate at some point in the future.

A Q&A with newspaper publisher — and former tech exec — Steve Grove (Eli Rosenberg - Hard Reset) -
Key Line: "Well, I am worried about Google Zero, which means suddenly the traffic that we get from Google approaches a very small number and perhaps zero…We have to figure out the business model for A.I. that somehow pays quality creators for their content in a meaningful way, whether that's a licensing agreement, whether that's a flat fee, whether that's some other model. What tech companies will tell you is, well, that sounds good, we want to be able to do that, but just so you know, we don't really need your content to have effective A.I. algorithms. The content within journalism is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive amount of information on the web. And while it is the highest quality content out there, what I've heard a lot of technology people say, and I'm not just pinpointing Google here, is that it really is kind of charity."
Why It Matters: I've been watching what is happening at the Strib for a few months now, primarily because of Grove's background. I think you are going to see them drift more and more into public media's model, so watch that space.
Related: Grove’s conversation with Brian Morrissey on The Rebooting pocast is also worth a listen.

AI & Us…

An Opinionated Guide to Using AI Right Now (Ethan Mollick - One Useful Thing)
Key Line: "If the chart suggests that a free model is good enough for what you use AI for, pick your favorite and use it without worrying about anything else in the guide. You basically have nine or so choices, because there are only a handful of companies that make cutting-edge models. All of them offer some free access....However, if you are considering potentially upgrading to a paid account, I would suggest starting with the free accounts from Anthropic, Google, or OpenAI. If you just want to use free models, the open weights models and aggregation services like Microsoft Copilot have higher usage limits."
Why It Matters: Mollick continues to offer the best guidance on the right ways to adopt AI. Amidst all the hype and (I think intentional) product-level confusion created by the companies behind all the most used models, this guide offers simplicity and focus.
Related: Ethan released a couple of other pieces last month worth reading, Real AI Agents and Real Work and On Working with Wizards.

AI is inherently ageist. That’s not just unethical – it can be costly for workers and businesses (Sajia Ferdous - The Conversation) 
Key Line: "There are much deeper issues and structural barriers at play. These include access and opportunity – including a lack of targeted training. Right now, AI training tends to be targeted at early or mid-career workers. There are also confidence gaps among older people stemming from workplace cultures that can feel exclusionary. Data shows that older professionals are more hesitant to use AI – possibly due to fast-paced work environments that reward speed over judgment or experience."
Why It Matters: Normally, when we talk about AI bias, we talk about issues of race or gender. So, I was especially happy to see someone addressing the issue of age. This feels like an opportunity for public media, both in terms of training staff - who are loyal to our mission and often stay with station deeper into their careers - and in terms of raising the level of AI literacy with our traditional audiences.
Related: Robin Brewer's contribution to The Conversation, Older Americans are using AI − study shows how and what they think of it 

AI Doesn't Lighten The Burden Of Mastery. (Gwendolyn - PlayTechnique) 
Key Line: "The AI had moved me forward, but it hadn't saved me the real work. I had thought I was mastering front end development, quickly. But mastery still required: building the model, holding it in my head, doing the thinking. False mastery is mistaking convincing syntax for real understanding."
Why It Matters: Part of the key to effectively using these tools is understanding and committing to a productive definition of "effective." In my experience, thus far, the thing that supposedly is happening faster - the task - isn't actually where the efficiency lies. For me, the efficiency rests in overcoming the psychological hurdles that come with creation and, more importantly, onboarding new ideas and thoughts that spark creation.
Related: Joshua Valdez's The Unbearable Slowness of AI Coding
Also related: Antonin's The Skill of the Future is not 'AI', but 'Focus' 
Still related: Pete Koomen's AI Horseless Carriages 

AI is a Mass-Delusion Event (Charlie Warzel - The Atlantic) 
Key Line: “Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with a different question: What if generative AI isn’t God in the machine or vaporware? What if it’s just good enough, useful to many without being revolutionary?...The models being good enough doesn’t mean that the industry collapses overnight or that the technology is useless (though it could)...Good enough has been keeping me up at night. Because good enough would likely mean that not enough people recognize what’s really being built—and what’s being sacrificed—until it’s too late.”
Why It Matters: It's occasionally good to step back and remind yourself that no one really knows what the effects of this exponential technology will be. And, if social media taught us anything, it should be that what we think we know isn't really what we'll learn about our reaction to this technology over time. Right now, the millions of experiments happening via AI interactions every minute have led us to think it is homogenizing our language, and maybe even our thought. I suspect what we learn in time about the impacts of this technology from 2023 forward will be quite different. And just as with social media, you should check in periodically with yourself and ask if using this tech is serving you.
Related: Rachael Hains-Wesson's Will AI pull the career ladder up out of reach – or just change what it looks like? in the Conversation.

Immersive Media

Why we don’t have the “killer app” of mixed reality (Tony Vitillo - The Ghost Howls) 
Key Line: "The use of mixed reality must be justified by a need to blend the real and the virtual: the virtual elements in your room must be there for a reason, and must blend in with your room’s elements. If an MR game is just a tabletop game with a passthrough, it could as well be a VR game, because the real world is there just as the background, and there is no real use of MR...A football match that happens as a 3D diorama on my table is a cool technical feature, but at first, it is not connected to my real space in any way. Then I would prefer much more to enter the football field, being there with the players in VR, instead of just seeing it as a small 3D representation."
Why It Matters: It's been a while since we've touched on aspect of xR in this newsletter. But there's a reason for that, and the point of Vitillo's (aka “The Skarred Ghost”) is to try and get to the bottom of that. New tech can often be a solution in search of a problem (lookin' at you, ATSC 3.0), and Vitillo breaks down some of the reasons that xR isn't solving any problems yet. Read this one just to touch base with the 2025 state of a technology that eventually will...probably...make waves.
Related: To eliminate any confusion up front, smart glasses count more as augmented reality (AR) than the mixed reality Vitillo opines upon above. That's probably where the biggest advances are happening right in the xR space. Witness Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Rebecca Bellan's article in TechCrunch, Harvard dropouts to launch ‘always on’ AI smart glasses that listen and record every conversation 

Games…

The Game-Changing Strategy: How Playables on YouTube, Netflix, LinkedIn, and NYT Are Driving Disruption! (Brian Christner) 
Key Line: "A "playable game" is a lightweight digital game designed to be playable directly within various media platforms or your browser. These games are typically embedded in websites, advertisements, social media platforms, or other digital ecosystems, making them easily accessible and convenient for users."
Why It Matters: H/t to Nebraska's Peter Clowney, for tipping me to this one. If your organization hasn't started experimenting with game development yet, it could feel daunting. But you don't have to start off 3D graphics or complex narrative development (though we'd be happy to show you how). This "Playables" tier of games can bring wider audience reach to your organization, as well as higher audience engagement. And these can be gateways to more elaborate game experiments later.

Why Some Puzzle Games are More Addicting Than Others? (Ahmetcan Demirel - Deconstructor of Fun) 
Key Line: “Hybridcasual puzzles have made an impressive impact on the mobile gaming landscape, but their journey is only beginning. While these games have found early success, there is significant room for improvement, particularly in how they refine core mechanics and enhance the player experience.”
Why It Matters: Content creators in public media often like to do things at a grand scale. But with gaming, success can rely more on simplicity. While simple should never be confused with "easy," you don't have to develop a sweeping epic narrative to power your game forward. You can create something in the puzzle or hybrid casual genre that still conveys a story and/or knowledge.

And finally…

Mr. Rogers and the French Revolution (GormtheOld25 - Reddit) 
And finally, this is going to irritate the **** out of some of you. I find it fascinating. As deepfakes go, it's by no means perfect. The rendering of Mr. Rogers is inconsistent, probably the result of the many Sora2 clips generated to make the longer piece. At times he almost looks like an older Jimmy Stewart. But I'm intrigued by this experiment. In the comments, the creator says, "I've been making AI videos since the very beginning- and people don't realize how much of an artform it is to learn how to prompt the models to get what you want, and how much trial and error there is. I probably use only 1 in 10 clips. I had to pay 200 for the pro version so I can generate 100 per day, without that this would not be possible in a reasonable amount of time."

Have a creative, actionable week!

Credit: Alex Curley’s Public Media Layoffs Tracker (Screen Shot, October 24)

Hi all, and welcome to our new readers from Alaska, Detroit, Houston, Erie, L.A., and the Bay Area! This edition we’ve got new editorials on the post-CPB future of public media, as well as stories on AI’s environmental impact, the inherent ageism of AI, whether the AI bubble is about to burst, and, finally, the digital rebirth of Agatha Christie. The (literal) headline though, is that we’ve finally shipped our newest general audience video game, Powwow Bound: A Menominee Homecoming.

But First…

We’re excited to announce our September webinar: Creating a Thriving Digital Community. In public media, we pay a lot of lip service to the concept of serving our communities, but this is often framed in the context of a broadcast ideology. KQED, no surprise, is experimenting with a new approach. You can register here, or read more about the webinar in the Webinars section below.

Public Media Innovators at the NETA Annual Conference

We’re equally excited to announce the five sessions we’re sponsoring at NETA’s annual (and now virtual) conference. There are lots of great sessions coming your way, but these are the ones we worked with NETA to hand select (links to session descriptions below, all times Eastern):

• Monday, September 15 

  • 1:15 PM - Playing With a Hire Purpose: Leveling Up Workforce Readiness Through Career Video Games 

  • 3 PM - CTRL+ALT+IMAGINE: Using GenAI to Power Learning & Creativity

• Monday, September 16

  • 3 PM - From Data and Organization Intentions to Implementation: Transforming Culture

• Wednesday, September 17 

  • 1:15 PM - Powwow Bound: Developing an Indigenous Video Game for Public Media (you’ve heard from me, now hear from the creators!)

  • 2:30 PM - Getting Started on Substack 

The full list of sessions is also online. Conference registration is free, but you do have to still register. So, register here!

Powwow Bound

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of joining a small group from PBS Wisconsin for a moving weekend of community, culture, and joy at the annual Menominee Powwow in northern Wisconsin.

Photo Credit: Chad Davis

If you’ve seen Amber Samdahl and I present at any conference in the last two years, you’ve probably heard something about the all-ages video game our stations were co-producing (with some generous funding from Vision Maker Media), Powwow Bound: A Menominee Homecoming. Launched at the powwow on August 1, we think this is the first time two local stations have collaborated on the in-house self-production of a video game (I know readers will keep us honest on that point). Our core thesis behind the game is that all of the mission rationale that you’ve heard applied to linear video content for decades is just as relevant (maybe more so) in the world of games.

That’s because video games are a huge industry. They are bigger than TV, film, and music…combined. They are also a largely self-regulated industry. For example, accessibility in games is not mandated. And when it’s done well, its celebrated because that is so rare. It’s also a very white, very male industry. When you multiply the size of the industry by the homogenization of the industry you get a media space that is just as in need of pro-social media creation as television and radio were in the 1960s.

Of course, public media has created games for kids. PBS Kids is a leader in that space, and as I’ve gotten to know the video game landscape of public media, I’ve been surprised at how many individual stations have made multiple games. Most of those come through station education departments, which ends up putting an box around the potential of the medium in a lot of people’s minds. A surprising number of us seemingly have the desire, skills, and/or connections to make video games. But to make games for all ages, or general audiences, is in some way ‘not what we do.’ Even at PBS, no one outside the Kids team and their supporters seems to see PBS’s potential as a gaming company.

The future of media is games. As I’ve said here before, the New York Times acknowledges this, The Atlantic acknowledges this, Netflix acknowledges this. YouTube acknowledges this. LinkedIn acknowledges this. In general, electronic media acknowledges this. That doesn’t make games mutually exclusive with linear audio and video. You can do both. Both sectors of the media landscape are in need of public media’s values.

Back in the Menominee nation, that anxiety that always comes with launching a new creative work into the world was quickly replaced by the warm embrace of a community who had never imagined they would see their people and their culture represented in this medium. Great care (meaning time, energy, and detail orientation) was taken by the Powwow Bound team to honor the people and traditions that inspired the story. Folks at the powwow were genuinely moved that public media invested the resources in telling their story this way, and very much appreciated public media’s commitment to getting the details right. (That should sound familiar to you documentary folks.)

The narrative for that game is built around this specific powwow and these specific grounds, and to debut the game at the powwow was a real treat. A happy accident, our booth for the weekend was unintentionally at the same location on the grounds where players spawn into the game. And the environmental design was so spot on that the littlest kids thought the game was live in real time and kept trying to see themselves in the game (which is as adorable as it sounds).

We even inspired some budding game designers. One young man came back to us on our second day with extensive production notes and recommendations for future feature enhancements. And on the last day, the game’s creator, designer, and co-producer, Jacob Schwitzer, held an impromptu tutorial session for a group of young boys who wanted to see under the hood in the Unity game engine.

The reaction at the powwow showed us that we succeeded in what we set out to accomplish: represent a community authentically as they live their lives today (not filtered through threadbare media clichés). Parents and other adults sometimes needed bit of coaxing to give the game a try. But many who stepped out of that comfort zone went and found a friend or family member after and brought them back to show them the game. And, no surprise, the game was an even bigger hit with kids (“general audience” games can still be appropriate for kids). Even the ones too little to follow the storyline enjoyed “running” and “jumping” around the semi-open world environment.

Photo Concept: Amber Samdahl - Photo Credit: Chad Davis

If you’re ever in Wisconsin at the beginning of August, I highly recommend you take a day, get some lemonade and some fry bread, and take in what is a gigantic and open family reunion at the Menominee Annual Contest Powwow. In the meantime, play Powwow Bound. It’s the next best thing…and its the next generation of public media.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars…

Creating a Thriving Digital Community (Thursday, September 11, 1pET/10aPT) 
Are you looking to cultivate a thriving online community for your audience? Healthy digital communities are more than a collection of “likes” or followers – they’re inclusive, uplifting, and collaborative spaces that involve direct partnership between media professionals and members of the public. This session will introduce concrete tools for starting a new digital “public space,” practices to improve social trust and belonging in your online community, and strategies for establishing meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships with audience members online.

In 2023, KQED launched an innovative digital community on Discord to reimagine social media and strengthen public conversation across the Bay Area. We’ll share lessons learned from that launch, case studies from our California newsroom partners, and insights that apply across digital media platforms and station sizes.

Reimagining the Station of the Future: Organizational Structures for a New Era (Thursday, Oct 2, 2pET/11aPT) 
From our friends over at the NETA’s Content Peer Learning Community. Join your peers for an open, candid conversation about how station organizational structures are evolving in response to recent funding cuts and shifting audience expectations. We’ll explore how content teams are adapting roles, workflows, and cross-department collaboration to stay nimble, creative, and resilient. This is not a presentation. This session is a peer exchange where folks can share real-world org charts, discuss lessons learned, and imagine what the “station of the future” could look like. Bring your insights, questions, and examples. Together, we’ll explore how to align structure with mission, break down silos, and build capacity for what’s next. NOTE: This session will not be recorded.

Thoughts on Public Media…

Let’s Make the End of CPB the Start of Public Media’s Revival (Craig Aaron - Pressing Issues) 
Key Line: "A public media worthy of broad public support — and billions of dollars — must focus on civic media, community engagement and accountability journalism. Investing in local voices and giving people the tools to tell and amplify their own stories is the answer to the journalism crisis and the antidote to disinformation. We must protect the public airwaves while challenging ourselves to find new ways to distribute content and reach audiences that don’t rely on secret algorithms and the whims of tech billionaires. Most of all, we must recognize that the fight for public media’s future is a fight for democracy and against authoritarianism."
Why It Matters: A lot of what Aaron wrote here resonated with me. One point in particular (my runner up for the key line) is that one solution to ensuring public media's survival is to expand the definition of what is public media. The non-profit journalism entity in your market? To me that should be public media. Our definition tends to be self-servingly boxed as 'stations receiving CPB support.' Let elimination of that support free your mind. Right now, "public media" contains stations. It should contain multitudes.
Related: Doug Chang's With CPB funding gone, public media must lean on creativity and community in Current.
Also Related: Steve Bass’ second installment (in what I’m beginning to think of as “The Bass Cycle”) of think pieces, Why public media must rethink assumptions shaped by CPB funding 

PBS and NPR are generally unbiased, independent of government propaganda and provide key benefits to US democracy (Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin - The Conversation) 
Key Lines: 'And then there are public media’s critical benefits to democracy itself. A 2021 report from the European Broadcasting Union links public broadcasting with higher voter turnout, better factual knowledge and lower susceptibility to extremist rhetoric. Experts warn that even small cuts will exacerbate an already pernicious problem with political disinformation in the U.S., as citizens lose access to free information that fosters media literacy and encourages trust across demographics. In many ways, public media remains the last broadly shared civic commons. It is both commercial-free and independently edited. Another study, by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School in 2022, affirmed that “countries with independent and well-funded public broadcasting systems also consistently have stronger democracies.”'
Why It Matters: There may not be much to learn in this one, but there is much to consider. Personally, I'm a fan of Democracy. It's not perfect, but I’m a contrarian and I like to think for myself. So, it beats authoritarianism. More to the point, it's unclear that public media, as we value and practice it, can exist outside a democracy that encourages public funding with editorial firewalls. Otherwise, "public" equates to state-run. And in that system, the media ethics we practice and content we create become the media of resistance.
Related: Of course not everyone shares this opinion, as seen in this piece by Heather Gann from AL.com: Alabama Public Television execs blame NPR, PBS ‘bias’ for funding cuts: ‘They’re in their echo chamber’ 

AI + the Future of Media…

Google And Pollster Scott Rasmussen Will Use AI To Survey Americans’ Political Views (Richard Nieva - Forbes) 
Key Line: "The goal is to uncover common ground, said Rasmussen, who cofounded ESPN with his father, Bill, in 1979. He argues that the U.S. political population is not 50-50, but more 10-10-80: the 10% that is MAGA conservative is warring with the 10% on the far left, he said. He’s hopeful that this project will highlight the rest....The problem with traditional polls, he said, is that closed-ended questions empower the asker to frame or tilt the discussion with yes or no answers, a binary that reduces nuance. “When you begin to ask people the questions in a different way — or begin to address their opinions in a different way — you hear things you never thought to ask,” he said. The result is an ambitious project: As the United States turns 250-years-old next July, Jigsaw partnered with Rasmussen's Napolitan Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to the future of polling and analysis, on an initiative to use AI in a similar fashion to poll Americans about the future of the country."
Why It Matters: There’s been a lot of discussion about AI related to news and information in the past three years, but I hadn't thought about polling yet. Statistics tells us that a minimum number should yield a relevant sample. And then every election season brings polling surprises. It makes more sense to me that we'd see different surprises with this approach, but I’ll be watching out to see if it makes waves.

YouTube’s Sneaky AI ‘Experiment’ (Alex Reisner - The Atlantic) 
The Lede: "Something strange has been happening on YouTube over the past few weeks. After being uploaded, some videos have been subtly augmented, their appearance changing without their creators doing anything. Viewers have noticed “extra punchy shadows,” “weirdly sharp edges,” and a smoothed-out look to footage that makes it look “like plastic.” Many people have come to the same conclusion: YouTube is using AI to tweak videos on its platform, without creators’ knowledge."
Why It Matters: It's an interesting juxtaposition that the one thing that is supposed to get you credibility on YouTube, authenticity, is the one thing they seem to be trying to smooth out. Does this count as AI slop? Maybe. If adopted at scale, and industry-wide, it could also create a competitive opportunity for genuinely authentic media that was edited and color-corrected by a person + algorithms instead of just algorithms.
Related: Jason Koebler's 404 Media essay from earlier this year, AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality 
Also related: Ted Gioia's The Force-Feeding of AI on an Unwilling Public This isn't innovation, it's tyranny 

AI + the Internet…

AI crawlers and fetchers are blowing up websites, with Meta and OpenAI the worst offenders (Gareth Halfacree - The Register) 
Key Line: "The story flips when it comes to AI fetchers, which unlike crawlers are fired off on-demand when a user requests that a model incorporates information newer than its training cut-off date....While AI fetchers make up a minority of Ai bot requests – only about 20%, says Kumar – they can be responsible for huge bursts of traffic, with one fetcher generating over 39,000 requests per minute during the testing period. "We expect fetcher traffic to grow as AI tools become more widely adopted and as more agentic tools come into use that mediate the experience between people and websites," Kumar told The Register."
Why It Matters: We're continuing to see a lot of this traffic slamming our sites in Nebraska, and occasionally slowing down site response times. So, I'd imagine your stations are as well. One thing to note though is the distinction between crawlers (bots seeking training data) and fetchers (agentic AI executing search queries in the pursuit of satisfying user search requests).

AI + the Environment…

In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses (Casey Crownhart - MIT Technology Review) 
Key Line: "It’s the most transparent estimate yet from a Big Tech company with a popular AI product, and the report includes detailed information about how the company calculated its final estimate. As AI has become more widely adopted, there’s been a growing effort to understand its energy use. But public efforts attempting to directly measure the energy used by AI have been hampered by a lack of full access to the operations of a major tech company. ...The publication greatly expands what’s known about AI’s resource usage. It follows recent increasing pressure on companies to release more information about the energy toll of the technology."
Why It Matters: There are two ways to look at this. Google's perspective clearly is 'see, this isn't nearly as bad as you feared." Of course, then other end of the spectrum would argue that no advent of AI would result in no additional environmental impact (beyond what Big Tech was already incurring). All of it feels like a placebo to me. If you feel there's a problem here, the problem is capitalism. Yes, it's cynical, but that's the system in which we are pursuing our mission.
Not So Fast: Reports Justine Calma in The Verge's Google says a typical AI text prompt only uses 5 drops of water — experts say that’s misleading 
Related: Earlier this MIT published their own, independent study of the potential impact of AI on energy usage: AI and Our Energy Future. It was formulated by independent researchers but lacked access to industry data.
Also related: Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much, by Peyton McCauley and Melissa Scanlan in The Conversation.
Still related: Hannah Ritchie's What's the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT? and What’s the impact of artificial intelligence on energy demand? 

AI & Us…

AI is inherently ageist. That’s not just unethical – it can be costly for workers and businesses (Sajia Ferdous - The Conversation) 
Key Line: "There are much deeper issues and structural barriers at play. These include access and opportunity – including a lack of targeted training. Right now, AI training tends to be targeted at early or mid-career workers. There are also confidence gaps among older people stemming from workplace cultures that can feel exclusionary. Data shows that older professionals are more hesitant to use AI – possibly due to fast-paced work environments that reward speed over judgment or experience."
Why It Matters: Normally, when we talk about AI bias, we talk about issues of race or gender. So, I was especially happy to see someone addressing the issue of age. This feels like an opportunity for public media, both in terms of training staff - who are loyal to our mission and often stay with station deeper into their careers - and in terms of raising the level of AI literacy with our traditional audiences.
Related: Robin Brewer's contribution to The Conversation, Older Americans are using AI − study shows how and what they think of it 

AI Doesn't Lighten the Burden of Mastery. (Gwendolyn - PlayTechnique) 
Key Line: "The AI had moved me forward, but it hadn't saved me the real work. I had thought I was mastering front end development, quickly. But mastery still required: building the model, holding it in my head, doing the thinking. False mastery is mistaking convincing syntax for real understanding."
Why It Matters: Part of the key to effectively using these tools is understanding and committing to a productive definition of "effective." In my experience, thus far, the thing that supposedly is happening faster, the task, isn't actually where the efficiency lies. For me, the efficiency rests in overcoming the psychological hurdles that come with creation and, more importantly, onboarding new ideas and thoughts that spark creation.
Related: Joshua Valdez's The Unbearable Slowness of AI Coding
Also related: Antonin's The Skill of the Future is not 'AI', but 'Focus' 
Still related: Pete Koomen's AI Horseless Carriages 

AI is a Mass-Delusion Event (Charlie Warzel - The Atlantic) 
Key Line: “Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with a different question: What if generative AI isn’t God in the machine or vaporware? What if it’s just good enough, useful to many without being revolutionary?...The models being good enough doesn’t mean that the industry collapses overnight or that the technology is useless (though it could)...Good enough has been keeping me up at night. Because good enough would likely mean that not enough people recognize what’s really being built—and what’s being sacrificed—until it’s too late.”
Why It Matters: It's occasionally good to step back and remind yourself that no one really knows what the effects of this exponential technology will be. And, if social media taught us anything, it should be that what we think we know isn't really what we'll learn about our reaction to this technology over time. Right now, the millions of experiments happening via AI interactions every minute have led us to think it is homogenizing our language, and maybe even our thought. I suspect what we learn in time about the impacts of this technology from 2023 forward will be quite different. And just as with social media, you should check in periodically with yourself and ask if using this tech is serving you.
Related: Rachael Hains-Wesson's Will AI pull the career ladder up out of reach – or just change what it looks like? in The Conversation.

Are we about to enter "AI winter?" Here's why the market sold off AI stocks... (Grant Harvey - The Neuron) 
Key Line: "...AI infrastructure kinda IS the economy right now. Here's what that actually means: AI data centers are adding between $93 billion and $163 billion to America's $23 trillion economy this year. Some estimates put the boost even higher in early 2025. Without AI spending, US growth would be nearly flat. Translation: AI isn't just part of the economy, it's doing the heavy lifting right now."
Why It Matters: There was some discussing on the Labs team Discord last week about whether we were in a bubble of not and whether that bubble was about to burst. Adapting a bit of what I wrote there, I still think we're in the phase where the talk of an AI bubble bursting is as much wishful thinking on the part of the ‘doomers’ as it is market unease (which is the "bubble"). The intentional lack of regulation around AI will continue serve as an accelerant for a still larger bubble. It'll burst at some point, to be sure. All bubbles do. But bursting bubbles don't often announce themselves. Regardless, this is very much like the beginnings of the internet, so when it does burst, I'd counsel against jumping on the "see, we told you" bandwagon. Downturns are usually the best times to dig in, better your skillsets, and make investments. AI is a new type of compute that we still haven't fully figured out how to best use. A lot of that will get figured out once the hype cycle ebbs and the bubble bursts.

Immersive Media

Blackmagic Releases Free Guides for Immersive Filmmaking 2025 (Andy Stout - Redshark News) 
Key Line: "[M]ost Immersive shots are captured with a zero degree, or near zero-degree tilt. As the camera captures a 180+ degree field of view, both horizontally and vertically, the audience is still able to look up and down. But instead of the filmmaker forcing the audience to look in a particular direction, the audience is in control. To encourage the audience to look at different parts of your image, you can use other techniques like lighting, aperture framing, and leading lines.”
Why It Matters: We're still very much in xR winter, though you can find green shoots if you look hard enough. It's been a while since I've seen a guide for shooting immersive. True, immersive is now considered 180-video, but this does take me back to the halcyon days of early-360 video (circa 2018). It's world a skim if it's been a while since you shot something immersive, or if this is a totally foreign concept to you.
Related: Jump straight to Blackmagic's Camera Guide.
Also related: Jump straight to DaVinci Resolve's Immersive Workflow Guide.

Games…

Voyages Into Native Worlds: Gaming Offers a Glimpse into Indigenous Cultures and Stories (Vincent Schilling - American Indian Magazine) 
Key Line: "Since [Oregon Trail], an estimated 2 to 4 million games have been created for a range of platforms and devices, from the smallest app games on phones, iPhones and tablets to games played on personal computers and consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation. Players can experience action-adventures, build virtual worlds, solve mysteries or learn about a range of topics. Yet despite the plethora of game types and storylines available, only a few of today’s video games are based on culturally appropriate Indigenous themes, characters or storylines."
Why It Matters: Just as public media has sought to increase the number of indigenous voices heard on television and radio, we have a unique opportunity to elevate similar voices from the world of video games. We're doing that with Powwow Bound and looking for indie game studios telling indigenous stories in a culturally sensitive way. When we find them, we'll try to connect them with local stations first.

And finally…

BBC Recreates Agatha Christie Using AI (Max Goldbart - Deadline) - And finally, cozy mystery, cozy AI? This is an interesting experiment. Could we in Nebraska bring Willa Cather “back” to answer questions about her life and literature? Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques mean that answer is probably "yes." But should we?

Have a creative, productive week, and a relaxing holiday weekend!

Poster by Ellie Nikoo, Kayla LaPoure, and Jacob Schwitzer

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Hi all. Greetings from the Twin Cities, where I’m attending PMVG’s “Future Proofing Public Media” summit. Talking with folks here, there is still good work for us to do, and we can ensure public media exists in the US for future generations….

But First…

You can register now for Creative Hustle our August webinar (and find the full description in the webinar section below).

Also, you may have seen that the NETA Conference, originally scheduled for Tucson in September, is now virtual. That’s a brave call on NETA’s part, and kudos for reading the room. We had been planning a Public Media Innovators track there, and that will now shift online. I’ll have more info on sessions in a couple of weeks, but you can expect AI, games and other innovative opportunities to be covered thoroughly over the three days.

And I don’t usually push our previous webinars two weeks in a row, but I do think our July webinar on Uncertainty could be helpful to check out or revisit now. If you missed any part of it or want to see it again, the video is now live.

The Status Quo is Dead, Start Asking Questions

Now that you’ve had a little time to grieve the loss of federal funding and gird yourself for the next chapter, it’s time to ask questions. I’m not talking about asking who’s to blame for this cluster of fudge (though, yeah, someone should probably be asking that question too 👀). I’m specifically talking about asking questions about the future we want to build. Any futurist will tell you that the future is not prescribed, it is made.

Who makes it? Lots of people. Some of those people care most about their bottom line. Some of those people care about the accrual and application of power. Some people care about their communities and their neighbors.

Anyone can take responsibility for building a better future, so why not you? But you’ve got to start by asking questions.

There are lots of ways to tackle this. But for me sitting here in the middle of 2025, I’m organizing my questions by themes, and these themes end up forming a natural funnel of focus from broad impact on public media organizations to specific tactics for action. Here’s a sampling:

• Theme: Future of Society 

  • Does public media require democracy to exist, or can it exist in (a competitive) authoritarian society?

  • Societal disruptions come in cycles, when do we expect this one to subside?

• Theme: Future of Media 

  • What futures seem pre-determined right now? What seems inevitable to you?

  • What outcomes do we want to create in the future?

  • What is the role of AI in content ideation, creation, and distribution?

    • Will the attention economy become the intention economy?

  • What is the role of a next-gen (spatial) internet (e.g. a metaverse) for media and our role relative to it?

  • If public media’s original role was to bring a certain set of values to 20th century mass media (i.e. broadcast), what sectors of the 21st century media landscape need a similar injection of our values?

• Theme: Defining Public Media (If we save public media, what are we saving?)

  • Is public media a set of medium-agnostic values that manifest themselves through content and experiences?

    • If so, what is valued?

    • Can public media include algorithms?

    • Can public media include “safe spaces” in a spatial internet?

    • Can public media include games (tipping my hand with this one, I know 😉)?

  • Or is public media simply an editorial + technical approach to creating media?

  • Or is public media just a portfolio brands and the content/products that make them resonant with audiences?

  • What do our stakeholders and communities think public media is and what do they value in it (the product approach)?

• Theme: A Public Media Organization’s Purpose 

  • What problem(s) are we trying to solve? And for whom?

  • What outcomes we want to see as a result of our work/product/experiences?

  • How do we define communities and then prioritize them? (And for that matter, what is community?)

  • If AI is seemingly going to have a homogenizing effect, can public media elevate the “human” perspective or point of view?

• Theme: Organizational Culture 

  • How do we translate organizational purpose into a daily lived experience that supports our teams and our colleagues?

• Theme: Organizational Strategy/Tactics 

  • How do we translate purpose through the force magnifier of culture to arrive at specific strategies and subsequent tactics?

  • How do we treat strategies as experiments (as opposed to destinations on a map that we must reach by a certain time threshold) and use a sprint to ideate, test, iterate, test, and so on?

I’m not sure these are all the right questions, or if they are worded in the most effective way. But consider them a starter pack. Perfect can definitely be the enemy of the good here…none of us are going to kick that particular public media habit overnight.

We’re beginning engage this process in Nebraska, having collectively generated about three dozen questions at this point. And in full disclosure, I omitted the questions created by my colleagues because I didn’t have their permission to share them here. So the ones you see above are just out of my brain. Suffice to say, their questions make our process better, and I’d encourage you to work with your peers on this, not go it alone.

In that spirit, send me the questions you are considering! I’d love to consider them too.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Tutorials…

Creative Hustle (Thursday, August 21, 1pET/10aPT)
Join Creative Hustle authors Olatunde Sobomehin and sam seidel from the Stanford d.school for an energizing conversation about charting your own creative path — one that connects your gifts, goals, and the communities you care about. Whether you’re an educator, producer, or strategist, this session will offer tools and frameworks to help you think differently about ambition, values, and impact. Expect real talk, practical inspiration, and ideas you can use to reignite your own creative hustle.

Thoughts on Public Media…

Introducing Adopt A Station (Alex Curley - Semipublic) 
Key Line: "The process of “adopting” a station is easy: First, donate (or up your donation) to your local public media station. Then, the site will automatically recommend a station that’s losing 50% or more of their revenue to “adopt.” Afterwards, congratulations! You’ve adopted a station."
Why It Matters: Former NPR employee Curley is now covering public media as an outsider, and I'm intrigued. I like the product skew to his focus, but if you run marketing for a station (or like someone who does) you might share this with them to ensure your branding is consistent.
Related: Jump straight to the Adoption site.

The New Frontier in Media: Investing in Resilience and Innovation (Wesley Park - AInvest) 
Key Lines: "The CPB cuts are a wake-up call. Public broadcasting's vulnerabilities are real, but so is the potential for innovation. For investors, this is a chance to align capital with purpose—funding media that strengthens democracy while generating returns. The key is to avoid one-size-fits-all solutions. Success will belong to those who understand the unique needs of local communities and the power of trust as a currency."
Why It Matters: On the surface, this doesn't look like a piece on public media. But the old maxim of "follow the money" applies. Defunding CPB, rightly characterized as a "shockwave" event, is the catalyst for these recommendations on investing in local media. And the investing angle might feel crass, but even if you feel "aligning capital with purpose" is a bridge too far, it's a good perspective to interrogate.

Thoughts for My Public Media Colleagues (Steve Bass via LinkedIn) 
Key Line: "[T]here’s an even bigger challenge – how to adapt to the changes in society and media. The world will not stop changing and we’re already behind."
Why It Matters: There's a reason we chose Steve to speak at our Future of Public Media webinar last January. He's kind-hearted without sugar-coating things for you. His piece is short but provides many good points for rumination. Current picked it up as well.

AI + the Internet…

A Cash Infusion from Chatbots? (Yona TR Golding - Columbia Journalism Review) 
Key Lines: '...[I]n his experience, even the kind of change that seems most unlikely can happen with time. “I’m in this for a decade-long effort to shift people’s views,” Gross said. “I think that long term, the right side of history will be protecting creative rights....”Creators need to have a reason for doing their creative work,” Gross said. “If that goes away, if there’s no incentive, then everything will all turn to AI slop.” He paused for a moment. “We’ll all be AI slop.”'
Why It Matters: For a while, I've been advocating for harping on this idea that we should be finding ways to monetize our content with the AI companies that are scraping our sites on a daily basis. Maybe there are deals in the works behind the scenes. I hope there are, but as someone once said, ‘hope is not a strategy.’ Tools are emerging that could handle this for us, and ProRata is one that is intriguing me (Tollbit is another). We're beginning to research these now, and if there's anything here to report I'll let you know.

Google’s latest core update leaves publishers rattled, but its consequences are still to be determined (Sara Guaglione - Digiday) 
Key Line: "Publishers’ visibility on Google search results has fallen since 2019, but this trend has accelerated sharply since April, according to a recent report by Enders Analysis. And since March, publishers’ search keywords have become over three times more likely to trigger an AI Overview. For now, the impact on publishers’ businesses is minimal, according to the analysis. Publishers’ discoverability and top-of-the-funnel brand awareness are most at risk."
Why It Matters: There's a lot of handwringing around "Google Zero." I appreciated that this piece took a more measured tone.
Related: As reported by Emma Roth in The Verge, Google rethinks search results with its new AI-curated ‘Web Guide’ 

AI + Content Creation…

The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work (Jason Koebler - 404 Media) 
Key Line: "The only journalism business strategy that works, and that will ever work in a sustainable way, is if you create something of value that people (human beings, not bots) want to read or watch or listen to, and that they cannot find anywhere else. This can mean you’re breaking news, or it can mean that you have a particularly notable voice or personality. It can mean that you’re funny or irreverent or deeply serious or useful. It can mean that you confirm people’s priors in a way that makes them feel good. And you have to be trustworthy, to your audience at least. But basically, to make money doing journalism, you have to publish “content,” relatively often, that people want to consume."
Why It Matters: There's no one "right" take on AI in media. We're all figuring this out together in real time. This is a particularly spicy counter-take to the conventional wisdom that AI is inevitable. There are some aspects of this argument that appeal to me, but I don't think the path is all in or all out. I get why people feel they need to occupy those poles of the argument, but a middle path that does prioritize humans should be mappable.

Powerful new Photoshop innovations for creators and creative pros (Deepa Subramaniam - Adobe Blog) 
Key Line: "We’re introducing Generative Upscale in beta for Photoshop on desktop and web, bringing high-quality resolution enhancements up to 8 megapixels without sacrificing image clarity. If you're a photographer, Generative Upscale is helpful for refining edits and especially useful for enhancing image quality for print, delivery, or reworking older files. If you're a social media manager, it can also be useful to help you adapt assets for various platforms."
Why It Matters: Since so many of us use Adobe tools in our work I like highlight their occasional advances. If used ethically, I can easily see how this generative upscale could improve the quality of our content.
Related: Sarah Fielding's take on the new Photoshop feature for Engadget.

Netflix is now using generative AI – but it risks leaving viewers and creatives behind (Edward White - The Conversation) 
Key Lines: "Netflix’s generative AI approach marks a fundamental shift. Instead of building digital scenes piece by piece, artists simply describe what they want and algorithms generate full sequences instantly. This turns a slow, laborious craft into something more like a creative conversation. But it also raises tough questions. Are we seeing a new stage of technology – or the replacement of human creativity with algorithmic guesswork? El Eternauta’s building collapse scene demonstrates this transformation starkly. What would once have demanded months of modelling, rigging and simulation work has been accomplished through text-to-video generation in a fraction of the time."
Why It Matters: Hollywood is doing a lot of handwringing over generative AI, but we don't have that luxury anymore (if we ever really did). I still advocate for a code of ethics around the use of AI (and a policy to back it up), but if you can improve your workflows then you should be exploring those options. That doesn’t mean we can’t prioritize and celebrate humans (“People first, people last). We just need to do it cost effectively.
Related: Steven Zeitchik's Rise of the Machines: Inside Hollywood’s AI Civil War, n The Hollywood Reporter.
Also related: THR's piece by Chris Gardner, Daniel Kwan Has a Plan to Tackle AI’s Hollywood Takeover and It Requires “Unprecedented” Action 

AI + Education…

OpenAI launches Study Mode in ChatGPT (Maxwell Zeff - TechCrunch) 
Key Line: "Study Mode is OpenAI’s attempt to address the millions of students who use ChatGPT in school. Studies have shown that using ChatGPT can be a helpful tutor for young people, but it also may harm their critical thinking skills. A research paper released in June found that people who use ChatGPT to write essays exhibit lower brain activity during the process compared to those who use Google Search or nothing at all."
Why It Matters: AI may be new, but some things never change, in this case the urge to hook 'em while there young. We saw deals for college students back in May, but here they're aiming younger.
Related: James O'Donnell has a critique of OpenAI's new initiative in MIT Technology Review. 
Also related: The editorial Writing is Thinking from Nature is definitely giving me a some strong confirmation bias vibes.

AI & Us…

‘AI is already eating its own’: Prompt engineering is quickly going extinct (Henry Chandonnet - Fast Company) 
Key Lines: "At the beginning of the corporate AI boom, some companies sought out large language model (LLM) translators—prompt engineers who specialized in crafting the most effective questions to ask internal AIs, ensuring optimal and efficient outputs. Today, strong AI prompting is simply an expected skill, not a stand-alone role. Some companies are even using AI to generate the best prompts for their own AI systems. The decline of prompt engineering serves as a cautionary tale for the AI job market. The flashy, niche roles that emerged with ChatGPT’s rise may prove to be short-lived. While AI is reshaping roles across industries, it may not be creating entirely new ones."
Why It Matters: Well, that was fast. It took the better part of 5-7 years for the equivalent social media jobs to become de rigueur. The scary part is the rising assumption that you will know how to coax value out of a chatbot or that you yourself will start to have diminishing value as an employee.

AI is driving down the price of knowledge – universities have to rethink what they offer (Patrick Dodd - The Conversation) 
Key Lines: "Universities can no longer rely on scarcity setting the price for the curated and credentialed form of information that used to be hard to obtain. The comparative advantage now lies in cultivating human skills that act as complements to AI. If universities do not adapt, the market – students and employers alike – will move on without them. The opportunity is clear. Shift the product from content delivery to judgement formation."
Why It Matters: This one is for all of you university employees out there. I know you can feel your world changing, because we can feel it in Nebraska. Things have been different in education for a good 15 years now. This piece is one of those gentle breezes that announces a coming storm, and I really like the idea that the university's role is to teach judgement. A lot of universities are trying to sell the social experience of college life as the value proposition. But unless there's a financial upside to graduating college, college will go back to being a club for wealthy folks. Employers prizing judgement and universities prioritizing judgement could be that missing link.

And finally…

An AI-generated band got 1m plays on Spotify. Now music insiders say listeners should be warned (Lanre Bakare - The Guardian) - And finally, I finally gave The Velvet Sundown a listen. The lyrics are very reminiscent of what I've randomly generated via Suno, when I've experimented with that app. And by that, I mean they make almost no sense…like, whole songs made up of the filler lines that songwriters use to get in and out of tight rhyming schemes. Obtuse lyrics aren't a problem, but this makes me realize that when they come out of a human, they provide the promise of some potential insight into the human condition. When they come out of AI, they feel like (to use the word of the moment) slop.
Related: Apparently, Spotify is all in on AI music, based on this piece by Emanuel Maiberg in 404 Media: Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission

Have a creative, productive week!

Image Generated with Firefly Image 4

Image Credit: GBH

Hi all. I know it’s a dark week for a lot of us. Knowing that federal defunding of public media isn’t really the will of the people just feels unjust. Let that feeling of outrage free your mind. We can do things differently….

But First…

Given the events of last week, I think our July webinar on Uncertainty was way more relevant than we ever imagined when we booked Maggie to talk to us. If you missed any part of it or want to see it again, the video is now live. More than ever, you’ll feel the urge to gravitate toward anyone who presents a certain view of the future but, as we learned from Maggie, uncertainty can be ripe with possibility. For the foreseeable future, beware anyone who offers you a vision of a certain future for public media. Watch, and Maggie will explain why.

We also announced our August webinar (which will be back in the usual ‘3rd Thursday’ slot. You can register now for Creative Hustle (and find the full description in the webinar section below).

Is PBS Punk? Now, It Must Be.  

With apologies to the late British PM Margaret Thatcher - ‘if you have to tell people you are [punk], you aren’t.’

I understand the impulse to appropriate the punk iconography used in the officially licensed “PBS is Punk” merch from Two Crow Collective, which was getting a lot of buzz earlier this week. I appreciate that people who identify as punk may have an affinity for the PBS brand and want to support us (some of the proceeds from the sales will go to the PBS Foundation). But I had mixed feeling on seeing the merch and it ultimately led me to the conclusion that we have yet to live up to the aspirations embedded in the cheeky design.

I wish PBS was punk. I would be proud if PBS was punk. Those of us working in public media should aspire to be more punk (and hip hop…but that’s not my essay to write). Punk is anti-authoritarian. Punk is local. Punk is DIY. Punk is authentic. Punk is kindness supporting community.

When you look at what punk is - at the values of punk - PBS should be punk. And after this past week, we need to embrace that punk spirit and those punk values more than at any point in our history.

We can do things differently. We don’t have to be bureaucracies that keep trying to execute the same work with fewer and fewer people. The status quo is dead. But the values of public media transcend content types, platforms and experiences. We need fresh leadership that understands that vision and helps us build a future that supports that vision. If you’re reading these words, it’s time to step up.

So, a challenge: Make punks proud. Do your part to make public media punk. Help your station elevate voices that rise against the status quo - both creators and those who don’t know how to create yet - and that can’t be heard because their voice isn’t profitable to a corporation. Find those people with a fire inside for DIY culture in your area and help channel their experience to a wider audience. Climb your wall of cringe as a station and show your local communities just how authentically local your love of your community can be.

And while you’re organizing yourselves, if you want to really want to let your punk flag fly, you could do worse than wear the Arthur-fist t-shirt being sold by GBH. (Bonus points if you also rip out the collar or sleeves.)

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Tutorials…

Creative Hustle (Thursday, August 21, 1pET/10aPT)
Join Creative Hustle authors Olatunde Sobomehin and sam seidel from the Stanford d.school for an energizing conversation about charting your own creative path — one that connects your gifts, goals, and the communities you care about. Whether you’re an educator, producer, or strategist, this session will offer tools and frameworks to help you think differently about ambition, values, and impact. Expect real talk, practical inspiration, and ideas you can use to reignite your own creative hustle.

The Neuron Prompt Tips of the Day—June 2025 (Grant Harvey - The Neuron) - The Neuron continues to be one of my go-to sources for day-to-day updates on advances in the world of AI. The copy editing is a bit lax, but the ideas behind the prompts are good and if you are looking to get better at generative AI prompting this is a good place to start.

Thoughts on Public Media…

What to Do Now About Public Broadcasting (Richard Tofel - Second Rough Draft) 
Key Line: "I worry especially that too many in and around public broadcasting are reacting to this watershed moment by repeating the critical error made by those metro papers: trying to preserve as much of what has gone before as possible, rather than seizing the moment to reinvent a system, and many of its components, that for far too long had remained unvarying and poorly adapted to a changing media landscape."
Why It Matters: The drop line speaks to me as well: "Rescission needs to be followed by innovation, not just restoration." He's talking about you...the person reading this newsletter. I’ll repeat what I said above, the status quo is dead. Without federal funding, I’m not even sure we can call ourselves “public” media any more. We may just be non-profit media now. Same values. Fresh perspective.

Clawback of $1.1b for PBS and NPR Puts Rural Stations at Risk – And Threatens a Vital Source Of Journalism (Allison Perlman & Josh Shepperd - Katie Couric Media) 
Key Line: “Why is public media necessary when there’s news on the internet? As journalism revenue has plummeted, public broadcasting has remained a vital source for news in communities across the nation. This is especially true in rural communities, where economic and political pressures have threatened the survival of local journalism. In addition, with much online news coverage placed behind paywalls, public radio and television plays an important role in making quality journalism available to the American public.”
Why It Matters: Friends of the newsletter, Allison and Josh originally penned this piece for the website The Conversation (if they sound familiar, you saw them in our February webinar on the history of public broadcasting). I'm including it as a way of showing how wide and deep the message is spreading.

Thousands of BBC jobs at risk as broadcaster considers major outsourcing drive (Michael Savage - The Guardian) 
Key Line: "The plans being considered include the offshoring of jobs currently carried out in the UK, with the BBC understood to be talking to US tech giants as potential partners. It is said to include the outsourcing of recommendation algorithms, which direct users to content."
Why It Matters: When things get bad, one of my mom's favorite phrases is, "Things are tough all over." This certainly applies here. I know I often think of Auntie Beeb as be a very wealthy aunt indeed. But the world is changing for all of us in media.
Related: On the other hand, in BroadbandTV News Julian Clover reports Record revenues for BBC Commercial 

Games…

‘Streak mechanism’ found to be key with Gen Z on gamified news app (Alice Brooker - PressGazette) 
Key Line: "Newsreel provides a similar experience to language-learning app Duolingo, offering three stories per day with an emphasis on politics and foreign affairs. The reading experience includes articles broken into small chunks, interspersed with videos and quizzes to test whether the user is taking in the information. Users log a “streak” by using the app on consecutive days and reading every story."
Why It Matters: The "infinite scroll" and "the streak" are key ways games have boosted engagement for years. How can tactics from the world of game design boost our engagement and impact?

UNO goes clubbing: Inside Mattel’s wild new plan to reinvent game night (Emily Price - Fast Company) 
Key Line: "These aren’t family-friendly sit-downs with juice boxes—they’re designed with Gen Z sensibilities in mind. Attendees can win custom Uno merch, product packs, and exclusive giveaways while battling it out over classic Uno and its variations. The point is less about who wins and more about the connection and memories made along the way. Mattel chose venues specifically for their Gen Z appeal—places that already host game nights, trivia, or other community events—so Uno fans don’t have to shift their habits to show up."
Why It Matters: IRL ways to reinforce community be a huge boon. Anyone with a talented outreach department already knows this. So, can you begin hosting your own station-sponsored or station-hosted game night in your core service area(s)?
Related: It's not all casinos either, as reported by Scott Stump on the Today Show website.

AI + the Internet…

How Google AI Overviews is fueling zero-click searches for top publishers (Charlotte Tobitt - PressGazette) 
Key Line: '“The inverse relationship suggests that users are increasingly getting answers directly on the results page, without clicking through to publishers. For news organisations, this shift marks a critical inflection point: visibility alone may no longer translate into traffic, challenging long-standing assumptions about the value of ranking in search." Websites that choose to opt out of Google’s AI scraping must also opt out of being shown in search results, unless they choose to be shown in only the less attractive “no snippet” format that shows users less information.'
Why It Matters: While the idea of "Google Zero" (i.e., the end of referral traffic from Google) is an exaggeration, the fears underpinning it are based in real data. It will only get more difficult to monetize web traffic in the future. So, you'll need other options for increase time on site (might I suggest games?).

Publishers facing existential threat from AI, Cloudflare CEO says (Christine Wang - Axios) 
Key Line: "The future of the web is going to be more and more like AI, and that means that people are going to be reading the summaries of your content, not the original content."
Why It Matters: Cloudflare has created some buzz in recent weeks for vowing to level the playing field for its creator clients with the rapidly increasing number of bots crawling sites. Compensation for content is going to continue to be a hot topic for conversation for the remainder of this decade.
Related: Also from Axios, Scott Rosenburg's AI leaves web in the lurch.
Also Related:

NotebookLM adds featured notebooks from The Economist, The Atlantic, and others (Sarah Perez - TechCrunch) 
Key Line: "The initial collection, which includes notebooks from The Economist, The Atlantic, as well as professors, authors, and even Shakespeare’s works, is designed to offer users working examples of how NotebookLM can be used to delve deeper into subjects of interest. NotebookLM users will be able to read the original source material, but also ask questions, explore topics, and get answers that include citations, according to Google. You can also listen to pre-generated Audio Overviews or browse the notebook’s main themes with the app’s Mind Maps feature."
Why It Matters: This feels ripe for our educational mission and, for me, takes NotebookLM from being a "gadget" to being a platform.
Related: Try featured notebooks on selected topics in NotebookLM 

AI + Content Creation…

Adobe’s new AI tool turns silly noises into realistic audio effects (Jess Weatherbed - The Verge) 
Key Line: "The Generate Sound Effects tool that’s launching in beta on the Firefly app can be used with recorded and generated footage, and provides greater control over audio generation than Google’s Veo 3 video tool. The interface resembles a video editing timeline and allows users to match the effects they create in time with uploaded footage."
Why It Matters: This is one of those advances which doesn't seem very sexy but could be incredibly useful. Pro foley artists and sound designers will poo-poo and tut-tut, but this is going to help a lot of budget strapped creators who don't have resources to hire a pro.
Related: Andy Stout of Red Shark News reports on some of the other product announcements from Adobe in Adobe adds increasingly powerful video capabilities, Topaz, Moonvalley, and more to Firefly AI

Google adds image-to-video generation capability to Veo 3 (Ivan Mehta - TechCrunch) 
Key Line: "Google said that users can generate a clip by selecting the “Videos” option from the tool menu in the prompt box and uploading a photo. You can also add sound by describing the audio in the prompt. Once the video is generated, you can download it or share it with others."
Why It Matters: In Nebraska, we're doing some tests around this very tech, so Google's announcement was timely. I hope to have a more detailed report out on those experiments later this summer, but for now we're watching this space closely.

Agentic AI…

OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent can control an entire computer and do tasks for you (Hayden Field - The Verge)
Key Lines: "The model behind ChatGPT Agent, which has no specific name, was trained on complex tasks that require multiple tools — like a text browser, visual browser, and terminal where users can import their own data — via reinforcement learning, the same technique used for all of OpenAI’s reasoning models. OpenAI said that ChatGPT Agent combines the capabilities of both Operator and Deep Research, two of its existing AI tools...Before ChatGPT Agent does anything “irreversible,” like sending an email or making a booking, it asks for permission first, Fulford said."
Why It Matters: This new product dropped late in the week (possibly in reaction to Perplexity's Comet browser) and immediately generated a lot of buzz. Agentic AI is still only about where generative AI was in early 2023. Lots of press but lots of users trying to figure out what is the true value.
Related: Read Dan Shipper's review of ChatGPT Agent at: Vibe Check: OpenAI Enters the Browser Wars With ChatGPT Agent 

Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser (Maxwell Zeff - TechCrunch) 
Key Line: "Comet’s headline feature is Perplexity’s AI search engine, which is pre-installed and set as the default, putting the company’s core product — AI generated summaries of search results — front and center. Users can also access Comet Assistant, a new AI agent from Perplexity that lives in the web browser and aims to automate routine tasks. Perplexity says the assistant can summarize emails and calendar events, manage tabs, and navigate web pages on behalf of users. Users can access Comet Assistant by opening a sidecar on any web page, which lets the AI agent see what’s on the web page and answer questions about it."
Why It Matters: I'm undecided on whether agentic AI will conquer the web, the desktop, or the mobile device first. My money is on mobile, but of course the three aren't mutually exclusive. The rollout of Comet was getting a lot of buzz up until OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT Agent. And they are rumored to be readying a browser for launch as well. I haven't be able to try Comet yet, but if you have, let me know.
Related: Here's a review from one Alvaro Cintas on X: Perplexity Comet is scary GOOD. 
Also Related: Emma Roth’s piece from The Verge in May: Google has a big AI advantage: it already knows everything about you

AI & Us…

You sound like ChatGPT (Sara Parker - The Verge)
Key Line: "In the 18 months after ChatGPT was released, speakers used words like “meticulous,” “delve,” “realm,” and “adept” up to 51 percent more frequently than in the three years prior, according to researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, who analyzed close to 280,000 YouTube videos from academic channels. The researchers ruled out other possible change points before ChatGPT’s release and confirmed these words align with those the model favors, as established in an earlier study comparing 10,000 human- and AI-edited texts. The speakers don’t realize their language is changing. That’s exactly the point."
Why It Matters: Humans impact the development of technologies, technologies impact human development, and so it goes. TV did this, the internet did this, social media did this (see Aleksic’s article below), and now AI is doing it as well. Some will wring there hands at this, just as some wrung there hands at the advent of the printing press. But this time it's different, they say. No, it's not. We adapt.
Related: The Great Language Flattening by Victoria Turk in The Atlantic.
Also related: Adam Aleksic's How incel language infected the mainstream internet — and brought its toxicity with it (read this one especially if you don't know what "incel" is).

The sound of inevitability (Tom Renner) 
Key Line: "One of my close friends won international debate competitions for fun while we were at university (he’s now a successful criminal barrister), and he told me that the only trick in the book, once you boil it all down, is to make sure the conversation is framed in your terms. Once that happens, it’s all over bar the shouting."
Why It Matters: Here's a contrarian perspective on this AI moment. I agree with his premise on framing, but I also do think that AI -in some form - is an inevitability. It doesn't have to be Zuckerberg's or Musk's or China's or the Emirates', but there's a convergence of computing trends that will only be forestalled by a total Station 11-style breakdown of society.

And finally…

AI videos are tricking tourists into visiting places that don’t exist. That’s just the beginning (Jesus Diaz - Fast Company) - And finally, remember what you mom told you about things that look too good to be true?

Have a creative, productive week!

Image Credit: Two Crow Collective

Image generated with Google ImageFX

Hi all. This week we’re catching up on whole host of topics around AI and SEO, education, journalism, video, photography, and the future of the internet. We’ve also got a piece on The Atlantics new games initiative, and finally, we’ll bid farewell to the blue screen of death.

But First…

A quick welcome to our new subscribers from PBS, Bowling Green, Alaska and Maryland Public Television! I’m happy to finally be getting back to this newsletter. I’ve been working on quite a few things over the past few weeks that will start popping up here in the next few weeks. So watch this space.

Webinars galore

And we’ve got a webinar today. A lot of you have already signed up (thank you!) but there is still time. Learning to Harness Uncertainty, a session with journalist and social critic Maggie Jackson, inspired by he acclaimed book Uncertain. We all know this is a very uncertain time for public media, and she’ll share you how uncertainty can actually fuel better decision-making, resilience, and creativity. You can read a more detailed description in the Webinars for You section below, or register here!

Looking back a quick thank you to all of you who attended our webinar, The 50+ Gaming Audience That You’re Overlooking. It was a good one, and worth checking out if you missed it, as this is one of the next frontiers for public media content creators.

And then, we actually are ready to give you a sneak peek of our August webinar. We’ll be joined by Creative Hustle authors Olatunde Sobomehin and sam seidel from the Stanford d.school for an energizing conversation about charting your own creative path — one that connects your gifts, goals, and the communities you care about. Whether you’re an educator, producer, or strategist, this session will offer tools and frameworks to help you think differently about ambition, values, and impact. Expect real talk, practical inspiration, and ideas you can use to reignite your own creative hustle.

We should have registration live for that next week and there’ll be a link in this newsletter (because there’ll be another exploration next week…I promise!).

Iterating on the Wrong Things

Shifting gears, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we often describe broadcast as a workflow or a product when, in reality, it acts as a governing philosophy—a top-down, one-to-many doctrine of service. This mindset still shapes how many public media organizations define their mission, design their operations, and measure success.

The problem? That worldview no longer matches the world we’re in. Audiences today expect portfolios of services—personalized, participatory, and available across platforms. They seek content that reflects their local realities, identities, and values. But instead of embracing this new logic, many public media organizations are trying to evolve out of a broadcast business without shedding the broadcast belief system that underpins it.

If you started a public media service today, you wouldn’t start with the broadcast mindset. Nonprofit newsrooms don’t. Independent creators and influencers don’t. Mission-driven startups in media and tech don’t. They begin with community, interaction, data, and user agency—not with schedule grids and centralized control.

Until we shift this mindset, we’ll keep iterating on the wrong things. Broadcast thinking isn’t just outdated—it’s a gravitational pull that distorts how we approach innovation. It keeps us focused on scaling reach instead of deepening engagement. It tells us our job is to program content, not co-create it with the people we serve. And it discourages us from exploring models that don’t flow from a transmitter or adhere to legacy notions of control.

We need a new public media doctrine. One that is bottom-up, user-first, and grounded in local relevance—not national scheduling. One that recognizes public service today is defined by adaptability, not consistency; by trust and responsiveness, not just signal reach.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars for You

Learning to Harness Uncertainty (Thursday, July 10, 2025. 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM ET) 

It’s hard to imagine a more uncertain year for public media. In a year filled with challenges and unknowns, many of us are craving clarity, stability, and answers. But what if certainty isn’t what we need most right now? What if learning to navigate uncertainty is actually the key to moving forward? This month, instead of focusing on technical tools or platforms, we’re turning our attention to how we think, adapt, and lead in uncertain times.

Drawing on her acclaimed book Uncertain Links to an external site., journalist and social critic Maggie Jackson will explore the new scientific discoveries that are upending our outdated notions of unsureness as weakness. Productive uncertainty fuels agility, curiosity, resilience, and creativity, the skills most needed in volatile times. In this session, Maggie will explore three key modes of uncertainty-in-action for 2025, plus proven strategies for wielding unsureness to boost decision-making, team performance, and personal well-being.

There’s still time to register here!

AI + Search & SEO

Neil Vogel on Google Zero (Brian Morrissey - The Rebooting) 
Key Line: "All publishers have needed to prepare for Google Zero, the extreme case where Google traffic stops. Of course, Google Zero is an extreme scenario, yet it’s pragmatic to be prepared for disaster scenarios. 'We literally call it Google Zero,' Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel told me recently at the Media Product Forum. 'What happens if Google just stops sending traffic altogether? That’s not a doomsday plan—it’s a working scenario.'”
Why It Matters: We've already seen data that web traffic is dropping to sites across the internet. This won't hit all public media companies equally, as some of you have been more successful than others at monetizing site traffic. "Data-driven" has been a mantra of public media consultants for the better part of the last decade, and I'm not saying that is bad. But digital ground is shifting under our feet, and even if your corporate support teams aren't selling CPMs a data-drive org or department needs to be ready to explain this shift to boards (or C-suites). I'd suggest laying that groundwork now.
🔈Listen: You can also jump straight to the podcast episode. 
Related: For a more practical take on how Dotdash Meredith confronting the AI future head on, checkout this podcast episode of Pete Pachal’s “The Media Copilot”: Dotdash Meredith’s bold bet on AI—and why it might actually work 
Also Related: Ahrefs reports in its blog on data detailing how AI is impacting search: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%

The Washington Post partners with OpenAI on search content (WashingtonPost PR) 
Key Line: "This partnership reflects a shared commitment to making reliable, factual information easier to find and engage with, especially on complex or fast-moving topics, where timely, well-sourced reporting, like that of The Post, matters most. ChatGPT will highlight The Post’s journalism across politics, global affairs, business, technology, and more, always with clear attribution and direct links to full articles so people can explore topics in greater depth and context."
Why It Matters: Again, I ask, is anyone working on a deal for public media relative to AI? I know some of you will respond that we are all fighting for our lives here. And my response is, okay, but if we survive the frying pan what does it matter when another fire is awaiting us.

AI & The Future of Journalism

A 30-minute AI strategy for news (Frank Mungeam - Local Media Association)
Key Lines: "At the annual conference of the Colorado Press Association, I led a mix of 30 news leaders in conversations that set out to do just that. This group included managers, reporters, technologists, academics and student journalists, and they tackled the challenge of coming up with a strategic plan for newsroom use of AI...Their insights are summarized below. The tactics are specific and actionable; more importantly, the process is repeatable in any news organization. The lesson? Asking the right questions, having a participatory process and including diverse voices can generate immediate, thoughtful and impactful actions that an entire team supports. Here’s the four-step process we followed, and the takeaways that emerged."
Why It Matters: Mungeam offers a good framework for getting started with AI in your department (whether it's news or not). And getting started is the key. Honestly, it matters way less where you start, just so long as you start.
Related: Check out the World Association of News Publishers piece "‘No longer optional’: Why AI is now a strategic priority for journalism"

Economist president Luke Bradley-Jones on building a moat to defend against AI (Dominic Ponsford - PressGazette) 
Key Line: "He said: “You have to really emotionally commit to being a subscription-first business, if that’s what you’re trying to be. I think many businesses that had a very significant advertising revenue stream have tried to hold on to that, and that’s made it harder to build a subscription business...Then you have to work out what are your areas of real differentiation. It’s a very, very competitive market out there. I come from an entertainment streaming world where you had exclusive shows and movies, and that’s how you drove differentiation.” For The Economist, he said, that differentiation comes not through news reporting, but by providing in-depth analysis in the areas it has defined as core strengths.“
Why It Matters: While we don't necessarily run a subscription model here in public media, we do get pushed in that direction by platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Substack. The bottom line is having a clear understanding of who you are as an organization and then also understanding your value proposition in the eyes of your audience. This isn't anything you have't heard before, and I'm not presenting it to you as a revelation. But it's a good touchstone idea to revisit periodically.
Related: Tom Butts and Phil Kurtz reported last winter in TVTech about Scripps and Gray Media’s independent leadership investments into AI.

AI & The Future of Education

Teachers union partners with Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI to launch AI-training academy (Mary Cunningham - CBS News) 
Key Line: "While some educators have expressed concern over being replaced by AI, AFT said it seeks to embrace the technology in a way that protects teachers' place at the head of the classroom. With this in mind, the foundation said reached out to tech companies for their assistance in developing the AI-training academy."
Why It Matters: There was a lot of chatter about AI in education at the end of the last school year. I know that AI in the classroom is not everyone's first choice, but I'd rather see trained educators at the table and receiving training from model creators (to supplement the clever hacks reported on YouTube and Substack).
ICYMI: The White House issued a related executive order in April: Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth 

Explore insights from the AI in Education Report (Microsoft Education Team) Key Lines: “Key takeaways from the AI in Education Report include: Start AI conversations today. There is an urgent need to communicate clearly and openly about AI, increase AI literacy, and create usage guidelines at educational organizations. Learn how AI can help. There is a clear opportunity for AI to help educators and administrators lighten workloads, boost productivity, and improve efficiency. Explore new ways to learn with AI. Early studies demonstrate the potential of AI to improve educational experiences and learning outcomes. Prepare for the workplace of the future. Students need to build people skills and technical capacity to prepare for a world transformed by AI.”
Why It Matters: Microsoft's report provides some helpful context around the topic of AI in Education, but you obviously want to take it with a grain of salt given how deep Microsoft's investment is in AI.

AI & The Future of the Internet

Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features (Miranda Bryant - The Guardian) 
Key Line: "The changes to Danish copyright law will, once approved, theoretically give people in Denmark the right to demand that online platforms remove such content if it is shared without consent. It will also cover “realistic, digitally generated imitations” of an artist’s performance without consent. Violation of the proposed rules could result in compensation for those affected. The government said the new rules would not affect parodies and satire, which would still be permitted."
Why It Matters: Europe continues to lead when it comes to ideas for protecting people against digital exploitation. Some will say that regulation like this stifles 10x innovation and is why Europeans can never lead like the USA in the AI space, to which I say, "yes, that's absolutely true. And thank goodness for Europe."

AI + Video

‘Surpassing all my expectations’: Midjourney releases first AI video model amid Disney, Universal lawsuit (Carl Franzen - VentureBeat) 
Key Line: "The launch lands at a time when AI video generation is rapidly becoming one of the most competitive corners of the generative AI landscape. Tech giants, venture-backed startups, and open-source projects are all moving fast....Midjourney’s bet appears to be on simplicity and cost-effectiveness—a “good enough” solution priced for scale—but that also means it launches without many advanced features now standard in the premium AI video tier."
Why It Matters: If for no other reason, you should click through to this article just to take a screenshot of the helpful grid mapping out the major generative video tools, their prices, and key features.

AI Tools for Video Editing That Are Actually Useful In 2025 (Matt Gregory - RedShark News) 
Key Line: "The good news is, some AI tools have moved well beyond gimmick territory. They're solving real-world post-production challenges: speeding up tedious tasks, improving quality, and unlocking new creative options. Here are six AI-powered tools that we have tested, tried and believe are genuinely useful for working and aspiring video editors."
Why It Matters: While most of the focus around AI video goes to generating the video, the real efficiencies can be found in editing (with fewer, though not nonexistent ethical quandaries). So it was nice to run across this post. Share it with the editor that makes you (or your organization's) work look good.

James Cameron Is Sizing Up AI With the Idea That It Can Cut the Cost of a Blockbuster in Half (Alex Weprin - The Hollywood Reporter) 
Key Line: 'When it comes to the controversial question of “training” AI models, Cameron seemed to suggest that regulators and lawyers should be more focused on the output of AI programs and tech, rather than the inputs and training data. “A lot of the a lot of the hesitation in Hollywood and entertainment in general, are issues of the source material for the training data, and who deserves what, and copyright protection and all that sort of thing. I think people are looking at it all wrong,” Cameron told Bosworth. “I’m an artist. Anybody that’s an artist, anybody that’s a human being, is a model. You’re a model already, you’ve got a three and a half pound meat computer."'
Why It Matters: The notion of focusing on the outputs makes sense to me. We do this already, especially relative to music and unintentional copying (think The Rolling Stones and k.d. lang, or Sam Smith and Tom Petty). Of course an argument against this is that the scale of AI creations make it hard to sue all the copyright infringements that could happen. But maybe that's because the law is at human scale, and we need new laws that function at AI scale.
Related: Cameron's comments triggered a 'quality over quantity' response from Netflix's Ted Sarandos, as reported by Dade Hayes in Deadline.
Also related: Moonvalley just announced an 'ethically sourced' generative video model called Marey that could be worth exploring
And the Oscar Goes To: Liv McMahon reports for the BBC that Films made with AI can win Oscars, Academy says 

AI + Photography

How AI is ruining real photography. And yes, this image is real (Simon Wyndham - RedShark News) 
Key Line: "AI isn't just encroaching on modern image creation, but it is also ruining the images of old. And no, I'm not talking about poor image restoration, uncanny valley facial enhancement, or upscaling. Instead, I'm talking about our acceptance of what's real and what isn't."
Why It Matters: This is an interesting perspective. As a photographer, even when on a specific assignment, I'm most interested in capturing moments that will never happen again. Sometimes that yields a shot of which I'm proud. But just about any of those shots can be generated with AI now, so the context of the shot is more important than ever.
Related: Check our Arryn Robbins’ piece for The Conversation, AI-generated images can exploit how your mind works − here’s why they fool you and how to spot them
Also related: Kapture.co’s piece The Silent Collapse: Generative AI’s Erosion of Photo Licensing Revenue

Project Indigo: Adobe's powerful new computational photography app (Andy Stout - RedShark News) 
Key Line: "Photos produced by Indigo employ both computational photography and AI to produce what Adobe says is a natural (SLR-like) look for photos, including "special (but gentle)" treatment of subjects and skies. This look is applied when generating JPEG images and is embedded as a rendering suggestion in raw DNG files (if enabled)." Why It Matters: Photographers know the best camera (ever) is the one you have with you. And most of us have cameras with us all the time now. Computational photography is the one area where smartphones genuinely diversify themselves from the larger sensors of DSLRs, so this app might be worth tracking as it develops. I experimented with it on a recent trip to New Mexico and found that its color representation definitely needs some tuning. I also didn’t find that it’s HDR capabilities outmatched the native capabilities of the iPhone’s camera, but I’ll keep playing with it.
But You Don't Have to Take My Word for It: Read Adobe Research's own write-up on Project Indigo here.
Related: ICYMI, here’s a piece of Adobe AI news from Sabrina Ortiz at ZDNet: Adobe Photoshop is getting its first AI agent - here's what it can do for you 

Other Things AI Related

Sakana AI’s TreeQuest: Deploy multi-model teams that outperform individual LLMs by 30% (Ben Dickson - VentureBeat)
Key Line: 'Frontier AI models are evolving rapidly. However, each model has its own distinct strengths and weaknesses derived from its unique training data and architecture. One might excel at coding, while another excels at creative writing. Sakana AI’s researchers argue that these differences are not a bug, but a feature. “We see these biases and varied aptitudes not as limitations, but as precious resources for creating collective intelligence,” the researchers state in their blog post. They believe that just as humanity’s greatest achievements come from diverse teams, AI systems can also achieve more by working together. “By pooling their intelligence, AI systems can solve problems that are insurmountable for any single model.”'
Why It Matters: This is one of the many possible futures for how we might use AI. If you subscribe the "wisdom of crowds" theory, and I do, this makes a certain amount of intuitive sense. And it jibes with my early experiments with Chatbots. As I've said publicly, our first draft of our AI Policy was written by ChatGPT and edited by Claude. That combo gave me a great foundation to edit into the draft policy that went to NPM leadership...and saved loads of time (again, the human hours that went into the original policy - all people, all in - was about 40 hours).

Games

Introducing The Atlantic Games: A digital parlor of puzzles and play (The Atlantic) 
Key Line: “The Atlantic has seen record subscription growth in the past several years, and now has more subscribers than at any point in its history; Games add value to those subscribers, and offer the opportunity for discovery and play for new audiences.”
Why It Matters: I know games are a hard sell in the world of public media. Many think we're broadcasters to the core, and while I'd argue that games can be tools for broadcasting a message, in reality "broadcast" means linear stories told through a television set the way they were 30-40 years ago. To these folks, games are "irrelevant" (yes, that's an actual quote). And let major publishers with whom we share television audience (e.g., Washington Week with The Atlantic) are investing heavily in other types of interactions with these audiences. So, if you believe in games as one possible future for public media, take heart.
Related: Sarah Scire covered the announcement for NiemanLabs in Wordle who? The Atlantic launches a suite of new daily puzzles and games.

And finally…

Windows killed the Blue Screen of Death (Amanda Silberling - TechCrunch) 
And finally, R.I.P. BSOD.

Have a creative, productive week!

Image generated with Google ImageFX

Image Created with Gemini 2.5 + Firefly Generative Expand

Hi all. This week we’ve got big, future-of-the-internet news from Google I/O and Microsoft Build, the paradigm shifting release of Google’s Veo 3, pieces on AI and the future of work, and finally, a production of Hamlet filmed in the most unlikely of theaters.

But First…

A quick welcome to our new subscribers from WETA, PBS, WDSE, KXCI, New Hampshire PBS, and others!

It was great seeing so many old friends (not to mention making some new friends) at the PBS Annual Meeting in Atlanta and then at the PMBA meeting in Tucson the following week. While Atlanta was my 20-something^th annual meeting, Tucson was my first PMBA, and it always fun to talk to a new crowd about the confluence of emerging media and public media.

Back in the world of Zoom, I wasn’t able to attend last month’s PMI webinar, Applied AI for Public Media: Marketing, Social, and Digital Strategy, as I was on a plane back to Nebraska. But man, I heard from people about it almost immediately on landing, and y’all seemed to really vibe with it (especially the OpusClip tool, which was also mentioned in the AI breakout session at TechSum). If you missed any part, or want to watch the webinar again, the video recording of the webinar is now live.

We’ve also opened registration on our June 19 webinar, The 50+ Gaming Audience You’re Overlooking. You can read more about it in the Webinars section below, but let me just say here that I think this topic is key to unlocking the future of public media in the US. You don’t have to kick TV and radio completely to the curb, but if you aren’t making room for games in your service to your community, you are trading away your future as a public media institution.

In other housekeeping details, getting presentations ready for the PBS Annual Meeting and PMBA has sucked up a lot of time that would otherwise go to this newsletter. As a result, I’ve got 400+ open tabs in my Safari browser (still, after locking content on this exploration) and I’m getting a couple dozen new emails a day with info that might be of interest. So, I’m going to try and step up the pace of publishing over the next two weeks before I go back out on the road, just to catch us all up. I’m also changing up the format at bit, clustering content around topics, as opposed to news pieces and think pieces. It’s an evolving process, but let me know what you think.

Static 

One night a group of us were out at a Mexican restaurant in Atlanta, and I ordered a fizzy water. This confused the waitress.

• Me: You know like a Topo Chico or a LaCroix.

• Her: Um, I’m not sure. You mean like a club soda?

• Me: Me, maybe unless you have something bottled.

• Her: We have Mineragua.

• Me: Never heard of it. Is that fizzy?

• Her: <Looks confused> Hold on, I’ll ask. <Leaves/Returns>
  He said it’s like TV static in your mouth.

• Me: That sounds perfect!

Back at the meeting there was no shortage of TV static for our minds either. Some came from politics of the moment (broadly, folks at the conference showed mix of bruised spirits and ‘happy warrior’ resistance). But some of that static was also fed into the signal thanks to the keynote presentation on AI from Shelly Palmer.

Don’t get me wrong. Palmer is smart. I’ve linked to his work here before, probably should again, and, regardless, you should occasionally check out his blog. But his presentation to PBS was clearly a lightly tweaked version of his ‘scary-AI-talk-for-apprehensive-C-suite-audiences’ (which someone - you know who you are - astutely suggested might have originally been created for the packaged goods industry). Palmer, as they say, understood the assignment. The goal was clearly to shock the audience into thought, discussion and action. But it was also a talk that was meant to explode in front of you in the room and then not to be parsed much later (or for that matter, in real time either).

(I haven’t heard if they are going to post a video of the talk, but Palmer extensively referenced the Google I/O ‘25 keynote, and you can watch that here. He inexplicably also failed to reference the equally important Microsoft Build keynote, and you should check that out as well.)

If you weren’t there, and heard it was deeply concerning, take a breath. Palmer’s talk carried with it an assumption, that we were in public media are not taking this moment seriously enough. So, if you’re reading this - and especially if you’re reading this and you’ve seen me and my tech-forward compadres in a webinar or conference session - you know how this technology is developing, you know how fast it is developing, and you know the stakes.

You also know there are people in public media who are thinking daily about these issues the breakneck pace of the technological evolution means for public media. Just to name drop a few: Mikey at PBS, Erica at NPR, David in Sacramento, Nathalie in LA, Ernesto in SanFran, Natalie in SLC, Shane in Nashville, Jacqueline in Miami and many others.

That’s not to say that we can afford to take our foot off the accelerator and ride the clutch. But I left Palmer’s talk with a feeling of disconnect that I’ve decided is due to the fact that we’ve already started to figure this out.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Tutorials for You

The 50+ Gaming Audience You’re Overlooking (Thursday, June 19, 1pET/10aPT)
What if your next big audience growth opportunity wasn’t another TV show or podcast – but a game?

In this session, Dr. Brittne Kakulla, senior insights manager at AARP, shares groundbreaking research on the 50+ gaming community – a rapidly growing, highly engaged audience that public media can’t afford to overlook. From Wordle to digital puzzles and beyond, gaming is already a major part of daily life for millions of Americans 50 and older – the same audience public media proudly serves.

Learn why older gamers are an untapped opportunity, what they want from game experiences, and how public media organizations can think differently about intergenerational play, content, engagement, and innovation for this key demographic. Whether you’re in marketing, content, community engagement, or strategy, this conversation will spark new ideas for reaching audiences in playful and powerful ways. Register now!

PBS Standards Webinar: APA’s Generative AI Best Practices Tool Kit (Wednesday, June 25, 1pET) Friend-of-the-newsletter, Talia Rosen, and her team are organizing this hands-on tour of a new generative AI tool kit published by the Archival Producers Alliance (APA). Archival producers Rachel Antell and Kenn Rabin will present the new GenAI Best Practices Tool Kit recently published by the APA through a guided tour of the resources, and they will answer audience questions about putting the tool kit into practice. You can learn more about the APA’s guidelines on the PBS Standards site. And you can register for the webinar here.

The Neuron Prompt Tips of the Day—May 2025 (Corey Noles - The Neuron) 
Key Line: "Supercharge your AI game with The Neuron’s May 2025 Prompt Tips of the Day. This month’s lineup features hands-on strategies for refining your Gemini prompts, generating vivid historical narratives, and wielding ChatGPT as a precision editor. Whether you're boosting productivity or pushing creative boundaries, these bite-sized tips deliver real-world impact—one prompt at a time."
Why It Matters: The Neuron is still one of my go-to sources for AI news. They are steeped in this stuff and I appreciate their curation of prompts. A quick skim of their list should give you a couple of new ideas to try.

AI & The Future of Work

Making AI Work: Leadership, Lab, and Crowd (Ethan Mollick - One Useful Thing)
Key Line: "My colleague Andrew Carton has shown that workers are not motivated to change by leadership statements about performance gains or bottom lines, they want clear and vivid images of what the future actually looks like: What will work be like in the future? Will efficiency gains be translated into layoffs or will they be used to grow the organization? How will workers be rewarded (or punished) for how they use AI? You don’t have to know the answer with certainty, but you should have a goal that you are working towards that you are willing to share."
Why It Matters: I will 100% cop to confirmation bias on this one. What Mollick has seen, writ-large, I see in our mission-driven corner of the media landscape. So, if you haven't developed the AI strategy for your organization, this is a good place to start.

Being honest about using AI at work makes people trust you less, research finds (Oliver Schilke & Martin Reimann - The Conversation) 
Key Line: "But there’s a caveat: If you’re using AI on the job, the cover-up may be worse than the crime. We found that quietly using AI can trigger the steepest decline in trust if others uncover it later. So being upfront may ultimately be a better policy."
Why It Matters: We're very much in a damned-if-you-do, screwed-if-you-don't moment with AI. So, this bit of research was not surprising to me. But the researchers ultimately land on the recommendation of "building a workplace where AI use is seen as normal, accepted and legitimate." As you saw with Mollick's piece (above), this isn't a correct path forward yet, but it seems like sensitivity and support are good values to help you find it.
Related: If, When and How to Communicate Journalistic Uses of AI to the Public from the Center for News, Technology & Innovation.
Also related: This report from Pew Research Center by Colleen McClain, Brian Kennedy, Jeffrey Gottfried, Monica Anderson, & Giancarlo Pasquini: How the U.S. Public and AI Experts View Artificial Intelligence 

A white-collar bloodbath (Jim VandeHei & Mike Allen - Axios) 
Key Line: "Make no mistake: We've talked to scores of CEOs at companies of various sizes and across many industries. Every single one of them is working furiously to figure out when and how agents or other AI technology can displace human workers at scale. The second these technologies can operate at a human efficacy level, which could be six months to several years from now, companies will shift from humans to machines." Why It Matters: One point that I've been making consistently in my talks on AI this spring is that we need to help our colleagues and teammates get ready for the skills shift that is coming in the creation and distribution of mass media. But at the same time, I think that there could be a real opportunity for us in the realm of artisanal media created by humans for humans. That can still be done using AI tools, but we have to attract those with a dedication to craft. And I see real opportunity in attracting the very talent that seems to be edged out of the market. What better way to signal value to that "younger" audience we always seem to be chasing, than by employing them to make media that matters.
Related: I do think that the author Brian Merchant has a point when he reminds us that 'The "AI jobs apocalypse" is for the bosses,' meaning AI isn't going to cut your jobs. But a human CEO might.
Case In Point: This reporting from Sarah Scire at NiemanLab: Business Insider will lay off 21% of staff amid AI disruption and “extreme traffic drops” 
Also related: This recent study, reported by Neil Franklin in Workplace Insight: Gallup report suggests that firms and their employees are not on the same page when it comes to AI

AI & The Future of the Internet

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of search, AI agents, and selling Chrome (Nilay Patel - The Verge) 
Key Line: "This is the only platform where I think the actual platform is, over time, capable of creating, self-improving, and so on. In a way, we could have never talked about any other platform before, so that’s why I think it’s much more profound than the other platform shifts. It’ll allow people to create new things because, at each layer of the stack, there’s going to be profound improvements. And so I think that virtuous cycle you get in terms of how you can unleash this creative power to all of society, be it software engineers, be it creators — I think that is going to happen in a much more multiplicative way."
Why It Matters: Google dropped a head-spinning number of product announcements at their Google I/O event (the week of the PBS Annual Meeting). From the main stage in Atlanta, Ira's guest speaker, Shelly Palmer, encouraged everyone in the room to watch the keynote end-to-end. But this is, I think, even more important, as it gets to the why behind that keynote.
Related: Zvi Mowshowitz did a great summary of the Google keynote in his Google I/O Day post.
Also Related: Kyle Wiggers & Karyne Levy also summed up the event on TechCrunch in Google I/O 2025: Everything announced at this year’s developer conference 
But You Don't Have to Take My Word for It: Watch the Google I/O 2025 keynote for yourself.

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on how AI can save the web, not destroy it (Nilay Patel - The Verge) 
Key Line: "And I think you really start to get into this mode where agents are doing things asynchronously for you. A lot of what happens right now in the current web model is everything happens synchronously. So you’re sort of sitting there like, “I’m staring at a browser right now. I may have a tool that I want to go buy on somebody’s Shopify storefront. My attention is focused on this particular task. I complete the transaction and then I move on to the next thing.” The interesting thing with agents is things are going to start happening asynchronously where you’re going to give an agent a task and it’s going to go do all of this stuff while your attention is elsewhere."
Why It Matters: The same week Google I/O happened, Microsoft Build also happened. The product announcements were less, by volume, but many were just as significant but a lot of the promotional weight was carried by their CTO. So, on the heels of that, The Verge's Decoder podcast parsed some the finer points with Kevin Scott. I found it useful to listen to this one back-to-back with the Sundar Pichai podcast; a good compare/contrast.
Related: Scott was also interviewed that week by Dan Shipper of Every’s Chain of Thought podcast: Kevin Scott on The Future of Programming, AI Agents, and Microsoft’s Big Bet on the Agentic Web 
Also Related: Microsoft adopts Google’s standard for linking up AI agents by the prolific Kyle Wiggers in TechCrunch.
Boring But Important: You’ll want to talk with your web dev team about Microsoft’s Introducing NLWeb: Bringing conversational interfaces directly to the web 
But You Don't Have to Take My Word for It: Watch the Microsoft Build keynote for yourself (Scott comes on stage about an hour and 12 minutes in).
Cliff's Notes: CNET cuts the two hours down so you don't have to in Microsoft Build 2025 Keynote: Everything Revealed, in 14 Minutes 

Generative AI Video

Veo 3 can generate videos — and soundtracks to go along with them (Kyle Wiggers - TechCrunch) 
Key Line: '“For the first time, we’re emerging from the silent era of video generation,” Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, Google’s AI R&D division, said during a press briefing. “[You can give Veo 3] a prompt describing characters and an environment, and suggest dialogue with a description of how you want it to sound.”' Why It Matters: I had begun to despair of generative videos promise to upend visual communication in 2025. Certainly, Sora from OpenAI disappointed but folks were seemingly eking out some interesting experiments using Runway 4. Veo 3 puts us back squarely into WTAF territory, and has shifted my thinking about what is possible in 2025 and 2026.
Related: Tom May's "I've been watching Google Veo 3 videos, and they're genuinely terrifying" in Creative Bloq.
Also Related: Simon Wyndham's "Google Veo 3: Has AI generated video crossed the Rubicon - again?" in Redshark News.
Still Related: Allison Johnson's "Google’s Veo 3 AI video generator is a slop monger’s dream" in The Verge.
The Hard Questions: That we are even discussing Emanuel Maiberg’s question in 404 Media is worth reflection: Why Does Google’s New Veo 3 AI Video Generator Love This Dad Joke?
Downstream Effects: "Darren Aronofsky’s AI-Driven Studio Primordial Soup Inks Google DeepMind Partnership, First Film Project to Premiere at Tribeca Festival" reported by Todd Spangler in Variety.
But You Don't Have to Take My Word for It: Read the blog post from Eli Collins, VP, Google DeepMind introducing Veo 3 and Imagen 4, and a new tool for filmmaking called Flow: "Fuel your creativity with new generative media models and tools".

📽️ Before you ask: yes, everything is AI here. (Lázló Gaál - X/Twitter) 
Key Line: “Welcome to a non-existent car show. Let’s see some opinions.”
Why It Matters: I like that they disclosed AI (albeit subtly) in the opening line. This was the punchline for my section on generative video in the talk I gave last week to PMBA about AI. The video isn’t perfect, but it gets a solid A- in my book. Of course, the key thing to note is that there's some judicious editing at play here. But behind every great producer is a brilliant editor. AI isn't changing that (yet).

📽️ I made this for $500 in Veo 3 credits in less than a day. (PJ Ace - Twitter/X) 
Key Line: "I used to shoot $500k pharmaceutical commercials….What’s the argument for spending $500K now?"
Why It Matters: Another example from Veo 3. Note that like the previous video, a lot of little details (like insignias on hats and text on patches or t-shirts) still don't make sense. But, again, this is likely the worst that generative video will ever be.

📽️ We Can Talk! (Ari Kuschnir - Twitter/X) 
Why It Matters: Yet another example where the editing makes all the difference in the world. Fun and upbeat, yes. But you can still see the seams, even if they aren't actually 'uncanny.'

AI Search & SEO

‘Search is going off a cliff’: CNN, BBC and Economist chiefs on future of news (Bron Maher - PressGazette) 
Key Line: 'Numerous publishers have expressed a concern that AI-enabled search services like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews are diminishing their referral traffic because they answer user queries without them needing to click through to sources. Minton Beddoes continued: “What matters, I think right now, is if you get your subscribers to use your own properties, you’re in a good position… but in terms of getting new subscribers, search is going off a cliff.” In such a situation, she argued, “brand matters”. But it was also “important in this world to figure out how to become discoverable… “You’re right, AI is a huge opportunity. But you have to think about it in terms of: what do we need to do to make sure that tomorrow’s listeners and viewers and readers know about The Economist, know about CNN, know about the BBC and know that’s where you have to go? And that is going to be different than it is right now.”'
Why It Matters: Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of the Economist put it as well as I could. Looking at NPM's traffic for the last year, ChatGPT is slight but there is a distinct upward slope to the trend line. At the same time, the trend in discoverability of our site via search has also been on an upslope since we relaunched the site about 4 years ago (when the data reset). I'll watching to see if either of those trend lines show a dramatic change in 2025.
Related: And while we aren't seeing it at NPM yet, Sara Guaglione reports in Digiday that ChatGPT referral traffic to publishers’ sites has nearly doubled this year 
Also Related: Google AI Overviews leads to dramatic reduction in clickthroughs for Mail Online by Charlotte Tobitt in PressGazette.
Shots Fired: News Media Alliance Issues Statement on Google’s AI Mode, Calls It ‘Definition of Theft’ by Akash Dutta in Gadgets360.

Google is using content from publishers who “opt out” of other AI training to power AI Overviews (Andrew Deck - NiemanLab)
Key Line: "Currently, there is no way for publishers to use robots.txt to only block Google’s indexing for AI Overviews, and not general search. So Google’s statement confirms the only way for publishers to opt-out is to effectively block Google’s ability to rank their site in search results altogether."
Why It Matters: For most of the first part of this year I’ve been thinking worrying about the changes happening around web search and content discovery. This past month, that ‘Spidey sense’ has kicked into overdrive. The bit came to light a couple of weeks back during part of Google’s latest anti-trust trial. Taken in combination with Google’s announcements this past week at Google I/O (see above), we need to be rethinking our strategies now.

Other Things AI Related

U.S. Copyright Office has registered 1,000+ works enhanced by AI (Timothy Beck Werth - Mashable)
Key Line: 'Assistant General Counsel Jalyce Mangum said that the "Office has registered more than a thousand works where applicants have followed our guidance to disclose and disclaim AI-generated material." Crucially, Mangum said the office considers "whether AI is enhancing human expression or is the source of the expressive choices."'
Why It Matters: Nearly three years into the AI-era and we’re starting to finally get some clarity on how much AI is too much for a human to claim ownership. All things considered, when I comes to regulation, that’s actually pretty speedy.
Related: This OG of AI lawsuits has largely faded into the background (though I still like to dust it off for some of my AI presentations), but as Ryan Browne reports for CNBC, Getty is still fighting: Getty Images spending millions to battle a ‘world of rhetoric’ in AI suit, CEO says 

AI interfaces that aren’t chat (Hiten Shah - Twitter/X) 
Key Line: "The responses were thoughtful, wide-ranging, and honestly a bit ahead of where I expected things to be."
Why It Matters: This is a short piece that goes long on expanding how you might think about AI. How we abstract our world matters. When we wrote letters we communicated one way, when we texted via pre-Blackberry smartphones, we communicated another. Pondering if the chat interface wasn't the main interface for AI is a great thought experiment.

The Creator Economy

Peacock launched an accelerator for creators. Now it’s picking up their scripted shows. (Sam Gutelle - Tubefilter)
Key Line: "As part of that process, the program participants earned development deals with NBCUniversal and took advantage of guidance from development mentors. Now, four of the projects greenlit in that fashion are set to premiere on May 19 as part of an effort dubbed the Peacock Emerging Artist Series."
Why It Matters: At the PBS Annual Meeting we heard a good session on stations that were having some success with YouTube. And some stations have even started working with creators or local influencers. So, I’m intrigued by other experiments where traditional media is leaning in to the DIY aesthetic of creators.

And finally…

My 38th 'Hamlet' (inside Grand Theft Auto) is the first I've seen with flamethrowers (Bob Mondello - NPR) - And finally, I can’t wait to stream this.

Have a creative, productive week!

Image created with ChatGTP 4o

Image created with ChatGPT-4o

Hi all. This week we’ve got a thought-provoking piece arguing a lot opportunities still exist for traditional media in this evolving media landscape, a concerning report on what AI overviews are doing to search results, more companies putting AI-first in their HR plans and, finally, some free ‘needle-drop’ music for non-profits from Moby.

But First…

A reminder that our May webinar is going to be earlier in the month than normal, hitting this month at noon ET on May 13. So, there’s still a week to register for Applied AI for Public Media: Marketing, Social, and Digital Strategy We’re co-presenting this one with our friends from the NETA’s MarCom PLC, and that means that this will have practical examples with which you can experiment right away. Find out more in the Learn section below.

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

I started my career amidst the drama of the 1995 attack on public media, and living through that time more or less inured me to just about every run that the detractors of public media have taken at us since. That said, this one scares me. It scares me because it’s not superficial. In the past efforts to defund us felt like an end for which the means could never quite be justified (thank you, Big Bird). This time, we’re simply one of the means to a much larger end.

Yet, I’m certain that a version of public media can continue to exist. There are good people rallying to our cause. And there are good people in national leadership focused on making our case. It’s just that what comes out of this might look very different than what we’ve known. And in that changed landscape, we (all of us within sight of these words) will need to be innovators.

This newsletter has put me in wide contact with a number of great, creative people in the world of public media. These people are hungry for innovation and ready to figure out how to pivot into what comes next. If public media is to exist in 5 years, and I believe it will, then make no mistake, we will need your innovative thinking, start-up hustle, and enterprising spirit. It’s time to be a little bit punk, and little bit hip-hop, and little bit DIY. Set national politics aside, and we still have what public media raconteur Tom Davidson refers to as “the audience problem.”

Do you have a hobby outside of your public media work? How can that merge with public media’s mission of service? New IP? New fans of public media waiting to learn about us?

Do you have a skill that’s not in your job description? Start-ups don’t have the luxury of rigid hierarchy and static job descriptions. Don’t hide your light under a bushel.

Pick the problem in public media that most excites you (e.g., game design, YouTube best practices, AI advocacy and adoption, search agent optimization, or choose your own adventure) and start digging into ways you can solve it. Find the like-minded souls who also want to solve that problem to (in your company, yes, but especially at other companies, and then challenge each other to keep iterating and improving. Share your learnings and your failures (whenever they aren’t one in the same).

And don’t despair. Americans (and I mean all Americans) need public media. It’s time to build what comes next. Do your part. Dream

Okay, on to the links.

Learn…

Applied AI for Public Media: Marketing, Social, and Digital Strategy 
Tuesday, May 13, 2025, 12 noon ET / 9 AM PT
Looking to make your workflows faster, your content sharper and your social media posts more impactful? This hands-on session is designed for public media professionals working in marketing, communications, and digital strategy — from social media managers and digital content curators to marketing leads on any-sized team.

Join the Public Media Innovators and MarCom PLCs as we showcase real-world examples of how our peers are using AI today, including how to:

• Generate SEO-friendly descriptions for web and video platforms

• Draft social media posts that fit your tone and goals

• Create alt text for images to support accessibility

You’ll walk away with downloadable prompts, links to custom GPTs, and plenty of inspiration to take back to your teams. This is a practical session built for doers—bring your curiosity, your questions, and maybe even that caption you’ve been staring at too long. Register here.

The Neuron Prompt Tips of the Day—April 2025 (Grant Harvey - The Neuron)
With AI, there is no substitute for just trying things out yourself. The Neuron is a top-shelf daily AI newsletter, and they've compiled their prompting tips from April all in one place. Some of the prompts seem to be referencing images from the blog that didn’t translate into the round up. So, it’s not perfect, but it’ll still get you thinking. Pick the most interesting and try them out with your favorite bot.

Think…

All is Not Lost for Traditional Media (Doug Shapiro - The Mediator) 
Key Line: "The challenge is to think through this question: as AI-enabled content becomes abundant, what new scarcities will emerge, what existing scarcities will become more valuable, and what businesses will be newly viable? I’ve taken swags at this before, but I think it’s worth continually revisiting this question. In a lot of ways, it is The Question™ that will determine how value will be created and redistributed in media over the next 20 years."
Why It Matters: There are a lot of good bits worth your focus in this one, so don’t let the heady opening section deter you. If nothing else, I would also recommend you also read the "Revisiting What Becomes Scarce as Content Becomes Abundant" and “Planning and Resource Allocation” sections. If you accept Shapiro’s basic thesis, there are definitely more than a few kernels of hope for us here.

A.I., Art, and Copyright: The Human Element That Makes All the Difference (Ann Tetreault - Library of Congress Blogs)
Key Line: "The Office has registered more than a thousand works where applicants have followed our guidance to disclose and disclaim AI-generated material. In the copyrightability analysis, distinguishing between using AI as a tool to assist in the creation of works and using AI to stand in for human creativity is important. The difference is whether AI is enhancing human expression or is the source of the expressive choices."
Why It Matters: Regulation is starting to catch up to AI and clearer guardrails now exist on how you can use synthetic media in creations and still retain copyright.
Related: And as Brooks Barnes reports in the NYT: Oscars OK the Use of A.I., With Caveats

How Ezra Klein’s YouTube Makeover Points to Podcasting’s TV Future (Rebecca Sananès - Vanity Fair) 
The Lede: "Earlier this month, The New York Times hired a full-time director of photography—primarily for podcasts. It might sound like a surprising move for a podcast, unless you’ve clocked what’s been happening at The Ezra Klein Show. Klein, once a disembodied voice, is now a bona fide millennial onscreen hottie, staring straight into the camera and engaging a new kind of audience. The message is clear, and in this case, the medium really is the message: Podcasts aren’t just going visual; they’re becoming television. And YouTube is the network where it’s all happening."
Why It Matters: Finally, an explanation for why Ezra started spending so much time at the gym. The good news for PBS stations (especially joint licensees) is that most of us already have a handle on how to make a version of this type of content. Now we have to master the art of creation for and distribution via YouTube.

Gaming's counter-cycle (Joost van Dreunen - SuperJoost Playlist) 
Key Line: "Am I suggesting that the games industry is impervious to the volatility in the global market? No. But I am saying that video games are a go-to form of entertainment that has proven itself to be more resilient during times of financial recession."
Why It Matters: Though this piece is focused on Hardware. There are many indicators that America is going into an economic downturn. The next year or two could be a great time for games, and thus a great time for your public media company to experiment with games.

Know…

AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5% (Ryan Law & Xibeijia Guan - Ahrefs Blog)
Key Line: "AI Overviews function in a similar way to Featured Snippets, by trying to resolve the searcher’s query directly in the SERP—likely contributing to more zero-click searches. And although AI Overviews often contain citation links, there can be many of these links cited, making it less likely for any single link to earn the lion’s share of clicks."
Why It Matters: This report has shown up just about everywhere in the last two weeks, but for good reason. What we feared (intuitively) was the case now seems to have data to support those fears. How to respond is a topic of much discussion, but the implications for content discoverability are clear. And your strategy needs to change.
Related: Andrew Chen's The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs

YouTube is testing AI Overviews in its search results (Danny Goodwin - Search Engine Land) 
Key Line: "Google AI Overviews have reduced visibility and traffic to websites. If this experiment is rolled out, could YouTube’s version of AI Overviews end up reducing visibility and video views for brands and creators?"
Why It Matters: This is directly tied to the story above. An AI-mediated distribution future is one for which we'll all need to adapt. So, pay attention to these early experiments.

AI assisted search-based research actually works now (Simon Willison) 
Key Line: "Those 2023-era versions were promising but very disappointing. They had a strong tendency to hallucinate details that weren’t present in the search results, to the point that you couldn’t trust anything they told you. In this first half of 2025 I think these systems have finally crossed the line into being genuinely useful."
Why It Matters: I concur. From a policy standpoint, these tools should still be treated as unverified sources and rigorously fact checked. But I'd put these research tools up there with an initial Wikipedia search as a way of orienting yourself around a topic. Next, we have to figure out what this means for SEO and the discoverability of our content.
Related: If you haven’t tried ChatGPT’s Deep Research agentic AI tool yet, I strongly encourage it. Khamash Pathak reports in Lifehacker (yes, that Lifehacker): ChatGPT Finally Has a Free (but Limited) Deep Research Tool. That’ll be enough to get you started.

Duolingo is Going to Be AI First (Luis von Ahn - Duolingo via LinkedIn) 
Key Line: "Being Al-first means we will need to rethink much of how we work. Making minor tweaks to systems designed for humans won't get us there. In many cases, we'll need to start from scratch. We're not going to rebuild everything overnight, and some things-like getting Al to understand our codebase-will take time. However, we can't wait until the technology is 100% perfect. We'd rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment."
Why It Matters: This all-hands email from the Duolingo CEO is the second I've seen declaring an AI-first future (the first was Shopify, see Exploration #139). But this one hits home a bit more because this is, ostensibly, an educational media company.
Related: Here's how Jay Peters reported it in The Verge: Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI
Also related: Of course this piece by Paul Monckton in Forbes could shed some light on the ‘why’ behind their decision: Forget Duolingo: Google Translate’s New AI Feature Teaches Languages 
Meanwhile: Wikipedia says it will use AI, but not to replace human volunteers as reported by Sarah Perez of TechCrunch.
Still Related: Anil Dash makes the “against” case in 'AI-first' is the new Return To Office
And then: Brian Merchant makes an even stronger “against” case, featuring reporting from ex-Duos in The AI jobs crisis is here, now on his Blood in the Machine blog

Americans predict the rise of AI won’t be kind to the news they get — or to journalists (Joshua Benton - NiemanLab) 
Key Line: "Roughly half of U.S. adults say that AI will have a very (24%) or somewhat (26%) negative impact on the news people get in the U.S. over the next 20 years. Just 10% say it will have a very (2%) or somewhat (8%) positive effect, according to a summer 2024 Pew Research Center survey. About a quarter (23%) say AI’s impact in this area will be equally positive and negative. Another 16% say they are not sure."
Why It Matters: I don’t know that I’d call this predictive, but it’s good to have a sense of what news consumers are feeling about AI right now.

They’re Making TCP/IP For AI, And It’s Called NANDA (John Werner - Forbes)
Key Line: "Here’s an important note – in terms of design context, NANDA builds on Anthropic‘s Model Context Protocol (MCP) that provides for standardized transactions between AI agents. NANDA adds Internet capability and protocols, so that these agents can “do things” over the web."
Why It Matters: Every once in a while, it's worth checking in on these "boring but important" stories. The difference between a gadget and true technological change is infrastructure.
Related: Learn more at MIT's NANDA page 
Extra Credit: Introducing the Model Context Protocol from Anthropic

Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28 (Scharon Harding - Ars Technica)
Key Line: "Amazon is forcing Echo users to make a couple of tough decisions: Grant Amazon access to recordings of everything you say to Alexa or stop using an Echo; let Amazon save voice recordings and have employees listen to them or lose a feature set to become more advanced and central to the next generation of Alexa."
Why It Matters: Amazon's Alexa was fun while it lasted. And then it just became that annoying piece of tech you forgot you had until you accidentally used the wrong mouth words in the wrong order. Of course, if you have kids, it might be a different story. Except, now, Alexa really is spying on you...albeit for AI.

Google Faces a Potential Breakup on Multiple Fronts (Mathew Ingram - CJR)
Key Line: "But another Silicon Valley behemoth is arguably in an even worse position, having lost not one but two landmark antitrust decisions, about two different aspects of its business: Google, which has been found to be guilty of anticompetitive conduct in both its search and online advertising operations. As these cases proceed through the remedy phase, the government is expected to argue that Google should be forced to sell off significant chunks of its business. And those sales—if and when they actually come to pass—could change the way that online publishing works in some fundamental ways."
Why It Matters: If this hasn't hit your radar yet, it's time to start paying attention, and this CJR piece is a good catch-up. In America, at least, Google is largely the internet, and so the internet is for us is very much poised to change. If you haven't thought about the tactics you'll need to employ to adapt, now is the time.

Adobe Firefly: The next evolution of creative AI is here (Adobe)
Key Line: "The new Firefly features enhanced models, improved ideation capabilities, expanded creative options, and unprecedented control. This update builds on earlier momentum when we introduced the Firefly web app and expanded into video and audio with Generate Video, Translate Video, and Translate Audio features."
Why It Matters: Adobe is probably only second to Microsoft products in terms of common usage in the public media world. I've played a little with Firefly 4 and first results are good but not great (especially where text and consistency are concerned). Either I need better training on how to get the most out of it, or it still has issues (especially in the arena of 'vibe editing').
Related: Jess Weatherbed reports in The Verge that Adobe adds more image generators to its growing AI family

Disney to Debut New ‘Star Wars’ Series in ‘Fortnite’ as It Deepens Epic Games Partnership (Alex Weprin - The Hollywood Reporter) 
Key Line: '“For the first time, Disney+ is premiering a show inside a game, launching alongside our largest Star Wars collaboration with Fortnite to date – giving fans and players an exciting first look at the kinds of experiences they can expect as we shape a new future together,” says Sean Shoptaw, executive vp of Disney Games & Digital Entertainment. “We’re building the next era of digital entertainment, where fans can play, watch, create and connect – and we’re just beginning to tap into what’s possible.”' Why It Matters: I get it, we're not Disney. But any public media company can be creating experiences in Fortnite now. This should definitely be on your horizon.
Related: Amanda Andrei's piece for American Theatre, Game Play’s the Thing for New Fortnite-Based Theatre Company 

And finally…

mobygratis (Moby) 
And finally, fans of the 90s/00s multi-genre recording artist, Moby, can now potentially work that Moby-sound into your public media creations. Free non-profit use is permitted, with a couple of restrictions. There are some interesting tracks here. From a quick sample, it feels a bit like listening to a compilation of Moby’s demos, B-sides and rarities. If nothing else, it's a good listen while you work.

Have a Resilient Week.

Image Generated with Adobe Firefly 4.0