Embracing an 'Opt-in' World
Hi all. Welcome to the first post-summer edition of Public Media Innovators Weekly. Hope everyone had a relaxing, safe holiday weekend. This week we’ve got a reframing of public media’s existential crisis, an exploration of whether AI can create art, and finally, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Roblox….
But First…
I’m on the road for the next two weeks, so it’s highly likely the next edition of this newsletter will come to you from the CPB/NETA conference in Pittsburgh in about two weeks.
Find Me at NETA
If you plan to be there, on Tuesday, September 17, I’ll be a part of the session “Getting the AI Conversation at Your Station” at 11a in the Allegheny room (17th Floor). I’m also co-presenting “Everything That’s Wrong with AI” (same room) at 3:30p with my PMI colleagues Amber and David. Stop by and say “hi!” (And if you’re participating virtually, say hi in the chat!)
Embracing an ‘Opt-in’ World
If you haven’t had a chance to read Joyce MacDonald’s “Public Media: Facing Challenges, Building our Future” you should check it out (either on the Greater Public site or on Current). I appreciated her optimistic reframing of existential challenges as mere business challenges to which we can rise by embracing a spirit of innovation: “This is the investment that will build our audience on new platforms: newsletters, events, short-form video and more. Let’s experiment, learn and grow. Our focus should be on creating engaging content, growing audiences, building deeper connections with our communities and strengthening our country. When we have the stability to invest in innovations without the burden of getting a return on every experiment we try, the revenue will follow.”
And while I do appreciate the reframe, I’m also not quite ready to let go of my existential angst, because in public media we still tend to talk about innovation as broadcasters. Innovation in public media used to mean broadcast, and there is still opportunity to be innovative in broadcast, but that isn’t where the future of public media sits. Instead, it sits in those “deeper connections” MacDonald references: in community cultivation, community support, and community service 3.0. To get there, we need to also reframe our shared definition of "community."
Public broadcasting was born into a monoculture, but public media lives amongst a mosaic of subcultures. To be where audiences are - to be a constructive part of their communities - we need to be preparing our organizations and our teams to be ready for this next generation of the internet as it evolves. We need to be not just on platforms like TikTok, but also platforms like Roblox and Fortnite (and whatever comes after). We need to be talking to the youngest adult members of our audience and the youngest supporters on our files to understand how they are using media, what is missing from media for them, and how we can leverage emerging media and emerging platforms to supplement that which they can get from mainstream media outlets, creators and influencers, and online communities of shared interest that may not necessarily align with the values that we know can strengthen communities.
We live in an 'opt-in' world now. It’s time we reframe our existential crises to reflect that.
Okay, on to the links….
Focus…
Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art (Ted Chiang - The New Yorker) - Chiang has written a number of prescient pieces about Ai over the last couple of years, but I'm not sure this is one of them. The value in this piece comes in how we think about art and how we think about intelligence. But where it breaks down is in its generalizations about whether gAI tools will dilute and ultimately make society worse. If you are suspicious of, or just like taking a contrarian stance on AI, there's plenty in here you'll like. And even a piece that is flawed in its construction can be good food for thought. But, ultimately, I don't think the piece is more than the sum of its parts.
Learn…
Inside the New York Times Games: A Conversation with Zoe Bell (Public Media Innovators - 3rd Thursday Webinars)- Are you a fan of Wordle? Addicted to the New York Times Connections? Join us for an insightful conversation with Zoe Bell, Executive Producer of Games at the New York Times, as we delve into the world of game development. Zoe will share her expertise on the relevance and impact of games in today’s media landscape, providing valuable insights that can help public media organizations attract and retain a wider audience, explore new forms of audience engagement and innovate in content creation. Please note: this webinar will not be recorded so be sure to sign up to attend live.
Think…
Here’s how 7 news audience directors are thinking about Google’s AI Overviews (Andrew Deck - NiemanLab) - We are just at the outset of the generative search era, AI's infusion into search tools like Google and Bing. No one - and I'd include the platform owners in that - knows how this is going to play out yet. But early data is starting to trickle in and strategies on how to react are starting to develop. We need to start considering these implications in public media as well.
A Right to Personal Use of Content with LLMs? (Nick Diakopoulos - Medium) - As a music-obsessed teen on a budget, I regularly checked LPs out from the local public library and dubbed them onto cassette tapes for my personal use. So that'll give you a hint of where I come down on this issue. Personally, I also wonder about accessibility. If you are using ElevenLabs to help you consume content because you are dyslexic, it would seem that blocking your ability to do that would expose a company to a non-zero amount of legal risk.
The AI job interviewer will see you now (Russell Brandom, Viola Zhou & Sanghamitra Kar P - Rest of the World) - The HR team at NPM was an earlier adopter of gAI to help streamline routine tasks, but they haven't use it for recruiting and screening. If your organization is, I'd love to hear how that is helping, but thus far I haven't heard of any other public media companies using AI for HR in the way you see referenced in this article. I think this future will come eventually, so best to start thinking now about how you might approach it. It doesn't have to be problematic, but there needs to be some intention behind your approach.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Know…
2024 Peabody Awards: Interactive and Immersive Submissions (Peabody) - Just a note that the Peabody Awards are now accepting interactive submissions. The deadline for entries is October 3 and the eligibility window is for projects released 1/1/23-6/30/24.
Eric Schmidt’s AI prophecy: The next two years will shock you (Akeem Azhar - Exponential View) - If you can look past Azhar being a bit of a Schmidt fanboy, you'll find a good summary analysis of Schmidt's comments on AI to an Econ class at Stanford. Schmidt, you may recall, ran Google for a number of years during the development of its AI initiatives. So he knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Read this one to both get a better understanding of how fast AI is developing right now, and to not feel so bad about having difficulty keeping up with it all.
JournalismAI encourages newsrooms to work together in leveraging AI (Neha Gupta - WAN-IFRA) - Especially valuable in this piece are the four guiding principles for "the ideal role of AI in newsrooms."
‘Megalopolis’ Cuts Ties With Marketing Consultant Behind Trailer Debacle; Fabricated Critic Quotes Were Generated By AI (Matt Grobar - Deadline) - Awkward. But this sounds like a failure of corporate bureaucracy, more than ignorance of gAI's limitations.
The Top 100 GenAI Consumer Apps (Olivia Moore - Andreesen Horowitz) - You may be saying to yourself, "wait, there are more one hundred?!" There are, and skimming this piece will give you a quick, high-altitude point of view.
AI startups ramp up federal lobbying efforts (Kyle Wiggers - TechCrunch) - This classic follow-the-money reporting is not surprising, but gives you a larger context about how AI is evolving as an industry.
Major Sites Are Saying No to Apple’s AI Scraping (Kate Knobs - Wired) - If you have a site that is blocking bots that would scrape training data for AI models (NPM does not), this is worth noting. If not, it's still worth noting that Apple has a scraper bot.
Meta is going to let preteens use Horizon World (Jay Peters - The Verge) - I can't se how this is a good think, but it's still worth noting. Roblox isn't directly mentioned in the article, but I feel like its shadow looms large over this decision.
Insta360 app update aims to simplify 360 video editing (Simon Wyndham - Redshark) - While we don't talk about 360-video nearly as much these days, it's still a legit tool for those making digital content. Insta360's major advantage was always its app software, pushing it quickly well ahead of more established hardware manufacturers. And as AI continues to infuse all products this will hopefully make the editing even easier.
A third of the world’s population lacks internet connectivity − airborne communications stations could change that (Mohamed-Slim Alouini & Mariette DiChristina - The Conversation) - Even if you only read the headline, it’s worth remembering just how vast the digital divide is on this planet. 💫
Video Game Preservation Has Become An Industry Urgency (Robert Steiner - Variety) - Many of our public media companies are wrestling with media preservation, but this isn't necessarily limited to digitizing old magnetic tape. One of the complexities of interactive media (and especially games) is knowing when to say decommission or invest in updating an experience. Indie filmmakers that have strived to embrace the web have wrestled with this for years, raising enough money to support the production and launch of a film but then not having enough money to maintain the 'content debt' that comes from maintaining an interactive experience. As we are working to create the next, more interactive, wave of public media, we need to be more intentional product lifecycle and preservation.
And finally…
‘Beetlejuice’ sequel sells tickets in first-of-its-kind Roblox activation (Chris Kelly - Marketing Dive) - And finally, coming this weekend to a theater near you (and, as seen on Roblox). Because we talk a lot about attracting new audiences to a classic brand, this piece may be of interest.
Have a creative, productive week!