Exploration #140

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.