Exploration #146

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!