Exploration #147

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:

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!