Literature and Rigid Thinking

Want someone to get past their rigid thinking and increase their openness? Put a novel in their hands. Canadian researchers say it will help them become more sophisticated thinkers and increase their creativity.  

University of Toronto students were asked to read either one of eight short stories or one of eight essays. Afterward, they each filled out a survey to measure the desire for certainty and stability. The short story readers had much lower scores on that test than those who read the essays. The fiction readers showed they needed less order and had more comfort with ambiguity. This was particularly true for participants who already read regularly.  

Writing in the Creativity Research Journal, the researchers say, “Exposure to literature may offer a (way for people) to become more likely to open their minds.” 

Fiction readers can more easily follow thinking styles that differ from their own—they can feel along with characters they may not even like—gaining a better understanding of the viewpoint. 

Read more about the study here. 

Stephen Goforth

17 Webinars this Week about AI, Journalism, Podcasts, Design, Elections & More

Tue, Sept 24 – When Journalists Are Held Hostage

What: Fenster and Kurmasheva will talk about what led to their improper detentions, trials and efforts to free them. 

Who: Journalists Danny Fenster and Alsu Kurmasheva were detained, tried and convicted in Myanmar and Russia respectively. Moderating the discussion will be former SPJ President and retired Bloomberg editor Steve Geiman.

When: 9 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists

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Tue, Sept 24 – Elements of Data Visualization and Design

What: This session will introduce basic data visualization and design elements based on best practices from current visualization research. Participants will be introduced to a story-based design method that emphasizes the target audience’s information needs to create effective data visualizations. Tools for color, chart selection and accessibility will be presented, and participants will gain practice doing a visualization ‘makeover’.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Research Institute for Public Libraries

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Tue, Sept 24 - The Futurist: Training for the AI Age

What: How the AI revolution could impact employees, the economy and education.

Who: Andrew Ng, founder of DeepLearning.AI; Raffaella Sadun, professor at Harvard Business School;  Matthew Beane, assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

When: 1:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Washington Post, Amazon Web Services

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Tue, Sept 24 - Podcasts in Your Learning Solutions

What: In this session, you will learn strategies to design, develop, and publish your own podcast on any budget (even zero).

Who: Betty Dannewitz Founder and CEO, ifyouaskbetty

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Training Magazine Network

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Wed, Sept 25 - The AI Generation: A Student Innovation Summit

What: With tech advancements and artificial intelligence on the rise, how will these innovations impact the world in which we live, learn, work and play? At our in-person and virtual summit, NBCU Academy will provide answers to help you leverage your tech and media skills. Talk with experts, meet our recruiters and sign up for career opportunities.

Who: Brian Cheung, NBC News Business Correspondent; Evrod Cassimy, NBC 5 Chicago Reporter & Anchor; Rashida Jones, MSNBC President; Kevin Cross, NBC and Telemundo Chicago President & General Manager; Yvette Miley, NBCUniversal News Group EVP, DEI; Tara Morgan, NBCUniversal Early Career Recruitment Manager; Sandy Sharp, NBCU Academy Senior Director; Byron Slosar, Hello Hive Founder

When: 12 pm – 3:30 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: NBCU Academy & Project UP

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Wed, Sept 25 - Navigating Artificial Intelligence: Microsoft Copilot Deep Dive

What: Compare and contrast Microsoft Copilot with ChatGPT, and see how Copilot’s deeper integration with Microsoft 365 applications unlocks unique use cases and enhanced capabilities.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Pennsylvania Small Business Development Center, Widener University

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Wed, Sept 25 - How to Attract and Sustain Your Audience’s Attention

What: You'll learn results from Dr. Simon’s recent neuroscience research that uncovers practical guidelines to capture and sustain your audiences’ attention. You'll dig into the scientific principles that convince people to look and learn.

Who: Carmen Simon, Ph.D. Cognitive Neuroscientist, Founder of Enhancive

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Training Magazine Network

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Wed, Sept 25 - Owning the Unknown: Teaching and Learning With AI

What: Explore how faculty and staff members, administrators and other players in the postsecondary ecosystem are harnessing AI to support teaching and learning and overall academic success. We'll also take a closer look at how AI could help bring higher education closer to its ultimate promise of greater access, improved student engagement and deeper understanding.

Who: Muhsinah Lateefah Morris, Ph.D. Director of Metaversity & Senior Assistant Professor of Education at Morehouse College; Kathleen Landy, Ed.D. Associate Director, Center for Teaching Innovation at Cornell University; Chris Hess, Ph.D. Director of Product AI Strategy, Higher Education at Pearson.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Inside Higher Ed

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Wed, Sept 25 – How HT Media is leveraging GenAI

What: How generative AI has been adopted by the news media industry. He will share roadblocks, bottlenecks, what didn’t work, and what did work. Gain insights into the top use cases where generative AI helped to solve complex challenges.

Who: Yudhvir Mor, chief product officer at HT Media

When: 7:30 pm

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: International News Media Association, HT Media

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Thu, Sept 26 - AI in Action: Empowering Production

What: Machines are learning the human voice and can isolate it in ways simple noise filters can’t. In this session, we step up your production with improved audio tools, going beyond waveform editing and new ways to incorporate voices when you don’t have taped interviews.

Who: Zac Ziegler, Arizona Public Media; Bob Caniglia, Director of Sales Operations, Blackmagic Design;  Nick Dunkerley, Creative Director, Hindenburg

When: 12:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Public Media Journalists Association

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Thu, Sept 26 - Meet The Generative AI Moment With Authentic Learning

What: This one-hour workshop will both provide a high-level explanation of how these tools work, along with insights from colleagues across disciplines at UChicago about how they’ve been approaching this change in the educational landscape. 

When: 1:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: University of Chicago

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Thu, Sept 26 - Student Journalists’ Legal Guide to Covering Elections

What: Explore your legal rights and responsibilities when covering elections and high-stress situations.

Who: Jennifer Nelson, senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsors: The Student Press Law Center and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

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Thu, Sept 26 - How to Transform Casual Readers into Loyal Supporters

What: An in-depth exploration of the audience funnel, a powerful framework designed to guide your community news business from attracting complete strangers to cultivating loyal, recurring supporters.  Whether you’re an individual content creator, or part of a large publishing group, understanding and optimizing your audience funnel is crucial for sustainable growth and financial success.

Who: Elvin Noriega and Wendy Lopez, Indiegraf Experts

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Indiegraf

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Thu, Sept 26 - Reframing Media Narratives of Addiction

What: Panelists explore how collaboration with communities during the reporting process can make better and more-accurate stories.

Who: Justin Maxon, photographer, writer, and film maker; Judith Surber, Hoopa Author who Wrote a New York Times Story on Opioid Addiction and wrote Reservation High, a fiction book about native life on the reservation, substance use, and recovery; Jacqueline Bates, photography director of Opinion at The New York Times; Alexandra Sifferlin, health and science editor for The New York Times Opinion desk.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Pulitzer Center

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Thu, Sept 26 - How AI Voice Is Changing Learning and Development

What: This webinar will help your team evaluate AI voice technology solutions like text-to-speech, voice cloning, and speech-to-speech. Get ready to take your skills from novice to ninja through an informative and fast-paced session that will give you the foundation to elevate your production skills with this wonderful new technology.

Who: Jeff Howard ,Marketing Manager, WellSaid

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: WellSaid Labs

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Thu, Sept 26 - Shifts in Digital Reputation Building

What: This one-hour panel discussion brings together industry leaders to explore the implications of AI-driven search on brand reputation management. This panel will share actionable strategies to stay ahead of the curve in this dynamic environment.

Who: Samantha Stark, Founder Phusion; Brian Snyder, Global President of Digital, Axicom; Caitlin Rourk, Senior Consultant, Corporate Affairs, Dell Technologies; Jeff Davidoff, Chief Marketing Officer, InfluenceAI

When: 4 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Institute for Public Relations

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Fri, Sept 27 - Following the Money in the 2024 Elections

What: All of the ways that you can track who is donating to politicians — from the state legislature all the way to the presidential election. Learn tips and tricks for how to  get to the bottom of who is trying to buy your vote, and ultimately, who will have a seat at the table when all the votes are counted. 

Who: Sarah Bryner, OpenSecrets

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: $35

Sponsor: iMedia Campus

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AI Definitions: Supervised training

Supervised training - In this type of AI training, the data is labeled by humans before giving it to the AI. For example, the AI might be given a database of messages labeled either “spam” or “not spam.”  This is the most common type of machine learning. Expensive and time-consuming, this type of training is used in voice recognition, language translation, and self-driving cars. Anything that takes only a second for a person to do is something that might be performed by AI through supervised training. This is why jobs that are a series of one-second tasks are at risk from it (such as security guard). Most of the present economic value of AI comes from this type of training.

More AI definitions here.

Regretting your Choices

The choices we make are statements to the world about who we are. When all you could do was buy Lee’s or Levi’s, the jeans you bought were not a statement to the world about who you are because there wasn’t enough variety in the jeans you bought to capture the variety of human selves. When there are 2,000 kinds of jeans, or 20,000 kinds of jeans, well, now all of a sudden it is a statement to the world about who you are because there’s so much variety out there. This is true of jeans. It’s true of drinks. It’s true of music videos. It’s true of movies. That makes even trivial decisions seem important, and when that happens, people want the best. We’ve got a bunch of studies that show that large choice sets induce people to regard the choices they make as statements about the self, and that, in turn, induces them to raise their standards.If there are 200, and you buy a pair of jeans that don’t fit you as well as you hoped, now it’s hard to avoid blaming yourself. The only way to avoid regretting a decision is not making it, so I think a lot of the reason people don’t pull the trigger is that they’re so worried that when they do pull the trigger, they’ll regret a choice they made.

Barry Schwartz quoted in Vox

26 free (mostly one hour) Journalism courses

These short online courses will strengthen your journalism skills (and add a line to your resume). Most of these Poynter courses are one-hour in length or less.

Journalism Fundamentals: Craft & Values - A five-hour, self-directed course that covers basics in five areas: newsgathering, interviewing, ethics, law and diversity.

Telling Stories with Sound - Learn the fundamentals of audio reporting and editing in this self-directed course.  

How to Spot Misinformation Online - Learn simple digital literacy skills to outsmart algorithms, detect falsehoods and make decisions based on factual information.

Understanding Title IX - This course is designed to help journalists understand the applications of Title IX.

Clear, Strong Writing for Broadcast Journalism - One-hour video tutorial  

Powerful Writing: Leverage Your Video and Sound - In this one-hour video tutorial, early-career journalists will learn how to seamlessly combine audio, video and copy in captivating news packages.  

Writing for the Ear - In this five-part course, you’ll learn everything you need to write more effective audio narratives.  

Fact-Check It: Digital Tools to Verify Everything Online

News Sense: The Building Blocks of News - What makes an idea or event a news story?

Cleaning Your Copy: Grammar, Style and More - Finding and fixing the most common style, grammar and punctuation errors.

Avoiding Plagiarism and Fabrication

The Writer’s Workbench: 50 Tools You Can Use 

Ethics of Journalism Build or refine your process for making ethical decisions

Conducting Interviews that Matter   

Make Design More Inclusive: Defeat Unconscious Bias in Visuals

Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Publishers - Three important areas of media law that specifically relate to gathering information and publishing online: defamation, privacy and copyright.

Freedom of Information and Your Right to Know - How to use the Freedom of Information Act, Public Records Laws and Open Meetings Laws to uphold your right to know the government’s actions.

Journalism and Trauma - How traumatic stress affects victims and how to interview trauma victims with compassion and respect. 

How Any Journalist Can Earn Trust (International Edition)

What news audiences in various parts of the world don’t understand about how journalism works

Is This Legit? Digital Media Literacy 101

MediaWise’s Campus Correspondents explain the fact-checking tools and techniques that professionals use in their day-to-day work.

The On-Ramp to Media Literacy

How Any Journalist Can Earn Trust 

Dignity and Precision in Language 

How to Avoid Being Sued: Defamation Law in the 21st Century

Conducting Interviews That Matter

Power of Diverse Voices: Writing Workshop for Journalists of Color

15 Articles about AI’s impact on College Faculty & Administrators

College Writing Centers Worry AI Could Replace Them - EdSurge 

Publication Ethics in the Era of Artificial Intelligence – Journal of Korean Medical Science 

The AI Hiring Spree Colleges face stiff competition as they race to build faculties with expertise. – Chronicle of Higher Ed

Los Angeles Unified launches Ed, the nation’s first AI ‘personal assistant’ for students – Ed Source 

Why We Should Normalize Open Disclosure of AI Use - Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Abstracts Written by Medical Researchers vs Generated by Large Language Models – JAMA Network

AI Will Shake Up Higher Ed. Are Colleges Ready? - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Mary Meeker wants AI and higher education to be partners – Axios  

MIT Guide to Responsible use of AI in Higher Education – MIT Sloan Management Review

This University Had an AI Robot as Commencement Speaker. Yes, It Was Weird.  - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Thanks to AI, people may no longer feel the need to learn a second language. – The Atlantic

OpenAI announces first partnership with a university – CNBC

How AI Has Begun Changing University Roles, Responsibilities – Inside Higher Ed 

Drexel University AI policies – Drexel

A.I. Program Aims to Break Barriers for Female Students – New York Times 

How Higher Ed Can Adapt to the Challenges of AI - Chronicle of Higher Ed

when the props are pulled out from under us

It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.  -Madeleine L'Engle

For Today

Do what makes you happiest.

Look upon what gives you joy.

Speak to those who warm your heart.

Listen to that which lifts your spirit.

Surround yourself with sights and sounds and people who give you pleasure.

For all the happiness you give to others all year long, give yourself a perfect day.

And then tomorrow, repeat the process.

Mohan Singh

7 Tips on How to Spot AI Images

The background. Are people in the background looking at the unusual thing going on? If they are going about their business, it is likely a fake. Often the background of AI images will be distorted. 

Other video and photos. If you don’t see other video from different angles, you may be looking at AI generated images. It would be unlikely that there would be only a single image or video of something odd or newsworthy. Don’t share until there is confirmation.

Details. AI generators are not good at details—like fingers, hands and hair. Often AI software will show too many fingers or odd hand placement.* 

Writing. Look closely at writing on a sticker, street sign or billboard. Often it is blurry when it shouldn’t be or else the letters are formed wrong, or the letters don’t form words.

Glossy. The overly-glossy look, similar to some stock photos, can be an AI giveaway. Watch for people with plastic-looking faces.

Source. Is the person or organization sharing the image reliable?

The Eyes. By using methods conventionally used to "measure the shapes of galaxies," researchers have found that deepfake images don't have the same consistency in reflections across both eyes. However, this method of detection does have false positives and false negatives.

*Rice University research could make weird AI images a thing of the past

AI Definitions: Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement Learning - This type of AI learning sits somewhere in between supervised and unsupervised learning. Rather than  being given specific goals, the AI is deployed into an environment where it is allowed to train with minimal feedback. This trial-and-error approach involves adjusting weights until high reward outcomes are reached. Desirable behaviors are rewarded, and undesirable behaviors are punished. It is similar to a person learning how to work through levels of a video game, searching for an effective strategy. Reinforcement learning is indeed used in video game development and has been used to help robots adopt to new environments.   

 More AI definitions here.

Real Beginnings

When we are ready to make a new beginning, we will shortly find an opportunity. The same event could be a real new beginning in one situation and an interesting but unproductive by-way in another. The difference is whether the event is “keyed” or “coded” to that transition point, the way that electronic key cards are set to open a particular hotel room door. When the card code matches, the door opens and the whole thing happens as if it were scripted. When it doesn’t match, the event is just an event and you are still in the neutral zone. The neutral zone simply hasn’t finished with you yet.

What isn’t finished is the inner realignment and renewal of energy, both of which depend on your being immersed in the chaos of the neutral zone. It is as though the thing that you call “my life” had to return occasionally to a state of pure energy before it could take anew shape and gain new momentum.

William Bridges, Transitions

12 interesting Quotes about AI Tools and Products

Is AI the end of search? One CDO says no but look for search to be decentralized. “If I want to know the closest pizza shop, that’s what Google is for, but if I want to understand allergen info for the shop, I need to ask the shop itself” using the shop’s AI.  - VentureBeat

Toys “R” Us has released a video ad, one of the first from a major brand that was created almost entirely by generative artificial intelligence. Sora completed 80% to 85% of the work before the agency went in to make slight corrections to the imagery. - Wall Street Journal

A Japanese mega-conglomerate says it's using AI to build what one of its designers called a "mental shield" that manipulates angry customers' voices so that call center employees don't have to deal with drama. Softbank insists it won't change customers' words, but instead will do things like make a shrill, angry voice lower, to become less grating, or else, raise the pitch. - ArsTechnica

We put five of the leading bots through a series of blind tests to determine their usefulness. ChatGPT, didn’t lead the pack. Instead, lesser-known Perplexity was our champ. - Wall Street Journal

There were more images created through AI last year than there were created through lens-based technologies. - Hollywood Reporter

Humane releases widely anticipated Ai Pin—a wearable badge that doubles as an AI-powered smart device. The voice-based, always-connected Ai Pin is the first of what will almost certainly be a long line of products riding the generative AI boon. - Tech Crunch

An innovative voice-cloning technology is making it possible to hear Chief Justice Earl Warren “read” the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision on school desegregation as he did on May 17, 1954, along with oral arguments by lawyers including a future Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall. - Associated Press

A new study “recruited management consultants from Boston Consulting Group.” One of the tasks was to brainstorm about a new type of shoe, sketch a persuasive business plan for making it and write about it persuasively. Some researchers had believed only humans could perform such creative tasks.  They were wrong. The consultants who used ChatGPT produced work that independent evaluators rated about 40 percent better on average. In fact, people who simply cut and pasted ChatGPT’s output were rated more highly than colleagues who blended its work with their own thoughts. And the A.I.-assisted consultants were more than 20 percent faster. - The New York Times

AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd, by looking at them just once. - Eureka Alert

A pair of studies looked at how much a person's expectations about AI impacted their likelihood to trust it and take its advice. A strong placebo effect works to shape what people think of a particular AI tool. - Axios

AI can figure out where a photo was taken. This "may help people ID the locations of old snapshots or allow biologists to conduct rapid surveys for invasive plant species—but similar tech could be used for gov. surveillance, corp. tracking or even stalking.” - NPR

A start-up called Perplexity shows what’s possible for a search engine built from scratch with artificial intelligence. Perplexity doesn’t give you back a list of links. Instead, it scours the web for you and uses AI to write a summary of what it finds. One impressive Perplexity feature is ‘Copilot,’ which helps a user narrow down a query by asking clarifying questions. Perplexity also allows users to search within a specific set of sources, such as academic papers, YouTube videos or Reddit posts. - New York Times

Followers and Admirers

A follower is what he admires, or at least strives to be it. An admirer holds himself aloof, does not or will not discover that what he admires contains a demand upon him: the demand to be what he admires or at least to strive to become it.

Søren Kierkegaard

14 Webinars this week about AI, Journalism, Graphics, Audio, & More

Mon, Sept 16 - Captivating Canva Graphics: Unlock the Power of Design Principles

What: By understanding design best practices, you can create more effective Canva graphics—and stay on-brand. Learn the four key design principles (layout, color, typography, imagery) as well as sources for high-quality graphics. Basic Canva knowledge is helpful but not required.

Who: Lidia Varesco Racoma of Lidia Varesco Design

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Nonprofit Learning Lab

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Tue, Sept 17 - Climate on the Ballot: The Stakes vs. The Horse Race

What: How can elections coverage prioritize informing voters of the climate stakes and hold leaders accountable for their climate positions?

Who: Neela Banerjee Chief Climate Editor for NPR; Chase Cain, National Climate Correspondent at NBC News; Lisa Friedman, Climate Change Reporter at The New York Times; and Adam Mahoney, Climate & Environment Reporter for Capital B News. Kyle Pope, Covering Climate Now's Executive Director for Strategic Initiatives, will moderate.

When: Panel - 12 pm, Eastern, Roundtable - 12:50 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Covering Climate Now

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Tue, Sept 17 - How Publishers are Incorporating Audio Content

What: Learn how incorporating audio content can unlock improved engagement and revenue opportunities for your publisher site.

Who: Travis Albritton, Head of Marketing, Amaze Media Labs

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Local Media Association

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Wed, Sept 18 - Climate on the Ballot: The World's Climate Election

What: Hear lessons learned from reporters in three climate-critical countries — India, Mexico, and the UK — on how their press handled recent national elections. And explore how reporters around the world can cover the importance of the US election for humanity's climate outlook.

Who: Iván Carillo, a Freelance Journalist & Documentarian from Mexico; Natalie Hanman, Head of Environment for The Guardian in the UK; and Ritwika Mitra, a Freelance Journalist in India. Elena Gonzalez, Covering Climate Now's Local Television Engagement Manager, will moderate.

When: Global panel: 9 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Covering Climate Now

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Wed, Sept 18 - Navigating Artificial Intelligence: ChatGPT Deep Dive

What: Learn about advanced techniques like fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and using custom GPTs to create a personalized and powerful AI assistant. Additionally, you’ll gain insights into choosing the right model for your needs. OpenAI offers different versions of ChatGPT, including GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, each with varying capabilities and performance characteristics.

Who: Zachary Piotti, Coordinator & Digital Marketing Consultant at Widener Small Business Development Center.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Pennsylvania Business One-Stop Shop

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Wed, Sept 18 - Climate on the Ballot: The State & Local Climate Election

What: State and local officials have important roles to play in championing or stymying climate action, and billions of dollars are flowing into communities across the country, due to recent federal climate legislation. How do we best cover the climate story locally, and what can we learn from colleagues who are doing it well?

Who: Aman Azhar, Maryland Reporter at Inside Climate News; Brian New, Investigative Reporter for CBS News Texas; and Joan Meiners, Climate News & Storytelling Reporter at The Arizona Republic. An additional panelist is to be announced. Alex Harris, Climate Change Reporter at the Miami Herald, will moderate.

When: Panel - 12 pm, Eastern, Roundtable - 12:50 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Covering Climate Now

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Wed, Sept 18 - A branded content success story  

What: Find out how a regional city magazine fine tuned their branded content program with content that is generating a significant audience, designed packages that have increased value and revenue and implemented distribution strategies that are outperforming clients’ expectations. 

Who: Kelly Travis, Director of Marketing & Revenue Operations, SLM Media Group and David Arkin, CEO of David Arkin Consulting.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Local Media Association

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Wed, Sept 18 - Student Media Coverage of Elections: Tools and stories to serve your students' audience

What: How Cal State LA's three voter guides were produced by the university's community news class for the Eastside and South Los Angeles communities. If you are putting one together, learn best practices – and what mistakes to avoid.

Who: Julie Liss, Associate Professor, Television, Film and Media Studies, California State University-Los Angeles.

When: 4 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: College Media Association

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Wed, Sept 18 - Beyond College Journalism: Post-Grad Life Webinar

What: Perspectives on life after college journalism. How did student journalism prepare them for their internships and their first jobs? What worked and what didn't work when applying for jobs? How to deal with rejections during a job hunt? How do early-career journalists cope with the state of the industry? What do professionals wish journalism school had taught them? What are things they noticed about the news industry after transitioning from a student to a full-time employee?

Who: Jaden Edison, K-12 Education Reporter at The Texas Tribune; Sara Martin, Former Three-Year Editor-in-Chief at The Metropolitan; Caryl Anne Francia: Editorial Intern at Pensions & Investments; Hannah Mirsky (Moderator), News Producer at Spectrum News North Carolina.

When: 5 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Nutgraf, an award-nominated weekly newsletter about student journalism.

More Info

Thu, Sept 19 - How AI Is Transforming Creative Production and Immersive Storytelling

What: Discover practical applications of AI-driven creative production technologies. You’ll find out:  How immersive production is reshaping how brands connect with their audiences How cutting-edge AI tools are revolutionizing the creative process in games and marketing Examples of how this new technology can boost creativity and drive engagement.

Who: Drew Weigel, 3D & Immersive, Shutterstock Studios; Justin Webber, Exec. Prod. Shutterstock Studios.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Ad Week

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Thu, Sept 19 - Solopreneur workshop: A checklist for your transition

What: We’ll walk through a checklist that covers every step for freelancers of creating a business plan, to researching and setting rates, to addressing federal and state business regulations and requirements.

Who: Freelance writer Jen A. Miller, who runs the Notes from a Hired Pen newsletter; Diane Sears, author and Founder and President of DiVerse Media.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: $10 or free for ASBPE members

Sponsor: The American Society of Business Publication Editors

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Thu, Sept 19 - Showing up: Public meetings in Utah

What: Learn how to find public meetings near you and learn how to best make your voice heard. Learn how much notice is meant to be given for the meetings, when they can be closed and what to do about it if you think open meeting laws are being broken.  

Who: First Amendment Attorney Ed Carter

When: 12 noon

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Utah Investigative Journalism Project

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Thu, Sept 19 - Demystifying AI: Building a Foundation for Responsible Use 

What: In this session, our panelists go beyond the fear of robots taking over the world and explore what AI is and the ways it can be used responsibly in the newsroom.   

Who: Bobby Allyn, technology correspondent, NPR; Nick Toso, CEO, Rolli; Moderator: Araceli Gómez-Aldana, WBEZ

When: 12:30, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Public Media Journalists Association

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Thu, Sept 19 - The Importance of High School Sports Journalism

What: In this roundtable discussion, we'll explore the importance of high school sports coverage, the challenges that arise and the future of high school sports journalism.  

Who: Newsday's Gregg Sarra; North Shore News Group's Anthony Lifrieri;The Express News Group's Cailin Riley; Jamie Stuart will moderate the discussion.

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Press Club of Long Island

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5 Tips for a Healthy Use of AI

The following strategies can help you maintain a healthy balance between your expertise and AI assistance:

1. Generate rough drafts from notes, rather than from a blank page: It’s fine to generate drafts with AI, but do your thinking first, put together some structured notes, and treat AI-generated content as a first draft that requires critical review and substantial editing. This approach can help mitigate the risk of anchoring bias.

2. Rotate between AI-assisted and non-assisted writing: To develop and maintain your own writing skills, interweave AI tools into your writing workflow, rather than relying on them for chunks of text. This will also help you maintain your own voice.

3. Customize AI prompts: Learn to craft specific prompts that guide the AI to produce more relevant and useful outputs for your particular needs.

4. Ethical considerations: Be transparent about AI use, especially in academic writing, and follow any guidelines or policies set by your institution or publication venues.

5. Fact-check and verify: Always verify facts, citations and specific claims made by AI. These tools have a tendency to generate “hallucinations,” plausible-sounding but inaccurate chunks of information.

From The Transmitter

Good advice from Agatha Christie

Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.  -Agatha Christie, born Sept. 15, 1890

Emotional Blackmail

When someone attempts to make you take responsible for their feelings, they are committing what psychologists call emotional blackmail. A parent uses this when telling a child, "You've hurt me so much," or when a spouse says, "You hurt my feelings.

It is placing responsibility for their emotional outcome on you—pretending you have control over something that you do not. The parent may choose to become angry or sulk or become bitter or irritable toward the child. Someone may claim your action justifies their emotion. But that person is still doing the choosing of their own emotions.

When you see a family tiptoe around the house because "we don't want to upset mother (or father)," then you have a family who has decided to make everyone responsible for a single person's feelings—taking on a burden they were never meant to carry. Each family member is responsible for his or her actions. It’s the wrong goal to aim at preventing someone from ever being upset.

Elizabeth Kenny once said, “Anyone who angers you conquers you.” To allow someone else to decide how you feel is abdicating your responsibility to define yourself. Don't allow someone else to sell you on the idea that you are responsible for what they feel. Don't blackmail those around you by threatening to unleash an emotional outburst for something you yourself created.

Stephen Goforth

15 Articles about AI & the Creative Arts

Ted Chiang Is Wrong About AI Art It’s real. But it isn’t revolutionary. – The Atlantic

Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art – The New Yorker  

Create Better AI Images With These Expert Prompt Writing Tips – CNET  

So long, point-and-click: How generative AI will redefine the user interface - ZDnet 

Video game actors go on strike over AI protections – Semafor  

Colin Kaepernick lost control of his story. Now he wants to help creators own theirs – Tech Crunch

The music industry is coming for AI – NPR

The AI artist who used Bad Bunny’s voice — and shot to fame – Rest of World

How to Write a Book with AI in 2024 – GeekyGadgets

AI can’t make music — but that doesn’t mean it poses an empty threat to musicians - The Atlantic

OpenAI rolls out voice mode after delaying it for safety reasons – Washington Post  

India’s star audio content company is going all in on AI. Will listeners tune in? - Rest of World

New study on AI-assisted creativity reveals an interesting social dilemma – PsyPost 

FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist – ArsTechnica  

AI Is Coming for Amateur Novelists. That’s Fine – The Atlantic

Four Rules of Life

Four rules of life: Show up, Pay attention, Tell the truth, Don't be attached to the results. -Angeles Arrien

AI Definitions: Generative AI

Generative AI (GenAI) - Artificial intelligence that can produce media content (text, images, audio, video, etc.). It operates similarly to the “type ahead” feature on smartphones that makes next-word suggestions. You might say it is like autocomplete at scale with the ability to go back and forth with the user to refine and tweak the requests.

More AI definitions here.