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The AI Upgrade
Welcome to The AI Upgrade, your weekly guide to understanding and unpacking the AI revolution. Made for professionals upskilling in the age of AI, this podcast is a must-listen for knowledge workers.
Each week, hosts Peter Bittner & Kris Krug chat with experts, founders, journalists, and technologists to understand the trends and impacts of AI on media. Interested in understanding the impacts of AI and other next-gen technologies on how we create, distribute, and access stories? The AI Upgrade is for you!
The AI Upgrade
Ep. 15 – A Small Newsroom's Guide to AI
The unofficial slogan of the Center for Cooperative Media at Monclair State University is collaborate or die. The Center, which works to help small newsrooms both in New Jersey and around the world to succeed, believes in the power of sharing resources to help local news outlets survive during these challenging times. It was that sort of spirit that inspired Joe Amditis, the Center’s Associate Director of Operations, to create free guides to help small newsrooms and media professionals understand how to use AI tools. In this week’s episode, host Peter Bittner talked with Joe about these resources and how small newsrooms can succeed in a world where AI-generated content poses a threat to quality journalism.
Show Notes:
(4:43) A roundup of best uses for AI tools
(10:03) Resources Joe created for small news organizations about how to use AI
(11:34) Where to find Joe’s free AI guides
(12:31) The basics of prompt writing
(13:34) Joe’s guide for newsmakers about image-generating prompts
(16:16) The mistakes big tech made with generative search
(21:07) Joe’s manifesto of hope about why small newsrooms can succeed in a digital sea of artificially generated nonsense
(22:40) How the monetization of GPTs can hurt small publications
(25:28) The demise of the tinkering generation and a call for an open source movement
(27:05) The pros and cons of trying to regulate the open source community
Learn more about the Center for Cooperative Media – a hub of collaborative resources and ideas
Where to find Joe’s free AI guides:
- Beginner’s prompt handbook: ChatGPT for local news publishers
- Beginner’s guide: Custom GPTs for local news publishers
- A beginner’s guide to image generation with DALL-E 3
Learn more about The Upgrade and our online courses
Connect on LinkedIn with Peter Bittner, The Upgrade’s founder and CEO
Special thanks to Mitch Walker for helping to design the podcast’s artwork
