We’re All Lousy Self-Evaluators

A stranger walks into a room and sits down behind a table. He picks up a piece of paper and read aloud a generic-sounding weather report. He completes his “report” in about 90 seconds and walks out of the room.

Next, you’re asked to guess his IQ.

You’re part of a psychological experiment, and you object to the absurdity of the request. I don’t know anything about that guy. He just came into a room and read a report. It wasn’t even his report- you gave it to him to read! How am I supposed to know his IQ?

Reluctantly, you make a wild guess. Separately, Fake Weatherman is asked to guess his own IQ. Who made a better guess?

Amazingly, you did, even though you know nothing about Fake Weatherman. Two (German) psychologists … conducted this experiment, and they found that the strangers’ IQ predictions were better than the predictions of those whose IQ was being predicted- about 66 percent more accurate.

To be clear, it’s not so much that you’re a brilliant predictor; it’s that he’s a lousy self-evaluator. We’re all lousy self-evaluators. College students do a superior job predicting the longevity of their roommates’ romantic relationships than their own.

Savor, for a moment, the preposterousness of these findings. Fake Weatherman has all the information, and you’ve got none. He’s got decades of data- year’s worth of grades, college entrance exams cores, job evaluations, and more. Fake Weatherman should be the worlds foremost expert on Fake Weatherman!

Chip & Dan Heath, Switch

12 Media Webinars this week about AI, journalism, storytelling, NIL, and more

Mon, Oct 9 - The Darkening Tide of Digital Repression and the Risks of Journalistic Reluctance 2023

What: This seminar examines why journalists often fail to take the necessary information security steps to better protect themselves, their sources, and their stories, despite ongoing threats to journalism.  

Who: Jennifer R. Henrichsen, Assistant Professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University

When: 3:10 pm, Pacific

Where: Microsoft Teams

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Washington State University

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Mon, Oct 9 - Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI: Empowering a Deeper Conversation

What: Navigating the positive and effective uses of AI and generative AI within K-12 school settings. Seven essential guidelines recommended for school superintendents and school leaders when implementing actionable steps and policies around AI and generative AI will be described.

Who: Matthew Friedman currently serves as the Superintendent of Schools in the Quakertown Community School District in Pennsylvania; Kelly May-Vollmar is the Superintendent of Desert Sands Unified School District, California; David Miyashiro is Superintendent of Cajon Valley Union School; Pete Just, CETL serves as the Executive Director of the Indiana CTO Council. District, California.

When: 5 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsors: The School Superintendents Association, The Consortium for School Networking, ClassLink

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Tue, Oct 10 - Storytelling for Impact

What: Tips, techniques and tools to help the modern marketer tell better and more impactful stories to activate their audiences around ideas and actions.

Who: Kiersten Hill Director of Nonprofit Solutions for FireSpring

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: FireSpring

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Tue, Oct 10 - Boost your reporting with data visualization: a toolkit for journalists

What: The basics of data visualization for journalists. By the end, you'll have everything you need to make your own charts and share them with your audience.

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Flourish

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Tue, Oct 10 - How ChatGPT Reduces Costs and Time by 70% in Lesson Writing - See a Proof in Action

What: What is the overview of the ChatGPT ecosystem and the tools and plug-ins you can use?  What are the learning platforms that can integrate with ChatGPT and reduce your cost? What are the steps to take so ChatGPT can be used to reduce research, writing, and development effort and expenditures? How do you deal with copyright and ownership of the content? What ChatGPT tools can you use in graphics, videos, and animation?  

Who: Ray Jimenez, Ph.D. Architect of TrainingMagNetwork.com, Chief Learning Officer of Vignettes Learning. He spent 15 years with Coopers & Lybrand in the areas of management consulting and implementation of learning technology solutions.

When: 12 noon, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: OpenSesame

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Wed, Oct 11 - Interpretable AI, algorithmic accountability, and AI ethics

What: What is interpretable machine learning? How can we make algorithms accountable for their decisions? How can we better explain how AI works in critical situations?

Who: Dr Stylianos Kampakis who has more than 10 years of experience in the area of data science working with organisations of all sizes on topics like data strategy and algorithm design.

When:11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Tesseract Academy

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Wed, Oct 11 - Athletes as Influencers: Working With NIL, Pros and Retired Players

What: Get best practices and actionable strategies to activate and optimize your athlete influencer relationships.  

Who: Giancarlo Morena Sr. Director of Marketing Celsius, Jared Kozinn Head of Sports  Partnerships  Dansons, Pit Boss; Bob Lynch CEO and Founder  SponsorUnited        

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: AdWeek

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Wed, Oct 11 - Digital Marketing for Nonprofits with HootSuite

What: Gain invaluable insights from industry experts on how to effectively manage and market your social media channels. Learn the dos and don'ts of social media management specifically tailored for nonprofits. Have your pressing questions answered in real time during our open Q&A session following the presentation.

When: 12 noon, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: TechSoup

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Thu, Oct 12 - Ideas That Will Instantly Grow Your Audience

What: Implementing a simple, but effective SEO strategy that will immediately get you results; Social media tactics that uses Meta’s tools to quickly grow your audience; How to take traditional topics like education and sports and build fast digital-only features that are useful, searchable and shareable; AI approaches that will help you create content efficiently but ethically.

Who: David Arkin, the owner of David Arkin Consulting and Tara Jones, who works for his consulting firm as a digital content strategist.

When: 1 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: $35

Sponsor: Online Media Campus

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Thu, Oct 12 - Telling Hard Stories: 2023 Dart Awards Celebration & Winners' Roundtable

What: Questions of craft, ethics and storytelling, and explore innovative best practices in hard-hitting, humane reporting on violence and tragedy.

Who: Janelle Nanos, Enterprise Reporter, The Boston Globe; Raquel Rutledge, Investigations Editor, The Examination News; Meg Shutzer, Investigative Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker; Connie Walker, Host, Gimlet, a Spotify Studio; John Woodrow Cox, Enterprise Reporter, The Washington Post

When: 6 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma

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Thu, Oct 12 - Reading Instruction and AI: New Strategies for the Big Education Challenges of Our Time

What: Experts in the field explore these instructional pain points and offer game-changing guidance for K-12 leaders and educators.

Who: Brandi Renfro Educational Consultant, Promethean; Lauraine Langreo Staff Writer, Education Week; Glenn Kleiman Senior Adviser, Stanford Graduate School of Education; Julie Cohen Charles S. Robb Associate Professor,  University of Virginia's School of Education and Human Development and others

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Education Week

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Fri, Oct 13 - How journalists can (and should) start using AI in their work 

What: A practical look at what journalists need to know about AI tools and their applications within journalistic work. Best practices for using AI in the newsroom.

Who: Francesco Marconi, a computational journalist, and the co-founder of AI company Applied XL, formerly R&D Chief at The Wall Street Journal and AI Co-Lead at the Associated Press,

When: 11:30 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Press Club

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10 Quotes Worth Reading about the Future of AI

Within five years everyone would have access to an AI personal assistant. He referred to this function as a personal chief-of-staff. In this vision, everybody will have access to an AI that knows you, is super smart, and understands your personal history. -Venture Beat 

Some experts in generative AI predict that as much as 90% of content on the internet could be artificially generated within a few years. -Bloomberg

Currently, most AI falls under narrow or specialized intelligence — good at one thing but pretty useless otherwise. However, we’re inching closer to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), where machines can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across different domains. -Christophe Atten writing in Medium

It is certainly the case that many new technologies have led to bad outcomes – often the same technologies that have been otherwise enormously beneficial to our welfare. So it’s not that the mere existence of a moral panic means there is nothing to be concerned about.  But a moral panic is by its very nature irrational – it takes what may be a legitimate concern and inflates it into a level of hysteria that ironically makes it harder to confront actually serious concerns.  And wow do we have a full-blown moral panic about AI right now. -Marc Andreesen writing in a16z

All of the software we’ve ever used was engineered to work backward from an outcome. Its creators wanted to help you find a webpage or play a game or operate a laptop. Perhaps you’ve noticed that the major AI chatbots arrived with almost no user documentation or instructions. A lump of clay doesn’t come with instructions either. That’s what makes this moment unique — and so worthy of species-level #1 foam-finger pride. We humans have created a tool for potentially infinite tasks. Its imperfections are ours to solve — and its powers still ours to shape. -Washington Post 

“AI may cause a new Renaissance, perhaps a new phase of the Enlightenment,” Yann LeCun, one of the godfathers of modern artificial intelligence, suggested earlier this year. AI can already make some existing scientific processes faster and more efficient, but can it do more, by transforming the way science itself is done? Such transformations have happened before. -The Economist

DeepMind’s cofounder says generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI: bots that can carry out tasks you set for them by calling on other software and other people to get stuff done. “Technology is going to be animated. It’s going to have the potential freedom, if you give it, to take actions. It’s truly a step change in the history of our species that we’re creating tools that have this kind of, you know, agency.” -MIT Tech Review

What If the Robots Were Very Nice While They Took Over the World? First it was chess and Go. Now AI can beat us at Diplomacy, the most human of board games. The way it wins offers hope that maybe AI will be a delight. -Wired

People need to develop “rugged flexibility,” to manage change most effectively. In other words, people need to learn how to be strong and hold on to what is most useful but also to bend and adapt to change by embracing what is new. -Venture Beat

Imagine if your brain got 10 times smarter every year over the past decade, and you were on pace for more 10x compounding increases in intelligence over at least the next five. Throw in precise recall of everything you’ve ever learned and the ability to synthesize all those materials instantly in any language. You wouldn’t be just the smartest person to have ever lived — you’d be all the smartest people to have ever lived. (Though not the wisest.) That’s a plausible trajectory of the largest AI models. -Washington Post 

We seem to be in what I can only call an “AI lull.” The initial excitement about ChatGPT, which started in January, has receded. Do not be deceived. While the hype and marketing may have died down, at least on the retail side, the AI revolution will continue. -Bloomberg

What Overinvolved parenting does to Kids

When parents have tended to do the stuff of life for kids—the waking up, the transporting, the reminding about deadlines and obligations, the bill-paying, the question-asking, the decision-making, the responsibility-taking, the talking to strangers, and the confronting of authorities, kids may be in for quite a shock when parents turn them loose in the world of college or work. They will experience setbacks, which will feel to them like failure. Lurking beneath the problem of whatever thing needs to be handled is the student’s inability to differentiate the self from the parent.

When seemingly perfectly healthy but overparented kids get to college and have trouble coping with the various new situations they might encounter—a roommate who has a different sense of “clean,” a professor who wants a revision to the paper but won’t say specifically what is “wrong,” a friend who isn’t being so friendly anymore, a choice between doing a summer seminar or service project but not both—they can have real difficulty knowing how to handle the disagreement, the uncertainty, the hurt feelings, or the decision-making process. This inability to cope—to sit with some discomfort, think about options, talk it through with someone, make a decision—can become a problem unto itself.

Julie Lythcott-Haims, How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success

A pessimist & an optimist

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.  -Sir Winston Churchill

Irritations

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. -Carl Jung

Please Understand Me

We want desperately to be understood. But if we put the power to decide whether we are understood into the hands of strangers, strangers who may or may not care about us, strangers who may or may not have our best interest at heart, we may waste our time and resources trying to please them.    

Why give people who don’t know us an outsized influence over our lives? Why provide them with control they haven’t earned by getting to know us by respecting us? How much better to find solace in those who truly care! Those people we can trust! People who will stand by us as they are invested in who we are becoming.

Stephen Goforth

A Dozen Recent Articles about AI & Journalism

How news can leverage artificial intelligence for productivity - Local Media Foundatio 

AI and journalism: What's next? - Reuters Institute

Generative AI could make the workflow easier for journalists and make programming more accessible for technically advanced investigations - Columbia Journalism Review

Insider's newsroom will start experimenting with AI - Axios 

In the AI Age, The New York Times Wants Reporters to Tell Readers Who They Are - Vanity Fair

AI & News: Moving Beyond “if” to “how” - Louise Story on Medium

The right newsroom jobs for AI, and the wrong ones - Axios

How the media is covering ChatGPT -- Columbia Journalism Review

Press freedom means controlling the language of AI – NiemanLab

AI wrote this editorial, and it argues that human journalists should keep their jobs – Seattle Times

Nearly three quarters of news organisations believe generative AI presents new opportunities for journalism – The London School of Economics

‘Generative AI doesn’t require us to reimagine journalism, but it gives us a really good excuse’ – Poynter

The heroes of an epic adventure

A team of researchers interviewed a group of people who've been through a course of psychotherapy this is what they found:  

Those former patients who currently enjoyed better psychological health tended to narrate heroic stories in which they bravely battled their symptoms and emerged victorious in the end.

In other words, these people saw themselves as the heroes of an epic adventure and their problems as obstacles that are part of the hero's journey. Now crucially, in those accounts. there was a dominant recurring theme around personal agency. This is the sense that you are the subject influencing your own actions and life circumstances just like the hero in pretty much any story you've ever come across.  

So how can we do this for ourselves?

Tip number one is to practice self-distancing, which is a simple act of viewing yourself from the outside in. It allows you to take a calmer, more objective view on the events of your life.

Tip number two is to focus on building your sense of personal agency. My recommendation is to start by practicing your ability to take intentional action. The capacity to intentionally set and achieve goals is widely considered a cornerstone of self-agency.

Hazel Gale

9 Webinars this week about journalism, media law, FOIAs, Social Media, AI & more

Mon, Oct 2 – Media Law Office Hours

What: The open group session allows journalists with legal questions to help find answers on issues related to the First Amendment, Freedom of Information, copyright, defamation, or other media law matters.

Who: Attorney Matthew Leish

When: 4 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free for members

Sponsor: New York Deadline Club

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Tue, Oct 3 - Media Distrust in a Post-Truth Society

What: Why has media distrust grown in recent years? And is there anything rank-and-file journalists can do about it?  Join us as we unpack the myriad of factors contributing to media distrust, and examine some ways it might begin to be restored.

Who: Gerard Baker, Editor-at-Large, The Wall Street Journal; Joy Mayer, founder of Trusting News; Rod Hicks, SPJ’s Director of Ethics and Diversity.  

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: New York Deadline Club

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Tue, Oct 3 through Thu, Oct 5 – National FOIA Summit 2023

What: The fall gathering of access professionals, transparency advocates, and journalists with more than 20 timely panels and training sessions about public records and access.

Who: Jeff Roberts Executive Director of NFOIC; Jodie Gil Associate Professor Southern Connecticut State University; Alexander Shalom, ACLU of NJ; Shirsho Dasgupta Investigative Data Reporter at the Miami Herald; Frank LoMonte, Counsel CNN; Sam Stecklow, Journalist Invisible Institute; Rachael Johnson, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Justin Mayo, Senior Data Journalist at Big Local News; Lisa Pickoff-White, Data Journalist, KQED; Derek Kravitz Investigations and Data Editor at MuckRock; and that’s just on Tuesday!

When: Sessions throughout these three days.

Where: Zoom

Cost: $25 for NFOIC members or $30 for non-members.

Sponsor: National Freedom of Information Coalition

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Tue, Oct 3 - Social Media 101 for Nonprofits

What: Practical tips and tools for extending your cause and mission via social media. We cover the basics of using social media for your nonprofit organization and give you handy tips for the “big 3:” Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Who: Kiersten Hill Director of Nonprofit Solutions

When: 2:30 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Firespring

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Tue, Oct 3 - AI and the Media

What: AI has been a massive talking point this year, in all areas of the media. Is it friend or foe? Will AI help media folk to become more creative, freeing them up from mundane tasks, and allowing them to extend their production and editorial horizons? Or will it replace jobs, promote tired formats and stereotypes, increase misinformation, and undermine copyright?  

Who: Sir Peter Bazalgette. Former chair of ITV, the Arts Council and Endemol; Jessica Cecil. Founder of the Trusted News Initiative and former BBC Chief of Staff; Alex Connock. Former CEO of Ten Alps, now a Fellow at the Said Business School, director of a postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence, and author ‘Media Management and AI’’; Thad McIlroy. Principal at the Future Of Publishing. Thad will be joining us live from San Francisco.  

When: 12:30, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free for students

Sponsor: The Media Society

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Wed, Oct 4 - How to Build a Webinar Using ChatGPT

What: How the team at Cvent used ChatGPT to create a webinar that was so good, it had people lining up to attend (virtually, of course). Register for this webinar to get answers to questions like:   How can AI be used to ideate topics, build the abstract, and write the content outline and script? What are some ways that AI can be used to help promote virtual events? Can audiences distinguish between AI and human input? Does using AI actually save time or does it add to the workload?

Who: Brooke Gracey of Cvent

When: 3 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Institute for Public Relations

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Wed, Oct 4 - What two experts want journalists to know in a time of vaccine fatigue

What: - What you need to know about the COVID-19, flu vaccines. What to know about the new RSV vaccine for older adults and infants. Story ideas for engaging a COVID-weary community. Covering health equity and access angles

Who: Dr. Tina Tan, an infectious disease pediatrics physician and professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine; Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and George Washington University public health professor.

When: 11:30 am, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The National Press Club Journalism Institute

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Wed, Oct 4 - Create Short-Form Videos That Actually Drive Sales

What: The impact that entertaining short-form video content has on driving social media ROI. Why creator-brand partnerships outperform brand-only content, and how to choose the right type of creators . How brands can use community-building to achieve higher engagement and follower growth than industry averages.

Who: Ashley Murphy, VP of consumer marketing at Rare Beauty; Kate Kenner Archibald, CMO at Dash Hudson.  

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Dash Hudson

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Wed, Oct 4 - How Media and Journalism Can Defend Democracy from Fascism

Who: Professor Ben-Ghiat, an American historian and cultural critic. She is a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders and professor of history and Italian studies at New York University.

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Media & Democracy Project

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11 Articles From Sept about Data Science, AI & More

Pentagon Discloses Plan For Defending Space Systems

Exploring Neural Networks & Unlocking the power of AI

Air Force approaches industry for enabling technologies in artificial intelligence for geospatial

The Defense Dept will award grants to develop new semiconductors for use in AI quantum computing & more

5 Crucial Steps to Develop an Effective Coding Routine

Everything you Need to Become a SAS Certified Data Scientist

Understanding Machine Learning Algorithms: An In-Depth Overview

5 Lessons on How to Get the Most Out of Your Data Science Projects

4 Skills the next generation of data scientists needs to develop

Why "AI" can't succeed without APIs

A beginner's guide to setting up Python and understanding its role in data science

Empathy is a Choice

Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us — a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain — it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. … This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.

Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams 

13 Articles About How Companies are Using AI in their Businesses

Meet Your New AI Chatbot Co-Worker - Bloomberg

AI and the automation of work – Ben Evans 

Why trying to "shape" AI innovation to protect workers is a bad idea – Noah Smith

Companies Put AI to Work Outside the Cloud, Trimming Costs - Wall Street Journal

How Do Companies Use Artificial Intelligence? – Data Science Central

As Businesses Clamor for Workplace A.I., Tech Companies Rush to Provide It – New York Times

U.S. employers are using AI to essentially reduce workers to numbers in the workplace – NPR

Business Technology Chiefs Question ChatGPT’s Readiness for the Enterprise - Wall Street Journal

AI-native business models and experiences will allow small businesses to appear big and large businesses to move faster – Tech Target

Generative AI Tools Use Custom Data to Power More Business Functions - Wall Street Journal

Businesses Aim to Harness Generative AI to Shake Up Accounting, Finance - Wall Street Journal

How businesses can break through the ChatGPT hype with ‘workable AI’ – Venture Beat

Companies Tap Tech Behind ChatGPT to Make Customer-Service Chatbots Smarter - Wall Street Journal

Success

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;

who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;

who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;

who has left the world better than he found it whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul;

who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;

who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;whose life was an inspiration;

whose memory a benediction.

Bessie Anderson Stanley

11 Articles about AI & Creativity

ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and the collapse of the creative process – The Conversation

The Truth About AI Getting "Creative" - Marques Brownlee (video)

What Dreams & AI have in common – Kevin Kelly’s blog

Is Adobe's AI art feature as creepy as it sounds? – Creative Bloq

Generative AI may shorten the time it takes to create richer and more thoughtful content - Semafor

Your Creativity Won’t Save Your Job From AI – The Atlantic

8 Big Questions about AI – New York Times

Is AI better at picking and pairing fonts than you? – Better Web Type 

Using AI to do the work you don’t want to do – The Dropbox Blog

How to defend against the rise of ChatGPT? Think like a poet – Washington Post

Spotify will not ban AI-made music - BBC

Wait! You Didn’t Use the Proper Lingo

Once introduced, a prescriptive rule about terminology in a particular profession or field of study is hard to eradicate, no matter how ridiculous. Steven Pinker writes in The Language Instinct:

The rules survive by the same dynamic that perpetuates ritual genital mutilations and college fraternity hazing: I had to go through it and am none the worse, so why should you have it any easier? Anyone daring to overturn a rule by example must always worry that readers will think he or she is ignorant of the rule, rather than challenging it. Since perspective rules are so psychologically unnatural that only those with access to the right schooling can abide by them, they serve as shibboleths, differentiating the elite from the rabble.

11 Articles about AI for those Leading Companies

What every CEO should know about generative AI - McKinsey 

Companies with innovative cultures have a big edge with generative AI - McKinsey

Does your company need its own LLM? - TechTalks

Four essential questions for boards to ask about generative AI – McKinsey

The Big Question for Managers on AI: Who Gets the Job of Figuring It Out? – Wall Street Journal

How AI requires a new approach to work and management – Charter Work

When AI Meets HR: Prepare Your Policies Now – Inc

Generative AI Can Make Business Intelligence Even Smarter – Here’s How – Inside Big Data

Companies Are Drowning in Too Much AI - Wall Street Journal

ChatGPT: Implications for Business – Medium

How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work - The Atlantic  

The Flip Side

Most people are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses but miss the flip side. If your weakness is confrontation, the flip side is that you are probably good at finding creative ways to get along with others and create harmony. Someone else might be prone to make rash decisions, and yet that same quality makes them ideal in times of emergency when quick action is critical. Those who are slow to act will likely be thorough and reliable. Whenever you spot your own (or someone else's) weaknesses—don't forget the flip side.

Stephen Goforth

11 Webinars this week on AI, Writing, PR, Storytelling, Social Media, Journalism & More

Mon, Sept 25 - How to use ChatGPT and other generative AI tools in your newsrooms

What: A four-week massive open online course, held from Sept. 25 to Oct. 22. Instructors will put aside the AI hype cycle and get down to the basic principles of how the technology works, how it might work in your newsrooms, and the ethical implications to consider. Upon completion of this course, you will:  Become conversant on the topic of AI and news. Be able to put into use tools from simple process automation to basic GPT functions. Develop a plan for your news operation to consider, procure, and maintain tools with automation and AI.

Who: Aimee Rinehart, the Senior Product Manager AI Strategy for The Associated Press.  

Sil Hamilton, AI researcher-in-residence at Hacks/Hackers, a network of journalists who rethink the future of news through talks, hackathons, and conferences.

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Knight Center for Journalism

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Tue, Sept 26 – Why Headline Testing Matters & How AI Can Help

What: We delve into the world of A/B testing data and show how ChatGPT can assist in the process. We aim to demonstrate the benefits of investing time in improving your content's performance right after publication.

Who: Smartocto’s content editor Stefan ten Teije; Janneke Bosch, who is the editor at Omroep Brabant.

When: 9 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Smartocto (builds editorial analytics systems for newsrooms)

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Tue, Sept 26 – Time and Project Management for Freelancers With The Writers' Co-op

What: Strategies for time and project management as a business of one. This webinar will also specifically talk about managing your workflow as a freelancer when you are neurodivergent. You’ll walk away with a slew of options, so you can pick and choose the ones that resonate with you. 

Who: Anna Burgess Yang, a freelance writer focusing on banking and finance based outside of Chicago; Andrea Trimarchi, a certified ADHD Life Coach and creator of Focused Femmes ADHD Coaching; Wudan Yan, the host and executive producer of The Writers’ Co-op.

When: 2 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: $35

Sponsor: The Writers’ Co-op

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Tue, Sept 26 – The Power of Mentoring

What: Find out why our news leaders believe it is crucial to have a deep relationship with a mentor or mentee.Panelists will share stories of being mentored and mentoring others and how these relationships nourished their careers.

Who: Laura Trujillo, Managing Editor, Life & Entertainment at USA TODAY, and author of "Stepping Back from the Ledge" from Penguin Random House. Nicole Carroll, Executive Director, ASU Local Journalism Initiative. Gary Estwick, Breaking News Editor at The Tennessean Katrice Hardy, NLA Board Member and Executive Editor of The Dallas Morning News. The discussion will be moderated by Paul Cheung, CEO of the Center for Public Integrity.

When: 4 pm, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The News Leaders Association

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Wed, Sept 27 - Public Relations & Artificial Intelligence

What: This webinar will explore the dynamic intersection of public relations and artificial intelligence. showcasing AI's evolution, as well as the opportunities and challenges it presents for PR professionals. A Q&A session will follow the presentation.

Who: Chris Harihar of Crenshaw Communications, a top B2B tech PR agency based in New York City

When: 11 am, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: $20 for nonmembers

Sponsor: PRSA Madison (Public Relations Society of America)

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Wed, Sept 27 - From Soft News to Hard News: The Long Journey of Women’s Sections

What: Get the scoop on the evolution of the women’s pages of newspapers and a female journalist who defied the staid conventions of her times and attracted millions of readers.

Who: Journalism professor Kimberly Voss explores the significance of the women’s sections, and journalist Allison Gilbert delves into Elsie Robinson’s career and life.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: $25 for non-members

Sponsor: Smithsonian  

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Thu, Sept 28 - Engage Your Audience Through Storytelling

What: Learn: How brand storytelling works. How to clarify your story’s message. How to understand your ideal customer’s needs

Who: Peter Davis, Brand Story Strategist & Owner of Hero’s Quest Consulting

When: 8:30, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The BBB

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Thu, Sept 28 - After Twitter: Understanding Social Media Protocols

What: We'll delve into the reasons behind the growing search for alternative platforms and the intriguing trends that are emerging from this shift. Discover post-Twitter social media's evolution, alternative platforms, and trends. Learn about decentralization's significance for nonprofits in online communication. 

Who: Ex-Twitter exec Evan Henshaw-Plath and Billy Bicket of TechSoup, Director of Maker Labs.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: TechSoup

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Thu, Sept 28 - How to Become a Micro-Influencer on LinkedIn: Grow Your Followers

What: In this program we will cover how to: Position your profile to be seen as a resource and subject matter expert. Create compelling and reputation building content.  Engage and amplify other influencers and prospects. Become a guest on podcasts, LIVE streams and beyond.

Who: Brynne Tillman CEO & LinkedIn Whisperer, Social Sales Link.

When: 11 am, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Training Magazine Network

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Fri, Sept 29 - Health and Science Journalism Webinar

What: Designed especially for freelance journalists, this webinar will teach effective storytelling, evidence-based reporting, and ethical considerations in health communication.  

Who: Lori Leibovich, Editor, NYT Well; Kyong Song, Managing Editor, WebMD; Shraddha Chakradhar, Deputy News Editor for Diversity, Science; Katherine Reynolds Lewis, IIJ Founder and Independent Journalist

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Institute for Independent Journalists

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Fri, Sept 29 - Covering a U.S. Government Shutdown: Story ideas for national and local reporters

What: Participants will: Gain confidence in covering the government shut down. Obtain resources for covering this story from both a national and local perspective Learn what led to this year’s impasse, and how this shutdown would be different Get story ideas to tailor the government shutdown story to a media outlet’s community.

Who: Shai Akabas, executive director, Bipartisan Policy Center’s Economic Policy Program. Moderator: Bara Vaida, NPCJI’s director of training and a longtime Washington, D.C.-based reporter.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Press Club

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Here's how you can spot who is going to be successful

(Some researchers ran) a workshop for low-performing seven graders at a New York City junior high school, teaching them about the brain and about effective study techniques. Half the group also received a presentation on memory, but the other half were given an explanation of how the brain changes as a result of effortful learning: that when you try hard and learn something new, the brain forms new connections, and these new connections, over time, make you smarter. This group was told that intellectual development is not the natural unfolding of intelligence but results from the new connections that are formed through effort and learning.

After the workshop, both groups of kids filtered back into their classwork. Their teachers were unaware that some had been taught that effortful learning changes the brain, but as the school year unfolded, those students adopted what (the researchers) call a "growth mindset," a belief that their intelligence was largely within their own control, and they went on to become much more aggressive learners and higher achievers than students from the first group, who continued to hold the conventional view, what (the researchers) called a "fixed mindset" that they're intellectual ability was set at birth by the natural talents they were born with.

(The) research had been triggered by curiosity over why some people become helpless when they encounter challenges and fail at them, whereas others respond to failure by trying new strategies and redoubling their effort. (They) found that a fundamental difference between the two responses lies in how a person attributes failure: those who attribute to their own inability-"I'm not intelligent"-become helpless. Those who interpret failure as a result of insufficient effort or an ineffective strategy dig deeper and try different approaches.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III,, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning