News & Resources

Chad Davis, chief innovation strategist at Nebraska Public Media

Next Generation of Public Media Leaders

An interview with Chad Davis

By Linda O'Bryon

At NETA Consulting, we often talk about the next generation of public media leaders, and the skill sets they will need to navigate these times of dynamic change. With AI and new forms of media consumption, today’s manager needs to be grounded in the values of public media while keeping an active eye on new trends. Chad Davis, chief innovation strategist at Nebraska Public Media, has developed a series of articles and webinars that focus on emerging trends and technologies. He appeared at a Poynter AI x Journalism Day panel during SXSW in Austin.

We recently caught up with Chad via a Zoom interview session, where he talked about the most important skill sets for navigating today’s media. These skill sets are very much rooted in history…but with a new, profound twist.

The interview has been edited for length.

What do today's public media managers need to put at the top of the list as they think about the future and develop a vision?

• Stay curious
• Approach new technology with a clear sense of your organization’s values
• Collaborate – in your community and with other stations
• Lean-in to your core competencies and work with other organizations to complement those
• Experiment – games and experiential outreach are two examples

What should public media’s role and position be in an AI – driven future?

Public media needs to be experimenting with AI. And I think we're getting more of that. I've been saying this now for a good three years. In the beginning there was a lot of doubt. I'm seeing a lot more uptake now from managers and especially speaking to leaders within public media. What I think needs to be happening is there needs to be a well-considered set of policies and governance around how individual managers teams can use AI, and it's not just generative AI at this point, it's agentic AI.

Generative AI and Agentic AI? 

Generative AI is about putting a prompt in and getting some type of result. And the better your prompt is, the more likely it is you'll get and the result that serves your goal. Agentic AI is more like automation. It's about setting up agents who can do things on your behalf. (Agentic AI can actually use generative AI on your behalf.) You know, in extreme cases, it's like creating a personal assistant, and then that AI agent can go and answer your emails for you, not something I would feel comfortable with or advise, but it's out there for whatever reason.

I think leaders need to understand agentic AI as well as generative well enough to be able to put some policies in place about how their teams might use AI. And I think that's really the key right now — where can you, as a leader in public media, create incentives, not mandates, because if you're trying to mandate it, that's just not really in keeping with the values of public media. If you want to be a good manager in an age of AI, you've got to create incentives for your teams to find ways that AI can solve for pain points in your workflows.

One of the things we have come to understand about ourselves as a species, or maybe we've come to be reminded of it for this generation, is that we, people, need people. And there will be, I think, a backlash against AI that sort of draws from the same inspirations. But I think eventually we will find a happy medium where the technology of AI helps us interface with other people. Ultimately, we'll find a balance where AI doesn't stand in the way of us engaging with other people and having real relationships and real-life experiences.

Examples of meeting the community where they are – experiential and gaming.

If you look at what Rocky Mountain Public Media has done recently, they've just hired a chief experience officer, and that role is very much what at another company might be the chief content officer. (At RMPM) Content is under the chief experience officer, and what they're saying is, hey, we're looking at the future of media and the future of how we serve our communities, and we think that it all hinges on experience. Now they have a chief digital officer who kind of runs the operation make sure that all everything is working, you know, in the technologically most efficient way, beneath the surface. But this new individual that they've hired is going to be focused on, what is it to experience Rocky Mountain Public Media. And I think that's a way to think about where we're going in the future. And that ties back to serving your local community.

We can also talk about games. I very much think games need to be part of our general audience portfolio going forward. 

You look at a (PBS) Wisconsin or a Nebraska (Public Media), and we're building toward creating more games, and LA is doing it as well. There are some other stations that are looking at this seriously. We need to be engaging our communities this way, in addition to the work we might be doing via algorithmic media or more traditional broadcast media.

My colleague in Wisconsin, Director of Innovation and Creativity Amber Samdahl, and I jointly participated in one of the “Steal This Idea” sessions at the PBS annual meeting. And it's really around this idea: we need to collaborate more, because what we did, Wisconsin and Nebraska co-produced a video game, and I think it's probably the first time that two local stations have produced a video game together. But we co-produced a video game and what we recognized before we even really got the concept fully baked for the game: the values that we have applied to video content over the years are equally applicable to video games. And so we tried to kind of model that behavior (for public media) through this game, but the other thing we tried to do was model this behavior of leaning into our core competencies. 

Back to the Future…or to the Middle Ages? 

The way we have been doing media since public media was dreamt of, almost 100 years ago, is shifting. The model is shifting. Public media itself is an idea that is kind of born around the New Deal, and then it took about 30 years to come into fruition. But it represents a different time, and it represents a different type of a media that was state of the art 60 or 70 years ago, and that's not the world we live in. 

I've been doing a lot of reading this past year in some of the kind of mid-20th century media theorists. It’s tension between what they call orality (reliance on the spoken word vs. the written word) and literacy. The easiest thing to think about is the time before the printing press. Think the Middle Ages. Think messages, communications, information, news as it existed at that point, traveled via word of mouth, oral storytelling, scribes and, the church-controlled media in early Middle Ages. Then the printing press hits. Everything changes because, of course, now you can reproduce type exactly every time, and so messages can be consistent. Messages can be tracked and verified, and it took a while for culture to shift. 

But you know, there's a group of media theorists who think that shift happened, and we've kind of hit peak literacy, and now we're sliding back towards a more oral culture, which seems in our nature, right? We gossip; it is what it is. We have water cooler talk. We never gave up being oral, but the (information) gold standard has been literacy. And that's shifting. You know, impact matters now more than authority with younger generations. 

Do you think we are stepping back with podcasts and oral productions versus the written word? 

I think you see it with influencer culture and creator culture; that's probably the biggest place. The poly sci people argue that our current president also is highly indicative of more of an oral mode of communication versus a literate mode of communication. And that can be read as a loaded statement. I don't mean it as much that way. Factually, he's more of an oral communicator; and not so much a reader or a writer. And we've been in a world of readers and writers, and that’s kind of the standard by which media is set. So, I think we see lots of indicators that the pendulum is moving back.

Public stations, especially NPR stations, are doing well with podcasts and new ways of the spoken word. But I think what I'm hearing you say, it almost needs to be more conversational versus something that is written/scripted.

What we've been seeing in the rise of chat casts is indicative of the shift back to a orality that is less the audio documentary, and more regular conversation, whether it's the Joe Rogan style or the Ezra Klein style, you know, kind of two ends of the spectrum; it is more of a conversation, more of an interview. Conversational style, interview is, I think, indicative of where we're kind of headed.

Despite that, we still hear from a lot of people who are supporters of public media who say they want fact-based journalism. They don't want to hear so many opinions. We hear opinion on cable; we hear it on social media. Many people say they want to make up our own minds. Isn’t there still a big role for public media in fact-based journalism?

Yes. I think, where we perhaps dropped the ball, is we rely too much on fact-based journalism. And I'm not saying we shouldn't have facts. This is not an either-or type of situation. The tension I mentioned between orality and literacy is not that we're not meant to live at one pole or the other pole. It's really a spectrum, and we slide along it. I think there is still a role in conveying information through that literate mode. We just need to get more comfortable with, again, working with the folks like the creators and the influencers who have their own standards, but they're not the same standards that we ascribe to: that black and white journalism option, not just one way or the other way.

As public media managers, leaders need to kind of start to open their minds more to these other avenues of serving their communities, because otherwise we're not serving the whole community.

I don't want to throw the traditional audience, the traditional consumers that we have, out by any means. I don't want to stop serving them. I don't think that does us any good. But that is an audience that will eventually go away, and I hear this time and time again at various meetings about trying to get to younger audiences. There's a lot of different ways to do that. In the spectrum of orality, to literacy, the literacy kind of serves more of our traditional audience.

Thank you, Chad Davis. 

As public media stands at the intersection of tradition and transformation, the question isn’t whether to change, but how. So, what choices will you make today to ensure your organization remains essential tomorrow?

The Value of Public Media Stations Moving to a Community-First Platform

By Milton Clipper

In an era of fragmented media, declining local journalism, and growing mistrust in institutions, public media stands at a pivotal crossroads. To remain vital, relevant, and deeply connected to the people they serve, stations must embrace a community-first approach. An approach that elevates local voices, responds to community needs, and places public service at the center of every decision. A community-first platform is more than a strategy. It is a recommitment to the founding ethos of public media: strengthening democracy and fostering an informed, engaged public.

At its core, a community-first model shifts public media from a top-down broadcast structure to a participatory, locally grounded ecosystem. Instead of shaping content around assumptions about audience interests, stations root their work in genuine understanding of local priorities. This means amplifying the stories and issues that matter most, from neighborhood development and local elections to cultural celebrations and the concerns of historically marginalized groups. In a media landscape dominated by national narratives, this hyper-local lens becomes a powerful differentiator and a lifeline for communities hungry for trustworthy, contextual information.

The first building block of this approach is deep local connection. Public media stations that prioritize local news and programming not only fill gaps left by diminishing local newspapers but also strengthen civic awareness. Investigative reporting on local governance, environmental issues, or public services gives residents the insight they need to participate meaningfully in civic life.

Community forums, citizen-led reporting, and collaborative projects further extend the reach of local storytelling, transforming audiences from passive consumers into active participants and supporters. Partnerships with schools, nonprofits, cultural organizations, and advocacy groups can enrich this work by bringing a wider range of lived experience and expertise into editorial spaces.

Equally important is expanding access. A community-first station reflects the collective thinking of the region it serves; its languages, perspectives, cultures, and abilities. This requires intentional representation in programming, improved digital accessibility, and a real commitment to reaching rural and underserved areas. By leveraging social media, on-demand platforms, and multilingual content, stations can ensure that every audience member can engage on their terms and at their convenience.

Engagement, the heartbeat of a community-first model, must be ongoing and reciprocal. Interactive tools, social media conversations, online polls, community surveys, and regular town halls help stations stay attuned to local priorities. These feedback loops do more than improve programming; they build trust, transparency, and authentic relationships. When audiences see their input reflected on-air or online, they recognize public media a valued platform worthy of their support.

Embracing community-first strategies also strengthens financial sustainability. Membership models tied to local content, community-based fundraising events, and partnerships with local businesses and institutions create a shared sense of ownership. Grants aimed at cultural preservation, education, or community development provide additional support for initiatives that directly serve local audiences.

Ultimately, a community-first shift is both a cultural and institutional transformation, one that amplifies emerging voices, taps into collective community wisdom, and stays responsive as communities grow and change. Stations that embrace this future will not only reinforce their role as trusted public institutions but will help build more informed, connected, and resilient communities.

A community-first platform doesn’t just serve communities; it helps build them. As a trusted, neutral convener, public media brings together community members, civic leaders, and local organizations to listen, learn, and collaborate. In doing so, a community-first approach creates civic capacity and reinforces the relationships that make informed, resilient communities possible. That’s public media at its best: turning shared trust into shared progress.