Round Two Grant Awards
Teacher's Little (AI) Helper
Let's use AI to cull through the vast Brains On catalog and help draft lesson plans for teachers!
We know Brains On is an educational treasure trove! But like many treasures, a lot of it is buried deep in our vast catalog. With Teacher's Little (AI) Helper, we would harness the power of AI to cull our catalog and find episodes and explanations that tie to common core curriculum. Then we'll have AI help draft lesson plans based on those episodes. With the help of an actual teacher, we'll refine and improve those lesson plans and offer them to other educators. It's a fresh new way to harness emerging technology to meet APMG's goals of educating and serving the public. Plus, getting more of our content into classrooms will help us reach new and hopefully more diverse audiences.
AI News Trust
This project will test the technical feasibility of creating a paid pipeline of verified news from trusted sources to train AI applications, better informing the public while creating a robust new source of revenue for news and journalism.
This phase of the AI News Trust project will create a working prototype using MPR News content to inform an AI environment and then run tests to compare the results of targeted questions against this trusted AI environment relative to the offerings of general AI products like Chat GPT.
If the test proves successful and the custom AI model delivers more consistent and accurate results against the publicly available AI applications, we will have identified a potentially impactful and lucrative new public service and business opportunity.
Round One Grant Awards
Marketplace Easily Reportable Localized Economic Numbers (MERLEN)
Strengthening local stations’ ability to report on important economic trends through branded analysis of localized data.
Every day Marketplace helps Americans understand the global and national economies, often by digesting the latest economic data (e.g., jobs and unemployment reports, housing starts, gross domestic product, poverty rates, inflation reports, etc.).
MERLEN would automate analysis of the data, putting the local data in historical and national context, starting with the monthly job report (unemployment and wages). The goal would be to provide script-ready analysis of the information tailored to local markets, complemented with branded digital assets--data visuals ready for use by local stations for web stories and social media.
Elevating New Voices in Tech
Increase digital revenue opportunities by showcasing emerging talent in a video-first Marketplace Tech show.
To enhance our appeal and relevance to a younger BIPOC audience, Marketplace is working to relaunch Tech as a video-first show for distribution on our social channels, primarily YouTube with extensions onto social platforms.
As part of that transformation, we’d like to build in an opportunity to showcase diverse talent on a weekly basis, increasing Tech’s ability to be a platform for elevating underrepresented voices in media. We would seek out talent who have the drive and business or technology expertise, and could benefit from our broadcast reach. Receiving a Kling Grant would allow us to build this platform by augmenting our video editing costs and social media engagement and marketing.