The Hex Update: Issue 041

the hex update
media
Local news audiences and their changing media habits; public media’s own social network?; a conversation about pocasting, Netflix, YouTube, and creator control; the importance of a film’s score; and some other cool things I came across this week
Author

Collin K. Berke, Ph.D.

Published

September 21, 2026

Let’s catch up

Welcome to Issue 041.

This week was a busy one. Phew, 😅. Between a virtual conference, work projects, appointments, and just regular degular life, I was glad to keep it all together. Mostly. I’m thankful to get some time to sit down, write about, and share what I learned recently. As I work to catch up with everything, here’s a short version of my update for this week.

Let’s get started.

Three topics recently caught my attention:

For a bit of fun, I share a video about the importance a film’s score can have on audiences. It was a really interesting watch using the Marvel Cinematic Universe as an example.

You’ll also find some additional links to other items I found cool this week.

Three things

Here’s what caught my attention this week:

Local news audiences aren’t disappearing, but their habits are changing fast (article)

I really liked the insights focused on people who live in news desserts, how they consume news, and the impacts the lack of news can have on these areas.

Can public media build its own social network? Chicago Public Media teams up with New_ Public to try (article)

This is an ambitious, needed project to better serve communities. I’m excited to see what comes of it.

Inside Podcasting’s Fight Over Netflix, YouTube, and Creator Control (podcast)

I really liked the conversation about podcast monetization and the role of the creator economy in podcasting. The conversation about the benefits of clipping was also interesting.

Check out the links above for the full story in each item. This being a short update this week, I only included a brief sentence about what I found interesting.

What I found interesting this week

I attended posit::conf(2026) virtually this week. This conference brings together both the R and Python communities, and it serves as a forum for data scientists, analysts, and other professionals to share talks about what’s happening in the data space. It was great to hear more about what the teams at Posit have been building. It was also terrific learning from smart, amazing data folks while they highlighted their work, projects, and ideas. In the past, I attended posit::conf() twice in person (once in Chicago and the other in Seattle). This is my second time attending virtually, which has worked best with my current commitments at home. If everything aligns next year, I hope to attend the 2027 conference happening in Seattle, September 13-15.

Cool things I recently bumped into

A collection of links to things I’ve found cool recently (or was reminded are cool).

That’s it for this update.

Fingers crossed this week is a little slower on my end. Here’s to hoping you have a great start to your week. May it be a productive one.

Cheers 🎉!

Let’s connect

If you found this content useful, please share. If you find these topics interesting and want to discuss further, let’s connect: