Mike Atherton

Mike Atherton is well-known in the content world for his work at institutions like the BBC and Facebook and for his co-authorship of the influential book Designing Connected Content. His latest content project appears at first to be less serious.

Newsbang is a daily AI-produced satirical news show. Its content is based on real historical news but delivered by AI-created stereotypical newscasters. The result is fun, but the process of creating the show has added real-world technical skills to Mike's professional toolkit.

We talked about:

his work as a UX writer and content designer
his experiments with AI tools, including the suite of generative tools he's using to create Newsbang, a completely artificial daily news program
how he accomplished his goal of creating an ensemble sketch comedy vibe
his workflow for the daily production of the "news" show
some of the surprising traits of his news characters that emerged as AI generated them
lessons learned about the cost of producing AI programming, like the costs of prompting
the variety of models he uses to build the show, including open-source models that have more lenient guard rails to permit more edgy comedic content
how he creates his own guardrails to achieve the effect he's looking for in the show while still creating a family-friendly show
how he developed the technical skills it takes to create Newsbang
how his work with Newsbang helps in his day job
his hope that more content professionals will follow him into the AI playground

Mike's bio
Mike Atherton brings years of experience to the UX, IA, and Content Design field, having tackled content challenges at big names like Meta and the BBC. Now, he's focused on developing UX writing systems, exploring the use of AI to do big things with tiny teams.

As well as the day job, Mike is the creative mind behind Newsbang, a daily satirical news podcast that's both written and produced using AI technology.

With Carrie Hane, he also wrote the book ‘Designing Connected Content’, sharing strategies for seamless digital experiences.

Mike lives in the British countryside and loves working from home.
Connect with Mike online

LinkedIn
Newsbang

Video
Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/lpDa8szujWo
Podcast intro transcript
This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 22. Most of the news coverage and social-media conversations around AI and content feel urgent and important. This is serious business, but you can have fun with this technology, too. Mike Atherton has done content work at places like the BBC and Facebook, and he still does proper content design in his day job. Newsbang, his daily, AI-produced satirical news show, has given him both an outlet for his inner comedian and a venue in which to hone important new work skills.
Interview transcript
Larry:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 22 of the Content and AI podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Mike Atherton. You might know Mike, he's probably best known as the... Well, he's best known for a lot of things, but he's worked at the BBC and a lot of other interesting stuff he's done. He co-wrote the book Designing Connected Content with Carrie Hane, which a lot of people in my world appreciate. But he's now a content designer and creative technologist based in the UK. Welcome, Mike. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days.

Mike:
Well, hey, Larry, thanks for having me on. It's great to be back. Yeah, I'm a UX writer and content designer by day. I work with various product teams in different kind of companies to write everything from the microcopy, the words on the buttons, through to taxonomy and control vocabulary and all the good stuff that we UX writers like to do. And as part of that, for the last few years, I've been dabbling with these wicked AI tools that have come our way and seeing what I cou...