The News Literacy Project is an innovative national program to mobilize journalists to help middle and high school students sort fact from fiction in the digital age.
The project’s primary aim is to give students the tools to be smarter and more frequent consumers and creators of credible information across all media and platforms. Students learn how to distinguish verified information from raw messages, spin, gossip and opinion and will be encouraged to seek material that will make them well-informed citizens and voters.
The project creates partnerships between active and retired journalists and English, social studies and history teachers as well as after-school media clubs. The journalists and teachers will devise units focusing on why news matters to young people, what the First Amendment and a free media in a democracy mean and how to identify reliable information. The material will be presented through hands-on exercises, games, videos and the journalists’ own compelling stories.
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Why News Literacy is important
David Yalof and Ken Dautrich showed in their book, “The Future of the First Amendment,” that the digital revolution is changing the nature of student participation in media -- but that America’s schools have not caught up with this trend. High school students are highly networked and far more connected to news and information than adults realize. Out-of-touch teachers and principals are killing student media at the time when they should be doing exactly the opposite by expanding news literacy to the entire student body. Since news literacy involves using the digital tools young people use to improve their news consumption and civic engagement, it is essential to the future -- to the future of news, to the nation's competitiveness and to democracy itself. That's why Knight Foundation funded the research that lead to David and Ken's book. There's more on this issue at teachfirstamendment.org