As a mom and NLP supporter, Wyoming woman values news literacy
Julia Krugh at her home in Wyoming
In spring 2020, with the world in lockdown and pandemic misinformation surging, Brad and Charlotte Krugh of Jackson, Wyoming, turned to NLP’s Checkology® e-learning platform to augment their older daughter’s distance learning.
Julia, now in eighth grade and attending school in-person, no longer uses NLP resources. But the Krughs remain committed to news literacy education. Charlotte Krugh’s perspective comes from her dual roles as a parent and as an NLP supporter. Her family’s Fore River Foundation is a funder of NLP.
“I really wish more schools would provide these programs. I can talk until I’m blue in the face about it, but when the librarian, the social studies teacher and the language arts teacher say you need to check your sources and verify information, it gets the kids’ attention,” she said.
The Krughs’ younger daughter Eliza, now a sixth grader in middle school, clearly paid attention when peering over Julia’s shoulder. When Eliza is watching TV or online, “she’ll shout out ‘fake news’ whenever she sees anything that’s not true.”
News literacy a family value
Krugh’s family was in the newspaper business, which is why news literacy is a focus of the family foundation. The importance of literacy and access to credible news was instilled early in her and her siblings. “There was a lot of education around how to be a literate human being,” she said, explaining why news literacy is a focus of the family foundation. “It’s one of the ways we want to give back. We really believe that being informed citizens is essential to democracy.”
She doesn’t have to look far to see that people need better access to credible information. While Jackson has a small but well-supported local newspaper, it is the community’s only local news outlet. That’s why some residents turn to social media for their news. “Many older people in this area get all their news from Facebook. We can’t get access to major news sources unless we go online,” she said.
For Krugh, this is a good illustration of why readily accessible news literacy education is needed not only for students in the classroom, but also for adults dealing with a wide range of information sources.