Apr-June 23 Movement Building Update

Published on July 28, 2023 Movement Building

NLP is the leading provider of free news literacy programs and resources for students and adults. Now, we are leveraging our expertise and reach to build a national movement for a more news-literate America. To make this happen we want to see media literacy established as a graduation requirement, a priority for educator professional learning and a valued skillset for news consumers of all ages.

Read below to keep track of our progress in this area and learn about the steps we are taking to move closer to our vision of news literacy as an integral part of American life.

👷‍♀️ Movement Builders in the Field

NLP’s district fellows and news literacy ambassadors are making strides to create groundbreaking shifts in education, bringing news literacy into communities across the country.

News Literacy District Fellowship program

NLP’s District Fellowship program unites district leaders to build a sustainable and actionable plan for news literacy education implementation in their districts. During their two-year commitment to this program, fellows perform a needs assessment and identify the grades and disciplines in their districts best suited for news/media literacy integration. They then work with NLP to create a scalable implementation plan.

This spring, NLP conducted a search for district leaders to join the second cohort of the program. We’re thrilled to announce the new cohort will consist of Gunnison Schools in Colorado, Cornell School District in Southwest Pennsylvania and Bloomfield Hills Schools in Michigan. Stay tuned for updates on the District Fellowship program home page.

Ambassador Updates

The News Literacy Ambassador Program supports local community organizing efforts to fight misinformation and pursue a mutual objective of creating a more news-literate generation of news consumers.

Get to know more about what motivates Texas educator and NLP news literacy ambassador Juan Alvarez in his Ambassador Connections article.

NewsLitNation ambassadors in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida supported educators whose students participated in May’s PitchIt! essay contests. In total, students wrote 349 essays expressing their thoughts about current events from a news literacy perspective and pitched their essays to a panel of judges that included educators and local journalists.
- Calling on what they had learned from NLP’s Checkology^® virtual classroom and a range of NLP resources, they created compelling essays such as: “Implicit Bias Impacting Interpretation,” “Relevancy of Amendments Today” and “How Much of a Media-Victim are You?” Check out some of the student essay submissions here.
- As the program expands, the search for new representatives has started! The group currently has 16 members, and NLP will add four new ambassadors from various states. And K.C. Boyd, the current Washington, D.C., ambassador, will take on the new position of national media specialist ambassador.
- In Colorado, the first ever in-person PitchIt! contest was hosted by The Colorado Sun and the Colorado Language Arts Society. Colorado Sun reporters Jennifer Brown and Sandra Fish, Colorado’s state senator Lisa Cutter, and political consultant Tyler Sandberg all weighed in to choose the PitchIt! Colorado State News Literacy Champion.
- Click here to read more about the 2023 PitchIt! Contest results and takeaways from the events.

Students, NLP ambassadors, and journalist panels from the 2023 PitchIt! Student Essay contests. Photos: Miriam Romais/The News Literacy Project

🔦 Partnership Spotlight

NLP has partnered with Urban Rural Action, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing people together across divides to address common challenges, to help more 35 concerned community members, or “Uniters” learn how to take action to deter targeted violence in their counties using critical thinking and news literacy skills. NLP’s senior manager of community learning, DeMario Phipps-Smith, will continue to lead this partnership over the next 18 months, providing a series of training events to help communities learn to identify credible news sources, spot misinformation and stop its spread. Read the full article to learn more about how South-Central Pennsylvanians are strengthening their communities through news literacy.

In April, NLP’s Professional and Community Learning team partnered with Glendale Community College Library to present on news credibility and bias in the news as a part of the Disinformation Competency Series. This professional development opportunity taught librarians how to engage students with news in a chaotic information landscape in order develop students’ critical information competency and critical thinking skills.

In April, Shaelynn Farnsworth, NLP’s senior director of education partnership strategy spoke at the Spring 2023 virtual mini-conference hosted by The New Jersey Association of School Librarians (NJASL).

Brittney Smith, NLP’s senior manager of education partnerships , discussed the importance of knowing what to trust and what to share with your social circles and your family with Word in Black in the article, “Teaching Generation TikTok How to Tell What’s True Online.” Brittney also gave a presentation at the NAMLE conference in July, the largest professional development conference dedicated to news literacy in the U.S.

Erin Olson, NLP’s senior manager of education partnerships, has worked to establish partnerships and expand outreach to educators, and this fall NLP will collaborate with both the California and Utah Departments of Education for an extensive year-long webinar series. The sessions will provide guidance, resources and frameworks for educators teaching news and media literacy skills in an environment where misinformation, artificial intelligence, and social media play significant roles.
In California, the webinar series partnerships include the California Department of Education, Santa Clara County Office of Education, Fresno County Office of Education, San Diego County Office of Education, and the California School Library Association. This professional development opportunity will align with requirements that help students qualify for California’s State Seal of Civic Engagement, recognizing their excellence in civics education and participation.
Similarly, in Utah, NLP will partner with the Utah Department of Education and collaborate with discipline-specific leaders within the department to address the diverse needs of news and media literacy educators across the state and develop curricula that fosters an informed and media-literate generation of students.

🏆 Media Literacy Education Landscape: Updates and Movement Wins

Through a partnership with Media Literacy Now, NLP receives monthly reports with updates on all legislation and laws related to media literacy, news literacy and digital citizenship in each state and at the federal level.

Learn about media literacy policies in your state.

Current Landscape Snapshot

We’ll keep you up to date on the latest district, state and federal media literacy education standards changes.

States mandating some form of media literacy education prior to graduation:	Illinois, Texas, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Connecticut, Minnesota and Massachusetts
States currently providing funding for media literacy education:	New Mexico, California, Utah, Washington, Connecticut and Michigan.
States with statutes encouraging media literacy:	California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Washington.

To date, lawmakers in 18 states have taken steps that help prepare students for participation in the economic and civic life of the nation through media literacy education. Take a closer look at how at U.S. education policies are transforming to prioritize media literacy in classrooms in the U.S. Media Literacy Policy Report 2022.