Dear friend of news literacy,
As we head into a new school year, I wanted to take a moment to share how grateful and energized we feel at the News Literacy Project. We’ve just wrapped up our most impactful year yet — reaching more educators and students in more districts than ever before. In fact, we exceeded all our goals for the year: more than 15,700 educators in over 4,800 U.S. school districts used our resources to teach news literacy to almost 575,000 students. Put another way, NLP resources were used in over 27% of all school districts and in all 50 states. We couldn’t be more thrilled, and we couldn’t have done this without your support.
We’re carrying that momentum into the year ahead with some exciting developments. First up is our new partnership with Clever, which launched Aug. 7. Clever is a free, seamless edtech solution that improves data security and gives educators and students secure single sign-on access. Now, Checkology® is available through Clever — making it easier and safer for educators to bring news literacy into their classrooms.
And speaking of Checkology, the version we launched in August is now a teacher’s one-stop shop for all things news literacy. It features all our classroom resources in one place: the interactive lessons, along with missions, exercises, infographics, posters and more. It’s everything educators need to engage students in thinking critically about the news and information they encounter regularly, whether they have five minutes a day or several months to devote to this essential subject.
And there’s more on the horizon. We’ll be unveiling a newly redesigned organization website (newslit.org) in early October to make it even easier for everyone to find what they need, including classroom teachers, librarians, caregivers and community leaders familiar with NLP or new to us. As always, thank you for being part of this movement. Together, we’re building a future founded on facts. My best, |
Chuck Salter
President and CEO |
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Thanks to the generosity of our dedicated donor community and supporters like you, we raised $8.9 million in FY25, which was 20% more than we raised last year. This support enables us to extend our reach and continually increase our impact. A special thank you to NLP’s philanthropic leaders who gave during our fourth quarter: Annenberg Foundation, FThree Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Noble and Lorraine Hancock Family Fund, Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund and our Visionary Circle donors.
Our partners — and all our supporters — make our work possible. Thank you! |
OUR LATEST news literacy resources |
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Back-to-school toolkit: Ready, set teach!
We just launched our Back-to-School Toolkit to help both classroom educators and school leaders kick off the year with confidence. Our new landing page is packed with easy-to-use guides, helpful tips and step-by-step instructions for bringing Checkology into the classroom.
Need a quick start? Grab one of our downloadable guides: the News Literacy Starter Pack for teachers or the Getting Started with Checkology guide for administrators. Plus, we’re hosting three live events this month to spotlight these tools and show how Checkology can support a strong start to the school year.
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Checkology now has a capstone activity!
We’re kicking off the new school year with something big: our brand-new capstone experience on Checkology. “Take Action: Putting News Literacy Into Practice,” is now available for educators using the platform to assign to their students.
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This single-period activity comes in two versions (middle and high school) and is designed to cap off students’ Checkology learning by helping them explore all five of NLP’s news literacy standards — especially the last one, focused on civic engagement. Students then apply what they’ve learned on Checkology to a fictional scenario. As they work through the scenario, students learn what it looks like to exercise news literacy skills as a responsible participant in a democracy. Educators can log in to Checkology to check it out and assign it to students.
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- Dissect viral content with our RumorGuard® worksheet!
Our recently released handout for educators looking to bring focus to RumorGuard, our platform for exploring viral misinformation, helps students build the skills they need to sort fact from fiction online. Designed for grades six and up, RumorGuard Report: Don’t Be Fooled uses real-world examples to teach students how to recognize false information, spot common tactics used to mislead, and evaluate sources for credibility.
In this activity, students choose a rumor from RumorGuard.org and analyze a related third-party fact check to understand how journalists verify claims. They then reflect on how they can apply these skills to their own digital lives. A companion task encourages them to break down the fact-checking process used in another article. Students can complete the activities solo, in pairs or groups — making it an easy fit for lessons in media literacy, journalism, digital citizenship and more. Research shows that this approach, called “prebunking,” helps build long-term resilience against misinformation.
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Students from Gate City Charter School for the Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire, where humanities and civics teacher Mary Ellen Wessels uses Checkology to weave news literacy into her classes, shared how the platform helped them think critically — from evaluating news sources to creating editorial cartoons. Using interactive lessons and activities, they’ve learned to spot bias, verify information, and express their own ideas through media.
As one student said, “It’s empowering to use visual imagery and writing to persuade and inform.” This story shows just how real — and impactful — news literacy education can be in the classroom. Read more in our full update: “The kids are alright: New Hampshire middle schoolers share how they use their news literacy skills”
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- A first-person piece in the education outlet The 74 by Hannah Covington, Senior Director of Education Content, explores how teens in one Oklahoma classroom think about conspiracy theories on their social feeds.
- In a CNN piece, Peter Adams, Senior Vice President of Research and Design, urged care and transparency as journalism embraces AI.
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An op-ed by our fellowship district educators in New York about how news literacy helps teens make sense of health influencers on social media ran in EdWeek.
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- Kim Bowman, Senior Manager of Research, and Peter Adams unpacked the findings of our teen study on an educator-focused podcast, discussing how media literacy education is associated with boosted trust in the news and greater civic engagement among young people.
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On Choose to Be Curious, a podcast and radio show, Dan Evon, Senior Manager of Education Design, talked about how curiosity can help us avoid falsehoods online.
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Quick hits: Our posts are trending |
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🎥 Have you seen our latest social videos?
Designed to spark conversation, our social videos are perfect for classrooms, social feeds or group chats. Three recent standouts: |
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Impostor content teachable moment: By jumping on the viral “Labubu impostor” trend, we turned a moment of internet buzz over these plushies into a high-impact news literacy lesson, helping audiences unpack how misleading content spreads online and garnering 690,000 views and more than 23,000 interactions as of early August.
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AI overview: A quick explainer that’s great for introducing students (and adults!) to how artificial intelligence shapes our information landscape. Watch it on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube.
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Geolocation and the Los Angeles ICE protests: Timely and powerful, this video explores how geolocation tools can verify or debunk viral claims. It hit around 10,000 views each on TikTok and Instagram.
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📘Want more tools?
We have helpful, shareable infographics on false context, news media bias and more — check them out on Facebook and LinkedIn.
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🌐 Now on Bluesky!
We’re expanding! Follow us on Bluesky for news literacy tips, updates and share-worthy content. |
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The News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit founded in 2008, is building a national movement to create systemic change in American education to ensure all students are skilled in news literacy before they graduate high school, giving them the knowledge and ability to participate in civic society as well-informed, critical thinkers. | © 2025 The News Literacy Project
5335 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Suite 440, Washington, DC 20015
[email protected] |
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