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, starting with efforts in the classroom. To make this happen, we want to see media literacy established as a graduation requirement, a priority for educator professional learning and a valued skill set 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.

Jump to:

👷🏽 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.

District Fellowship program

• In September, NLP officially welcomed three new school districts to the second cohort of the program.Bloomfield Hills Schools in Michigan, the Cornell School District in Pennsylvania and the Gunnison Watershed District in Colorado join five other districts already in the program.Read the press release to get more details about the program and the new cohort!

Ambassador Updates

• With 16 ambassadors in 16 cities across the nation, NLP’s ambassadors helped connect over 4,000 teachers with NLP’s resources and programming during the 2022-23 school year! Check out the roundup of this cohort’s impressive accomplishments below.

• In September, 10 educators became news literacy ambassadors for 2023-24, expanding our reach with a total of 19 ambassadors across the nation!

• Miriam Romais, NLP’s director of NewsLitNation®, is excited for what’s on the horizon for this year’s cohort: “We are so pleased to grow this program, as the ambassadors are at the heart of our NewsLitNation educator community. They are active educators themselves, so they understand the needs of their fellow teachers and librarians and make themselves available to work with their local schools, districts and boards of education to help address specific news and media literacy needs within their regions.”
• The new group includes award-winning journalists, authors and podcasters, and sought-after speakers and experts in their fields. Get to know more about them here!

• This fall’s Back to School campaign equipped educators with a robust range of news literacy learning tools for the 2023-24 school year! Guided by our goal to help more educators and students access Checkology® this year, we hosted five webinars to discuss best practices for leveraging NLP’s resources to build a strong news literacy curriculum.
  • Veteran student journalism  educators Adriana Chavira, a former NLP news literacy ambassador, and David Doerr, a current ambassador, kicked off the campaign as hosts for the first webinar, Back to School with Student Press Rights. Check out everything the Back-to-School campaign offered here!

Partnership Spotlight

• NLP’s educator engagement team has begun reoccurring partnership meetings with current school district partners. Meetings are held every two months and serve as a way for us to check in with partner districts and share NLP news regularly.

• This year, the partnership strategy team will provide monthly news literacy webinars for educators in Utah called Empowering Critical Thinkers: Strategies for Navigating News and Media. In California, the team will present News and Media Literacy for All.

•  Educators in both states will learn about NLP programs and resources through partnerships with the Utah Department of Education, and a collaborative partnership with the California Department of Education, Fresno County Office of Education, San Diego County Office of Education, Santa Clara County Office of Education and the California School Library Association.
• Erin Olson, NLP’s senior manager of educator partnerships, leveraged her classroom experience for a College Media Review article, “Why I asked my students to Google me,” that explains how she created an environment conducive to curiosity and critical thinking.

🏆 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

• After passing legislation in 2022 mandating media literacy in public schools, Delaware is one of the first states leading the charge to prioritize media literacy education. You can read NLP’s Education Partnerships Manager Brittney Smith’s insight on how educators can encourage critical thinking in the classroom in this Delaware Public Media article.
• In California, Assembly Bill 873 was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, integrating media literacy instruction into the four core subjects that all students learn from kindergarten through 12th grade. It will bring California in line with a small but growing number of states teaching media literacy in grade school.
• “Teaching media literacy is a key strategy to support our children, their families, and our society that are inundated with misinformation and disinformation on social media networks and digital platforms,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman. “Thank you to Governor Newsom for signing AB 873 and affirming that media literacy instruction is essential to keeping our students safer online and to safeguarding the future of our democracy.”
• To date, lawmakers in 18 states have taken steps that help prepare students for participation in the civic life of the nation through media literacy education. Take a closer look at how U.S. education policies are prioritizing media literacy in classrooms in the U.S. Media Literacy Policy Report 2022.

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.

News Literacy Movement Wins

• The team that brings you NewsLitNation®, NLP’s news literacy education network, has expanded! Meet Nierra Coleman-Jones, Manager of NewsLitNation for NLP.
• All Checkology lessons are now aligned to the five national news literacy standards that define the core competencies students need to be news-literate, including English language arts, library and media studies, social studies, science, and technology. Explore the Standards-Aligned home page to learn how Checkology lessons help news literacy students gain essential life skills.
• NLP has developed a Framework for Teaching News Literacy, which includes news literacy standards, essential questions and knowledge/skills objectives, along with suggested performance tasks and learning activities. Our framework supports educators as they integrate news literacy into existing curriculum or as the basis for creating stand-alone courses or units.

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.

Jump to:

👷‍♀️ 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

• 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

• 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

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.

As you may know, 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 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.

Jump to:

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 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.

• In February 2023, the inaugural cohort of district fellows gathered for an in-person retreat in New Orleans. NLP’s educator engagement team — including Ebonee Rice, senior vice president of educator engagement, and Shaelynn Farnsworth, senior director of education partnership strategy — met with 12 fellows to review their assessments and action plans.
  • During this retreat, the group shared the results of its assessments, which identified the grades and disciplines best suited for news/media literacy lessons. The fellows also drafted action plans for news literacy education implementation in their respective districts.
  • One district fellow told us: “We wanted to thank NLP leadership, you and your team for an amazing learning opportunity in New Orleans. The experience of meeting with the dedicated educators in other districts was the highlight of our weekend. We brought back many ideas from our collaboration with them to Canyons (Canyons School District, Sandy, Utah) and have begun integrating those ideas in our existing and planned news literacy professional development modules…As a result, we have been able to strengthen the foundation of our commitment to news literacy instruction across the district and to really solidify our communication about the importance of news literacy to our stakeholders.”
• The application for cohort two of the District Fellowship program is live and available now! Current public school district leaders, administrators or curriculum directors who are ready to take action to embed news and media literacy education into their districts are welcome to apply. And while the application is open to school districts in all states, NLP is hoping to secure fellows from the following states: California, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Alabama. Read and share the full application with your circle!

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. Connect with an ambassador near you for events, presentations and to discuss the unique needs of educators in your school district or region.

• NLP ambassador happy hour events provide an opportunity for current ambassadors to champion news literacy and recruit new educators to join NewsLitNation^®, NLP’s nationwide network of teachers, librarians and administrators that advocates for news literacy education. These events help to expand the reach of our platforms, resources and lessons to more students and school districts around the country.
  • In February, Texas ambassador Juan Alvarado hosted an NLN happy hour during the TCEA conference in San Antonio and recruited 48 new NLN members!
  • During March, ambassadors hosted five happy hours — in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

• Pennsylvania educators are working hard to ensure news literacy is a priority in their state!
  • There are currently 95 educators and nearly 4,000 students in Pennsylvania active on Checkology^®.
  • Eight educators in the Pittsburgh Public Schools District are in our network.
  • Fifteen Southwest Pennsylvania school districts have news literacy educators in our network: AW Beattie, Avonworth, Central Valley, Chestnut Ridge, City CHS, Connellsville, Derry Area, Freedom, Hempfield Area, Mt. Lebanon, New Kensington-Arnold, Peters Township, Pittsburgh, United and West Jefferson Hills.

• 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.
  • When the school year begins in fall 2023, NLP will have 20 ambassadors in 14 states: Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, New York, Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania, California, Alabama, Florida and Iowa.

Partnership Spotlight

• During the fourth annual National News Literacy Week, NLP partnered with Teens for Press Freedom for a student-led conversation about the overwhelming amount of information (including misinformation) students encounter and how they can determine what information to trust. Listen to the conversation here.

• As we continue to cultivate our relationship with the Iowa Department of Education, we are excited that the Spencer Community School District will incorporate Checkology lessons in their high school curriculum.

• Erin Olsen, NLP’s senior manager of education partnerships, was interviewed about the importance of news literacy on radio station KWMR’s community and public affairs show, Epicenter, which covers local issues and topics relevant to the West Marin, California, community. Tune into the conversation here.

• NLP’s new Checkology lesson, “Harm and Distrust,” sparked many stimulating conversations about the history of racist reporting in mainstream media. One of those conversations was led by Brittney Smith, our senior manager of education partnerships (East) and included Brittany Hogan, a pioneering educational equity and diversity professional, and K.C. Boyd, library media specialist and NLP news literacy ambassador. Watch the recording to learn how educators tackle these topics in the classroom.

• NLP will continue to strengthen its educator network through relationships with Sacramento County Office of Education, Ohio Department of Education, Atlanta Public Schools, New Jersey Department of Education, Alabama State Department of Education, Cleveland Metropolitan School District, Ohio Catholic schools and New Jersey Association of School Librarians.

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.

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.

States currently providing funding for media literacy education: Colorado, New Mexico, Hawaii, California, Pennsylvania, Utah, Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Washington, Connecticut and Michigan.

States with statutes encouraging media literacy: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.

Learn about media literacy policies in your state.