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.

September – December 2022

Each quarter, the Movement Building work updates will keep you in tune with the efforts of NLP and our educator network toward making media literacy education a priority across the U.S. and creating a future founded on facts.

Our community of invested supporters enables NLP’s work, both inside and outside of the classroom. This commitment and interest allow us to continue to influence the media literacy landscape and fuel an achievable national initiative that equips people of all backgrounds with knowledge and skills to be active, informed participants in civic life.

Jump to:

Movement Builders in the Field

• District Fellowship program updates.
• News literacy ambassador updates.
• NLP partner spotlights.

Media Literacy Education Landscape.

• Current landscape snapshot.
• Movement wins.

Movement Builders in the Field

NLP’s NewsLitNation News Literacy Ambassadors and district partners defend democracy and promote news literacy in their classrooms and at the school district level.

District Fellowship program

NLP’s District Fellowship program brings together 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.

• Check out the new District Fellowship program webpage! Here, you can explore more about how our fellows are affecting media literacy education at the district level.
• We selected and met with the first fellowship cohort of 17 district leaders from five school districts in July, and since then each district has developed a working team of up to 10 people from within their districts. They have been determining which grade levels and discipline areas they want to target for their news literacy instruction implementation plan.
• To date, we have held three all-cohort convenings and each district has met one-on-one with NLP staff (all meetings to date have been virtual). In August, the cohort met with CEO Chuck Salter and Peter Adams, our senior vice president of research and design, to learn more about NLP’s vision and mission and the design of NLP’s news literacy instruction resources.
• The next all-cohort meeting was held in October, and NLP staff conducted a training on best practices for communicating within their districts and communities about the importance of news literacy instruction.

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.

• Six new ambassadors were added to the program, expanding it to a total of 16 news literacy ambassadors around the country! New ambassadors include:Juan Armijo (NM) Grade 9-12 – Civics, Govt, History, Social Studies
  Jocelyn Burlew (OH) Grade 6-8 – History, Digital/Media Literacy
  Lesli Morris (UT) Grade 9-12 – English/ELA
  Sean Scanlon (IL) Grade 9-12 – Administrator, Social Studies
  David Doerr (TX) Grade 9-12 – Journalism / Photojournalism, Digital Media, Graphic Design, Newspaper Production
  Juan Alvarado (TX) Grade 9-12 – English/ELA.

Read more about the six new ambassadors here.

• TX ambassador David Doerr presented his first news literacy event in October at The Texas Association of Journalism Educators Fall Conference in San Antonio, Texas.
• PA Ambassador Deborah Domingues-Murphy hosted a table at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit Social Studies Conference in October.
• NLP’s news literacy ambassador and librarian media specialist K.C. Boyd was honored at the School Library Journal (SLJ) Leadership Summit as the school librarian of the year in November.

• You can now find out more about PitchIt!, NLP’s student essay contest series, on our new landing page! Educators can use this resource for contest details, updates on contests cities, winners, insights from other educators, and more.
  • The PitchIt! Miami student essay contest is open and will be live until May 12, 2023. The contest was recently launched district-wide by Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

• We are now hosting NewsLitNation Happy Hour engagement events at various conferences throughout the year to connect ambassadors with NLP staff in-person, and to recruit more educators to NewsLitNation.
  • Happy Hour events have been hosted at the SLJ Leadership Summit, the National Council for the Social Studies Conference, and more, with over 100 educators engaged.

• You can now join over 900 fellow educators on the NewsLitNation Facebook Group!

Partnership Spotlight

• NLP’s Senior Manager of Educator Professional Learning Alexa Volland and Senior Manager of Education Partnerships (East Coast) Brittney Smith held a virtual professional development training for about 70 principals and assistant principals from Community School District 10 in the Bronx, New York, which serves 57 schools K-12.
• NLP partnered with Senior Planet from AARP and the National Institute for Civil Discourse to help the public survive Thanksgiving with the webinar, Productive conversations without confrontation. This virtual event had over 500 attendees!
• In December, NLP held a NewsLitCamp®, our professional learning event where teachers, librarians and other educators across all subjects connect directly with journalists and hone their ability to teach students how to sort fact from fiction. The event in Philadelphia was co-hosted with WHYY and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
• NLP’s Senior Manager of Community Learning DeMario Phipps-Smith traveled to Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida for a full-day training for instructors at the Non-Commissioned Officers Academy.
• DeMario is also cultivating NLP’s renewed relationship with Urban Rural Action.
• We have new partnerships in the works! These developing relationships include Sacramento County Office of Education, Ohio Department of Education, Atlanta Public Schools, New Jersey Department of Education, Spencer School District (IA), Alabama Department of Education, Cleveland, and Ohio Catholic Schools.

Media Literacy Education Landscape: Updates and Movement Wins

Through a partnership with Media Literacy Now, NLP receives monthly reports that provide a status update for all bills and laws related to media literacy, news literacy and digital citizenship in each state and at the federal level.

Current Landscape Snapshot

States mandating some form of media literacy education prior to graduation (Tier 1): Illinois, Texas, New Jersey

States currently providing funding for media literacy education (Tier 2): Colorado, New Mexico, Hawaii, California, Pennsylvania, Utah, Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Washington, Connecticut, and Michigan

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

Read more about the education landscape here.

Movement wins

New Jersey is now a Tier 1 focus among our priority educator engagement states!

This means that New Jersey schools will mandate some form of media literacy education prior to graduation.

New Jersey moved up in our ranks in late November when Governor Phil Murphy signed bill S588, making it the first state in the U.S. to mandate media literacy curriculums from kindergarten through grade 12.

“This bill ensures that 1.3 million public school students in New Jersey will be better prepared for life beyond school with key skills that help them with lifelong learning, civic participation, and work skills,” said Olga Polites, leader, New Jersey Chapter of Media Literacy Now and NLP partner.

Ebonee Rice, NLP’s senior vice president of educator engagement, applauded the development. “It is so important that students are equipped to confidently navigate today’s information landscape, and this is a great first step.”

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June – August 2022

Each quarter, through these updates, we’ll keep you in tune with the work our network of educators is doing and how that work is shifting the media literacy education landscape across the U.S. to create a future founded on facts.

Our community of invested supporters makes NLP ’s work both inside and outside of the classroom possible. And our stakeholders’ commitment and interest allow us to continue to impact the emerging media literacy movement and fuel an achievable national initiative that equips people of all backgrounds for active civic life

Jump to:

Movement Builders in the Field

• District Fellowship program updates.
• News literacy ambassador updates.
• NLP partner spotlights.

Media Literacy Education Landscape.

• Current landscape snapshot.
• Movement wins.

Movement Builders in the Field

NLP’s NewsLitNation News Literacy Ambassadors and district partners defend democracy and promote news literacy in their classrooms and at the school district level.

District Fellowship program

NLP’s District Fellowship program brings together 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.

• NLP launched the application process and selected five districts to make up cohort one of the District Fellowship program:
  • Canyons School District in Sandy, Utah.
  • Greater Albany Public Schools in Albany, Oregon.
  • Iowa City Community School District in Iowa City, Iowa.
  • Las Cruces Public Schools in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
  • North Salem Central School District in North Salem, New York.

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.

• In June, with the help of news literacy ambassador Amanda Escheman, NLP, the Colorado Education Association and the Colorado Sun wrapped up a cosponsored three-part web series designed to help teachers navigate news literacy curriculums. Watch all three webinars here!
• For the 2021-22 school year, NLP’s ambassadors held 26 events — workshops, webinars, presentations, panel discussions, student contests and community meetings — reaching 3,828 educators and librarians. This represents more than four times the number of educators reached last year.

Partnership Spotlight

• Miami-Dade County Public Schools and NLP hosted the PitchIt! essay writing contest to empower students to be civically informed and engaged. Essay topics covered some of the most important issues of our time and explored how students can help combat misinformation or work to protect freedom of the press. Over 100 students participated, with 15 finalists and eight winners.
• In partnership with the New York City Department of Education, NLP held a PitchIt! contest with 100 student participants. Read more here.
• NLP is a Flip Discovery Partner! Flip (formerly known as Flipgrid) by Microsoft is a social learning platform that allows educators to interactively explore lessons and resources and share them with students. NLP’s education team has developed 77 topics and 9 collections on Flip for educators, resulting in over 147 hours of video response engagement with members of the Flip community. Check it out here.
• NLP’s research and design team collaborated with our partner, the New York Department of Education’s Civics for All team to create a Confirmation Bias & Motivated Reasoning infographic to be shared in schools and classrooms across the district. Check it out here.
• We’re expanding! Our most recently secured partnerships include the Oregon Department of Education, Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Institution, Forward Learning of Puerto Rico and Hawaii Department of Education.

Media Literacy Education Landscape: Updates and Movement Wins

Through a partnership with Media Literacy Now, NLP receives monthly reports that provide a status update for all bills 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
States currently providing funding for media literacy education: Connecticut, Michigan, New Mexico, Utah, Washington
Other states with statutes encouraging media literacy: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Washington
Read more about the education landscape here.

Movement wins

Los Angeles Unified School District is a longtime partner of NLP and recently identified news and media literacy as an essential skill for all students, grades K-12, and as a graduation requirement as part of Critical Mass Media studies. The district has designated NLP’s Checkology^® virtual classroom as a preferred curriculum to acquire these skills. Dharma Hernandez, coordinator of professional development design, Division of Instruction, meets monthly with NLP’s senior director of partnership strategy to determine next steps to ensure a successful district implementation of NLP resources and programs. She advocates for Checkology in the district and has begun conversations with the Science and STEM departments to include our new set of lessons.