NLP partners with National Writing Project for news literacy webinar series

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president for educational programs, moderated a special conversation with national political reporters Matea Gold and Abby Phillip from The Washington Post.

Gold and Phillip offered their insights on examples of rumors and misinformation in the 2016 campaign, discussed the competing issues and agendas they must navigate in their reporting, and chatted with students and educators about the active role young people can play as consumers and creators of news and information about political issues. The hangout was part of a special series on “Building News Literacy, Critical Media Skills, and Political Awareness Today” produced in connection to Letters to the Next President 2.0.

Nicco Mele: NLP is helping to prepare for a ‘radically altered media landscape’

It is only fitting that Nicco Mele leads one of the core lessons in the News Literacy Project’s new Checkology™ e-learning platform. After all, this digital visionary has been instrumental in helping us reach this milestone.

Mele was introduced to NLP in 2010 and served for more than four years as our pro bono tech adviser. He helped to envision how technology could move NLP from a hands-on, classroom-based startup to an organization poised to reach national scale online. Nico Mele

In 2014, he connected NLP with Actual Size, the talented Pittsburgh-based creative design studio that became our partner in building the ambitious platform.

“The future is busily arriving,” Mele said. “We’ve got to be prepared for a radically altered media landscape. Checkology™ is a crucial part of that preparation.”

Mele’s own future arrived on April 25, when he was named director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he had previously served as a lecturer and fellow. He returns to Harvard on July 1.

He is currently a senior fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. He is also the co-founder of Internet consulting firm Echo & Co. and the author of the 2013 book “The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath.”

In 2003, at age 26, Mele became webmaster for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s Democratic presidential campaign, where his team used the Internet to fuel a grass-roots social media effort that revolutionized the way money is raised in American politics. The following year, Mele oversaw Internet strategy for Barack Obama’s successful U.S. Senate race in Illinois.

From 2009 to 2014, Mele was a member of the faculty at the Kennedy School, teaching graduate-level classes on the internet and politics. He became senior vice president and deputy publisher of the Los Angeles Times in November 2014; the following year he joined USC, where he also was named the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Journalism at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism.

Mele’s lesson on the Checkology™ platform — “Personalizing Information: The Role of Algorithms” — teaches students how algorithms help to find, and to hide, information by determining what people see based on their interests and ideological predispositions. He guides students through a series of interactions with a mock search engine and social media platform to simulate how algorithms can create what is known as a “filter bubble.” He concludes the lesson by instructing students on steps they can take to make their personal filter bubbles less restrictive.

The News Literacy Project’s Checkology™ platform: ‘A dream come true for teachers’

A New York City high school educator called it “a dream come true for teachers.” A Chicago school administrator described it as a promising way to learn about social media and digital citizenship.

Even before its national launch this week, the News Literacy Project’s Checkology™ e-learning platform was making a strong impression.

This set of highly engaging digital lessons and educational resources is the culmination of all of NLP’s work to date and will serve as the project’s primary path to national scale. As a first step, NLP completed a small number of pilots in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area last month.

Scott Murphy, the director of secondary curriculum and districtwide programs for Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools, said, “I’m really impressed by a level of complexity that is accessible for all students in a classroom and the ways that it gets students to engage in critical thinking and to think deeply.”

The platform features 10 core lessons that give students a foundation in news literacy; they include a focus on the role of the First Amendment and watchdog journalism in a democracy, along with skills and concepts that help students determine how to know what to believe when encountering news and other information. Journalists from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, Bloomberg and the Chicago Sun-Times are joined by experts on the First Amendment and digital media as virtual teachers and video-based guides.

It incorporates many of the best practices in e-learning, including self-pacing, blended and experiential learning, personalization, rich formative assessment, remediation, student challenges, and points and digital badges to incentivize and reward engagement and the application of new skills. There is also a class discussion area where students can share and comment on work, reflect on key questions and initiate conversations about news and information. The lessons are aligned with next-generation state standards and 21st-century learning skills.

NLP is offering the platform — which went live yesterday at www.checkology.org — through a “freemium” model and by subscription. The “freemium” model gives educators basic access at no cost, allowing them to deliver the lessons in a one-to-many format (using an LCD projector, for example). Premium subscribers will be provided with individual student logins to unlock one-to-one delivery features, including self-pacing, saved progress, individual assessments, points, badges and student discussion. Teachers can apply here for NLP mini-grants to allow classrooms in underserved communities to pilot the premium unit at no cost this spring and in the fall.

The platform has gotten off to a promising start. On the first day of last month’s pilot at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School in Washington, students described it as “entertaining and engaging” with “cool examples.” They were asked to list pros and cons on a sheet of paper. Under pros, Octavian Martin wrote “uses real newscasts” and “real newscasters” and referred to a clip from comedian Dave Chappelle. He listed no cons.

The News Literacy Project joins the Pulitzer centennial celebration

The News Literacy Project is joining the celebration of the Pulitzer Prize centennial to provide some extraordinary opportunities to high school students who have participated in its programs.

The Pulitzer centennial committee is sponsoring a series of events across the country to honor “100 years of excellence in journalism and the arts.” It has invited NLP — whose leadership and journalist fellows include numerous Pulitzer Prize winners — to be a part of the celebration. The Pulitzer Prize, awarded annually to news publications for public service and to individual journalists for excellence in a variety of categories, is journalism’s highest honor.

Educators and students who have participated with NLP will attend special events in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Student journalists from three NLP partner schools in New York will join the national press corps at Columbia University’s Pulitzer Hall on April 18 for the announcement of this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners. The students will write about the experience for their school newspapers.

Other events that NLP educators and students will attend include:

“Living the Pulitzer Legacy” at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York on April 6, featuring Pulitzer Prize winners Larry C. Price, David Rohde and Paul Salopek, each of whom was honored for international reporting. Rohde, who won his Pulitzer at The Christian Science Monitor, is an NLP journalist fellow.
“Pulitzer-Prize Winning Photographers and Their Images” at The New School in New York on May 10. The event will be hosted by the Eddie Adams Workshop. Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1969 for an image he captured while covering the Vietnam War for the Associated Press.
An event focusing on the Public Service prize at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Chicago on May 6.
“War, Migration and the Quest for Peace” at the Ebell Theater in Los Angeles on May 19 and 20, hosted by the Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

NLP has had Pulitzer connections from the beginning.

Alan C. Miller, NLP’s president and founder, won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2003 as an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times. He joined more than 300 fellow Pulitzer winners, the largest such gathering ever assembled, on Jan. 29 at the Newseum in Washington for the kickoff of the centennial celebration.

John Carroll, a founding member of NLP’s board and its chair for four years, served on the Pulitzer board from 1994 to 2003 and was its chairman in 2002. He edited three newspapers that won numerous Pulitzers — including the Los Angeles Times, which won 13 in his five years as editor. Carroll’s father, John Wallace Carroll, also served on the Pulitzer board.

In addition to Rohde, NLP journalist fellows who have won Pulitzer Prizes include Don Bartletti, a former photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times; Matt Wuerker, a political cartoonist with Politico; columnists Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle and Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune; and investigative reporters Andrea Elliott, Kevin Sack and Deborah Sontag (The New York Times), James Grimaldi (The Wall Street Journal), Michael Moss (formerly with The New York Times) and David Willman (the Los Angeles Times).

In addition, one of NLP’s earliest supporters was David Moore, whose grandfather, Joseph Pulitzer, bequeathed the funds that established the Pulitzer Prizes in 1917. The David and Katherine Moore Family Foundation has provided grants to NLP every year since 2009.

Juliet Stipeche, News Literacy Project board member, appointed the mayor’s education director in Houston

Juliet Stipeche, a member of the News Literacy Project’s board, has been appointed by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner to serve as his director of education.

She will coordinate education programs and resources between the city and Houston schools, community colleges, universities and nonprofits. She began in the newly created position on Feb. 1.

“I am excited and deeply honored to work with Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is committed to building a city where educational equity and opportunity exist for every child regardless of ZIP code,” Stipeche said. “I look forward to collaborating with fantastic community partners to build lasting relationships to promote educational excellence in the city of Houston.”

Father Joe Parkes: ‘Making our students citizens of the world’

Father Joseph Parkes, S.J., the founding president of NLP partner school Cristo Rey New York High School, calls news literacy "one of the most important needs in the country."

Staying informed and engaged is something that Father Joseph Parkes, S.J., the founding president of Cristo Rey New York High School, takes quite seriously.

“I look at the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post every day,” Parkes said. “I email the papers a lot, too, and I’ve written to the public editor of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others.”

According to Parkes, students often lack this kind of critical thinking and civic engagement when they arrive at Cristo Rey, a Roman Catholic college preparatory school in East Harlem.

“They are so inundated with information that I don’t think they have time to figure out what’s nonsense, what’s propaganda and what’s true,” he said. “How do you build up a critical mind?”

Parkes, a warm, energetic man who has served as president of three Catholic high schools during the past 27 years, recognized the need to provide students with the know-how to be smart, active news consumers and better-informed citizens. He welcomed a collaboration with NLP when its president, Alan C. Miller, approached him in 2011.

“It’s one of the most important needs in the country,” Parkes said. “If you really want to be an active citizen, you have an obligation to begin to inform yourself about what’s going on.”

The collaboration has evolved into one of the News Literacy Project’s strongest partnerships. Dozens of students, who come from low-income communities throughout New York City and pay tuition through a work-study program, are taught NLP’s core curriculum each year in their senior English class. Moreover, news literacy now informs many elements of the school’s senior English course.

“They are skills that can remain with them forever. They learn how to critically read a news article or a television news story,” Parkes said, “and that’s a huge plus.”

NLP units include lessons delivered by journalist fellows — including David Gonzalez and Andrea Elliott of The New York Times, Ron Claiborne of ABC News and Lisa Fleisher of The Wall Street Journal — who Parkes believes inspire students.

“If someone comes in from The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal to speak to them, they consider that an honor,” Parkes said. “That’s important to them.”

As a board member of Cristo Rey’s national network of 30 schools, Parkes has helped introduce NLP to Cristo Rey schools in Takoma Park, Maryland, and Houston. He has also participated in events to promote NLP’s mission in New York and elsewhere, including the national News Literacy Summit 2014 in Chicago.

In the process, he has become an ardent advocate for news literacy education. “It’s invaluable in making our students citizens of the world,” he said.

Opening a window on the world

Since the launch of its classroom program seven years ago, the News Literacy Project (NLP) has helped young people gain the tools to become lifelong learners through the news media.

At KIPP NYC College Prep, a group of high school seniors did not know that Osama bin Laden had been killed more than a year earlier until they learned it in their NLP unit. By the time their unit was done, they were following world events as avid readers of The New York Times.

In Chicago, as a result of their experience with NLP, middle school students in the Marquette Park neighborhood began to read and watch the news for the first time and to discuss the day’s events each evening with their families.

“I have begun to closely monitor where I get my news and the quality of news I take in,” 10th-grade student Hermela Mengesha wrote after completing an NLP unit at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, last October. “I also understand the importance of being socially and politically aware.”

For the past seven years, NLP has been opening a window on the world for students by sparking an interest in the news. In the process, young people, particularly those from underserved communities, are gaining the tools to become lifelong learners through the news media.

“The News Literacy Project allows an opportunity for my students to experience worlds and ideas that are so different from the lives that they lead on their blocks,” said teacher Carol Moran, who has included NLP units in her high school English classes at Chicago Military Academy since 2010. NLP “creates a deeper understanding of the world that they are in than any textbook lesson.”

As an example, she cited a recent class when students were discussing the role of the press as a watchdog during the Iraq war and a student recalled an NLP lesson delivered via Skype by Nancy Youssef, a correspondent with The Daily Beast in Washington. “That a student can connect what we are doing now to what they experienced last year is an extraordinary learning outcome,” Moran said.

Moreover, students who complete NLP units say they are more likely to become civically engaged. They are more inclined to create blog posts, correct a mistake they find online and vote in elections when they are old enough to do so, NLP assessment data show.

“We are changing the behavior of kids,” said Karen Toulon, executive editor for special projects at Bloomberg’s New York City headquarters and a leader of NLP’s partnership with Bloomberg and PS/MS 57 James Weldon Johnson Leadership Academy in East Harlem. “To see them blossom and become engaged is really remarkable.”

Beyond its classroom, after-school and digital programs, NLP is bringing students to news organizations on field trips. Such experiences can shape future aspirations.

During their visit to The New York Times last year, middle school students from De La Salle Academy had the opportunity to sit in on an editorial meeting with the associate managing editor for weekends, Marc Lacey, and the weekend staff. Lacey, an NLP journalist fellow, invited the students to weigh in on which stories and photos to play most prominently on Sunday’s front page.

“The experience made me feel honored to be in the building and to actually be in the meeting for the Sunday newspaper,” said student Jaymi Choi. “The experience made me want to work for The New York Times.”

It’s our anniversary!

In just eight years, NLP has reached more than 23,000 students and worked with 150 diverse schools and 31 partner news organizations — and 300 journalist fellows have delivered more than 600 lessons.

The News Literacy Project celebrated two milestones today — the eighth anniversary of its founding and the seventh anniversary of its classroom program, which kicked off with an event in Brooklyn featuring founding board member Soledad O’Brien. Since then we’ve worked with more than 150 diverse and dynamic middle schools and high schools in four major markets.

From the beginning, we’ve made it our mission to provide young people with the skills to separate fact from fiction in today’s vast information landscape. The need for news literacy has never been greater, and we’re honored to be serving that need.

We offer our humble thanks to all of our supporters and partners, and we look forward to bringing our program to teachers and students across the country in 2016 and beyond!

See our impact from the past eight years:

Tribune Content Agency distributes Spotlight blog post and other NLP content

Newspapers and websites that subscribe to material from the Tribune Content Agency (TCA) now can pick up News Literacy Project (NLP) blog items that analyze news literacy lessons in current events.

NLP’s Teachable Moments blog features insights written by NLP journalist fellows. TCA sent out the most recent post, “Spotlight: A Movie’s Lessons About Great Journalism,” late last month. The report, by retired Wall Street Journal reporter Roy J. Harris Jr., explores the watchdog role of a free press as demonstrated in the movie Spotlight, which illustrates how The Boston Globe uncovered the sex abuse scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church. The South Florida Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale picked up a version on Dec. 2.

In September, TCA distributed “Trump’s Falsehoods Pose Challenge to Press and Public,” by Larry Margasak, who spent more than four decades as an Associated Press reporter. His piece, which examined how how a candidate can rank so low on accuracy and so high in the polls, was picked up by several news organizations, including The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tennessee.

John Dickerson discusses the value of NLP and the role of truth in the 2016 presidential campaign

John Dickerson, the moderator of CBS News’ Face the Nation, said today that “the important thing about the News Literacy Project is that it … creates a reflexive intent to seek the other side of the story or seek more information than you just read.”

Dickerson was the featured speaker at an NLP breakfast in Washington. He was joined on the set of the Sunday public affairs show by Chip Reid, a CBS national correspondent and a volunteer NLP journalist fellow.

Reid said NLP’s mission is even more crucial these days because politicians “can put obviously false information out there and just walk away from it. … In the past, when someone said something that was absolutely false, there was some admission or correction.”

Dickerson, who is also the network’s political director, explained why candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign, particularly Donald Trump, can repeatedly make false statements without seeming to pay a price for it with their supporters.

“To them, the candidate may be wrong on the facts, but they’re speaking to a larger truth,” he said, “You’re never going to fix that with a fact-check.”

Referring to Abraham Lincoln, he said, “If ‘Honest Abe’ was the chief characteristic of the greatest president ever, it is no longer highly valued.”Dickerson also noted that polls show that neither Trump, the leading Republican candidate, nor Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is considered trustworthy by many voters.

When candidates lie, “you call them on it,” Dickerson said. But, he added, when they refuse to acknowledge that they have done so, “at some point, there are diminishing returns” in continuing to challenge them.

NLP technology adviser named deputy publisher of the Los Angeles Times

Nicco Mele, an acclaimed digital strategist who has served as the News Literacy Project’s pro bono technology adviser for more than four years, has been named deputy publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

“We intend to be one of the great journalism organizations of the 21st century, not just the 20th,” Austin Beutner, the Times’ publisher, said Monday in a Times story on Mele’s new position. “With Nicco, we truly have a digital native to help us reimagine our business and develop new digital revenue streams.”

As the webmaster for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in the 2004 Democratic primaries, Mele is credited with transforming the way that political campaigns raise money online.

Mele is a faculty member at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the co-founder of Echo & Co., an Internet strategy and consulting firm. He is the author of the 2013 book The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath.

Since 2010, Mele has advised NLP on using technology effectively to teach middle school and high school students how to know what to believe in the digital age. His guidance has included assistance with the design of NLP’s website and with its compact digital unit, which is the project’s primary path to scale.

John Carroll, who was the editor of the Los Angeles Times from 2000 to 2005 and is the chair of NLP’s board, told the paper, “Nicco’s not a journalist, but he hears the music.” Mele “believes in the social mission of journalism,” Carroll said.

Of Mele’s work with NLP, Carroll said, “He did it free and in good spirit. He’s not just a technologist or a guy who only wants to make money.”

Mele will join the Times, one of NLP’s 26 participating news organizations, in January 2015. NLP plans to expand to Los Angeles next year.

The News Literacy Project to honor its journalist fellows with John S. Carroll Award

The News Literacy Project will recognize the outstanding contributions of one or more of its journalist fellows annually in honor of John S. Carroll, the late chairman of NLP’s board and a renowned newspaper editor.

Volunteer journalist fellows have been a key to NLP’s success from the start, bringing their distinctive real-world expertise and experience into the project’s partner schools. There are nearly 300 journalists in NLP’s online directory; collectively, they have delivered more than 600 lessons in person and virtually since 2009.

These individuals include network correspondents, authors of best-selling books and winners of many of journalism’s highest honors. Several worked for Carroll; five of them, including NLP president Alan C. Miller, won Pulitzer Prizes while collaborating closely with Carroll when he was the editor of the Los Angeles Times.

“John was tremendously proud of the work of our journalist fellows, both in their careers and in their generous service to NLP,” Miller said. “It’s only fitting that we celebrate their role in his honor.”

The volunteer fellows’ involvement with NLP represents an extraordinary commitment at a time when journalists are stretched as never before. Some have visited schools multiple times in New York City, Chicago, the Washington, D.C., area and Houston. Others have participated remotely from such far-flung posts as Cairo and Mexico City. Many have narrated video lessons or connected with students in several cities simultaneously through virtual visits from their newsrooms.

Carroll led Los Angeles Times from 2000 to 2005, during which time the paper won 13 Pulitzer Prizes. He also was the editor of The Baltimore Sun (1991-2000) and the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader (1979-1991). He was considered one of the greatest newspaper editors of his era, if not any era.

He was the first person to join NLP’s board in 2008 and served as its chairman for four years (2011-2014). He remained on the board until his death in June at age 73. The cause was Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare degenerative brain disorder.

The award is initially being sponsored with a gift from Maggie Farley and Marcus Brauchli. Farley worked for Carroll as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times and heads NLP’s Washington, D.C., advisory committee. Brauchli is the former executive editor of The Washington Post and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Honorees will receive a plaque and a cash award at a dinner with NLP board members. NLP is seeking additional support to fund the award.

Greg McCaffery, CEO of Bloomberg BNA, joins the News Literacy Project’s board

Greg McCaffery, the CEO and president of Bloomberg BNA, has joined the News Literacy Project’s board.

“Educating students to be discerning consumers of news strengthens both their critical-thinking skills and our democracy,” McCaffery said. “I’m delighted to join the NLP board as we expand the reach of this important education initiative that inspires our next generation of savvy news consumers.”

McCaffery has held his current position since 2012. Bloomberg BNA is Bloomberg LP’s legal, tax and regulatory information subsidiary, employing more than 1,500 journalists, analysts and researchers who focus on the fields of law and business, tax and accounting, human resources, and the environment.

McCaffery, a graduate of American University, joined BNA (formerly known as the Bureau of National Affairs) in 1986. He held reporting and editing positions on several of its publications until 1990, when he was named to a management post. He became vice president and editor-in-chief in 2000, publisher in July 2001, president in 2007 and president and CEO in 2012, shortly after Bloomberg acquired BNA.

Bloomberg is a major supporter of NLP. The company’s bureaus in New York City, Washington and Chicago partner with NLP and a school in each of these major markets. In addition, Bloomberg is one of the leading funders of the e-learning platform that NLP is designing to move to national scale.

ESPN senior vice president Rob King joins NLP’s board

Rob King, ESPN’s senior vice president for SportsCenter and News, has joined the News Literacy Project’s board.

“NLP’s commitment to education and empowerment underscores the best that journalism can offer our society,” King said. “I’m excited to learn more, share what I’ve learned and engage my colleagues and peers with the project.”

In May 2014, he was named by Fast Company as one of the “Most Creative People 2014.”

King has been in his current position, overseeing ESPN’s flagship program and the company’s newsgathering operations, since January 2014. He previously served as senior vice president for Content, ESPN Digital & Print Media, where he was responsible for all content — text, audio, video and multimedia — and the overall editorial direction of ESPN’s portfolio of digital and print sports properties. He also oversaw management of more than 200 editors, writers and designers across ESPN.com and its network of related sites, ESPN The Magazine and espnW. He joined ESPN in 2004 as a senior coordinating producer.

A graduate of Wesleyan University, King began his journalism career as a general assignment reporter and graphic artist at the Commercial-News in Danville, Illinois. He then spent five years as a graphic artist and cartoonist at the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, before moving to The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, as presentation editor, directing the photography and graphics departments. In 1997 he joined The Philadelphia Inquirer as a graphic artist; in his seven years there he rose to become deputy sports editor, assistant managing editor and deputy managing editor.

King is also a member of the Associated Press board and is chairman of the Poynter Institute’s National Advisory Board.

NLP model can be successfully sustained and replicated, data show

Newly compiled data from the 2014-15 school year indicate that the News Literacy Project’s model is successful, sustainable and replicable.

NLP’s curriculum consistently produces strong gains in students’ knowledge and prompts them to change the way they think about and act on news and information, according to surveys of students who have participated in NLP digital

and classroom units.

The data also suggest that NLP’s method of teaching news literacy can be widely replicated in schools across the country.

The findings mark significant milestones in NLP’s seven-year history as it prepares to launch a redesign of its digital program to schools nationwide early next year. They are based on pre- and post-unit surveys of students’ attitudes, knowledge and behavior and were collected and analyzed by Anita M. Baker, NLP’s independent evaluation consultant.

“I am impressed with the high caliber of results across the board,” Baker said. “That’s no small accomplishment. They reflect an undeniable level of skill-building.”

Results from the 2014-15 school year showed that 80 percent of the students who were enrolled in NLP’s digital programs and completed the surveys said that they were better able to evaluate news and information as a result of the unit and that what they learned from NLP was valuable.

The findings also showed that a substantial proportion of students reported noteworthy increases in:

Their frequency reading a newspaper online or in print.
Their knowledge and appreciation of the First Amendment.
Their belief that a free press is important.

NLP’s classroom program produced similar results during the past school year. More than 80 percent of participants in the assessment surveys said they learned:

How to gather, produce and use credible information.
How to seek out news that makes them knowledgeable about their communities, the nation and the world.
To approach information found on the Internet with skepticism.

This year, two new factors were included in the evaluation reporting. The results include Houston, NLP’s first pilot program outside its initial major markets since 2009. Baker also compiled the results nationally over a three-year period (the 2012-13 school year through the 2014-15 school year).

The Houston program produced strikingly similar results to those in the more established regions.

“NLP is able to take a fairly complex strategy, implement it into a public school where no relationships have been established before, and the results look similar to locations that have been using the program for five or six years,” Baker said. “It’s impressive that the project can do this.”

The over-years data show both consistency over time and gains from one school year to the next.

Baker’s message to NLP? “Don’t change what you’re doing,” she said, “because it certainly seems to work.”

Learn more about the results of NLP’s 2014-15 evaluation and the three-year assessments.

Bob Baker, L.A. Times stalwart, early friend of NLP, dies at 67

Bob Baker, a beloved former reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times and an early friend of the News Literacy Project, died Friday. He was 67.

The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, his wife, Marjorie Baker, said.

During more than 25 years at the Times, Baker distinguished himself as an accomplished reporter and writer with a distinctive voice and as a gifted editor and writing coach who inspired and mentored numerous reporters.

His love of journalism was infectious. His book on the craft, Newsthinking: Making Your Facts Fall Into Place, has been used in newsrooms and in college journalism courses.

“Bob was dedicated to the essence of our work, a Braveheart for journalistic excellence,” said Roger Smith, who retired from the Times as national editor in 2013 after 36 years with the paper. “We’re going to miss him.”

Baker was also an accomplished musician and songwriter who turned a shed behind his Los Angeles home into his personal recording studio. After his retirement from the Times, he traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, where he hired top session musicians to record an album of him singing his original songs.

He wrote about this experience in a memorable 2007 story in The New York Times. It ran under the headline “When Walter Mitty Met Conway Twitty.”

His musical talents included a significant contribution to the News Literacy Project: Not long after he joined NLP as one of its initial journalist fellows, he wrote and recorded what quickly became the project’s anthem, “Check It Out.”

“I am a reporter, so people tell me lies,” the song begins. The refrain is an adage passed down in newsrooms for decades: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

NLP has used the song in videos and public events. It was also the inspiration for the final student projects in NLP’s classroom and after-school programs.

Jee Yon Pae joins the News Literacy Project as vice president of development

Jee Yon Pae joined the News Literacy Project today as the organization’s first full-time development professional. She came to NLP from the Urban Alliance, a Washington nonprofit that provides internships, training and mentoring to youths in under-resourced communities.

NLP President Alan C. Miller said that Pae brings “an exemplary fundraising track record, a deep commitment to serving youth and an impressive set of skills that will serve the organization well as we seek to expand our financial capacity. We look forward to working with her.”

During her 11 years at the Urban Alliance, which included nearly four years as chief development officer, she was part of a senior leadership team that oversaw growth from a program that served 100 Washington youths on a $1 million annual budget to one serving more than 1,000 young people in four regions on a $6 million annual budget. The organization expanded to Northern Virginia, Baltimore and Chicago.

Pae previously worked as a teacher at Calvin Coolidge Senior High School in Washington for two years through the Teach For America program.

“As a former classroom teacher who is passionate about young people and the daughter of parents who run a Korean newspaper business in the D.C. region, I feel that all of my life experiences to date have prepared me to join NLP’s team at this exciting moment,” she said. “I am so grateful for this amazing opportunity to work hard to bring NLP’s mission to fruition.”

Pae is a graduate of Sweet Briar College, where she majored in international affairs. She also has a graduate certificate in Counseling Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Learners from George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education & Human Development.

News Literacy Project selected to appear in the Catalogue for Philanthropy

The News Literacy Project (NLP) has been selected to appear in the prestigious Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington as “one of the best” community-based nonprofits in the region for 2015–16.

Following a thorough evaluation and financial review process, NLP was one of 78 nonprofits chosen from a competitive field of 200 candidates by the Catalogue’s team of 120 reviewers. NLP, based in Bethesda, Maryland, will be featured in the Catalogue’s print and online editions.

As the organization notes on its website, “The Catalogue for Philanthropy takes the guesswork out of giving by identifying the best community-based charities in Washington, D.C., and nearby Maryland and Virginia.” It promotes nonprofits with budgets below $3 million that serve the environment, the arts, education and human services throughout the region.

Every featured charity has a site visit by at least one reviewer, and some by as many as five. The Catalogue’s accounting firm reviews the tax returns, audited financial statements, and other key financial indicators of all finalists to ensure financial viability and transparency. All organizations on the Catalogue website are re-certified every four years.

In addition to producing its guide to charitable giving, the Catalogue for Philanthropy creates resources and runs educational workshops on fundraising, marketing, communications and other topics for its chosen nonprofits. It was founded in 2003 by the Harman Family Foundation, with help from the Meyer Foundation and the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation has been a partner since 2005. Other foundations and donors throughout the region provide support as well.

“We greatly appreciate the News Literacy Project’s inclusion in the Catalogue,” said NLP President Alan C. Miller. “We look forward to participating in the Catalogue’s workshops and other programs and benefiting from the validation and heightened visibility that this honor brings with it.”

The News Literacy Project launches pilot program in Houston

The News Literacy Project (NLP) is pleased to announce its launch in Houston, Texas, the organization’s first expansion into a new region since 2009.

NLP began its first classroom unit on Jan. 20 with four sections of 117 eighth-grade English students at Lanier Middle School in central Houston. The unit is expected to continue for a month.

Lanier has a notable place in journalism history: Walter Cronkite, the iconic former CBS News anchor, attended the school in its inaugural year, 1927, and worked on the staff of its student newspaper.

“The News Literacy Project has been an eye-opening experience for my students,” said Dwaine Yeargin, the English teacher whose class is doing the pilot program. “Not only are they thinking in new ways about how the news gets reported, but they are also thinking more critically about the need for standards and accountability.”

Additional pilot classroom programs are scheduled this spring. These will be delivered in ninth-grade communication classes at St. Agnes Academy in the Sharpstown area west of the city and in nine-grade world geography classes at KIPP Northeast College Prep High School in northeast Houston. NLP is also working with a KIPP high school in New York City.

NLP is expected to reach a total of 225 students this spring in the three Houston schools. The project is seeking to raise funds from foundations, corporations and individuals to expand the program and reach more educators and students throughout Houston.

The Houston Chronicle is a local partner. The paper hosted a VIP lunch last June welcoming the organization to the city. Officials from the Houston Independent School District and representatives from foundations, leaders of educational nonprofits, and teachers and administrators attended.

The initial members of NLP’s Houston advisory committee are Andrea White, a member of the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board and the former first lady of the city, and Dr. Scott Van Beck, a former superintendent and the executive director of Houston A+ Challenge.

The Houston expansion has been spearheaded by consultant Tina L. Peterson, who has a doctorate in mass media and communication and has taught media studies and journalism at the college level for seven years. She is also a member of the Leadership Council of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE).

Erika Hobbs joins the News Literacy Project as Chicago program manager

Erika Hobbs, a journalist and educator, is the new Chicago program manager for the News Literacy Project. She begins her position overseeing NLP’s most robust regional program today.

Hobbs brings a wealth of media, management and teaching experience to NLP. She was an award-winning reporter for more than a decade, including five years covering education at the Orlando Sentinel, and has been an adjunct instructor in writing and journalism at four colleges and universities — most recently at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she also held various communications roles.

Hobbs has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She has nearly completed her coursework toward a doctorate in communications, focusing on the representation of students of color in education coverage and the redefinition of news in a digital age.

Hobbs said that she looks forward to furthering a mission that “works to counter the narrative that news is useless, dead or irrelevant in a digital age and that cultivates a new way of understanding how digital technology is reshaping news, how to make it a more powerful tool than ever, and how to filter the ‘noise’ on the Internet from the truth — or the truth as best as it can be told.” Another goal, she said, is “to nurture aspiring writers or interested individuals to participate in the news process, whether through craft, increased readership, criticism or scholarship.”

She succeeds Mary Owen, who is leaving after three years to pursue other interests.

Juliet Stipeche, former president of Houston Independent School District board, joins the News Literacy Project board

Juliet Stipeche, an attorney and the former president of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) board, has joined the News Literacy Project's board.

“I am so excited and honored to serve as a new member of the News Literacy Project’s board,” Stipeche said. “Students today have access to more media than any other time in human history, but lack basic tools and resources to discern fact from fiction. NLP empowers students with mentors and cutting-edge resources to critically assess data and develop their own message and voice. It is exciting to see how NLP modernizes journalistic opportunity, so every student regardless of ZIP code will be able to properly assess data and share a unique story with the rest of the world to make an impact and difference in their own community and beyond.”

Stipeche has served five years on the HISD board; her current term ends Dec. 31. She was president of the board in 2014. She is a partner at the law firm Nagorny & Stipeche P.C. and associate director of the Richard Tapia Center for Excellence & Equity at Rice University, where she serves as project manager for several programs, including the XSEDE Scholars Program and the Empowering Leadership Alliance.

She is a member of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the National Hispanic Professional Organization and the Hispanic Bar Association of Houston.

Stipeche is the third distinguished individual to join NLP’s board since October. NLP is seeking to expand its program in Houston following a highly successful pilot earlier this year.

Paul Gigot says news literacy is critical to ‘the future of democracy and governance’

News literacy, says Paul Gigot, editorial page editor and vice president of The Wall Street Journal, “is critical to much more than just the future of our business, of journalism, but to the future of democracy and governance.”

During a News Literacy Project VIP breakfast on Oct. 28 at the Journal’s New York City headquarters, Gigot discussed some of the changes roiling the news media by the proliferation of digital technology.

“It’s a hell of a lot easier to write about creative destruction than it is to live through it,” he said, citing the advent of the 24-hour news cycle and the challenge to the news media’s traditional business model as examples of disruptive shifts.

In this increasingly crowded information landscape, readers are “looking for credible information they can trust,” Gigot said. “That’s the coin of the realm.”

He explained that he maintains his section’s credibility by practicing transparency and respecting the “wall” between news and editorial content

“We don’t bury our flag; we wave it,” he said. “Readers know our philosophy. Being trustworthy gives us the capacity to influence people who don’t already agree with us.”

During a question and answer session following his talk, Gigot expressed concern for the future of watchdog journalism at the state and local levels.

“I’m less worried about national accountability than local accountability,” he said. While news organizations will continue to monitor the federal government, he said, it is less certain that smaller papers will be able maintain their capacity for quality investigative journalism at city and town halls and state capitals.

Gigot has been with the Journal since 1980. He won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2000 for his weekly column on Washington politics, “Potomac Watch.”

In his current position, which he has held since 2001, he oversees the Journal’s editorials, op-ed articles and leisure and arts criticism. He also directs the editorial pages of the paper’s Asian and European editions and the OpinionJournal.com website.

The Wall Street Journal is one of NLP’s participating news organizations, and the Dow Jones Foundation is a major supporter.

New NLP lesson focuses on the watchdog role of a free press

This school year, participating NLP students are engaging in a new lesson that explores the importance of a vigilant free press by bringing to life four case studies of notable investigative reporting.

As Cristo Rey New York High School students discussed a 60 Minutes report about a black man wrongly convicted of armed robbery by an all-white jury in Texas and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole, they began to make connections between the First Amendment and the watchdog role of a free press.

Without that investigative report, a student concluded, “Nobody would have known or cared.”

These students were among the first to dig into NLP’s newest classroom lesson, introduced this fall. Titled “Democracy’s Watchdog,” this lesson explores the importance of a vigilant free press by bringing to life four case studies of notable investigative reporting:

Nellie Bly’s pioneering undercover reporting in 1887 about a hospital for the mentally ill.
The Washington Post’s iconic coverage of the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s.
The 60 Minutes report in 1983 that led to overturning the wrongful conviction of Lenell Geter.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s groundbreaking investigative series in 1988 that exposed racially biased mortgage-lending practices.

The lesson employs the “jigsaw method,” in which students are initially each assigned to two groups: “expert” and “jigsaw.” First, students are divided into four expert groups to learn as much as possible about a single case study. They then reassemble to share what they learned in their jigsaw groups, made up of experts from each of the four case study groups. This enables students to master a significant amount of material in a short time through peer teaching.

The lesson ends with the entire class reflecting on how the outcomes in each case — and democracy itself — would have been different without a free press.

Students have embraced this lesson. At DePaul College Prep in Chicago, students subsequently told their teacher that they wanted to watch All the President’s Men, the movie depicting the Watergate reporting of the Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

In New York City, students “found the cases very interesting and enjoyed discussing with their classmates the reliance of each case on the First Amendment,” said Stephanie Mueth, an English teacher at Cristo Rey. “It was an intriguing lesson for the students, which allowed them to think critically and creatively.”

Bob Schieffer calls NLP’s mission ‘as important as the journalism itself’

On the Face the Nation set at CBS News’ Washington bureau, Bob Schieffer discussed his distinguished career in journalism, changes he has observed in politics and the news media, and the role of news literacy in the digital age.

Schieffer, the moderator of the CBS Sunday public affairs show Face the Nation, says it’s vital for today’s young people to learn how to determine what news and information they can trust.

“With the coming of the Internet, we are bombarded with more information than any of us can process — some of it right, a lot of it wrong,” he said after appearing at a News Literacy Project (NLP) VIP breakfast. “That’s why it is so important for young people to understand how the news process works, where the news comes from, what they can trust and what they can’t. NLP is helping them to understand that process, which is why I believe what NLP is doing is as important as the journalism itself.”

During the event, held Oct. 6 on the Face the Nation set at CBS News’ Washington bureau, Schieffer discussed his distinguished career in journalism, changes he has observed in politics and the news media, and the role of news literacy in the digital age.

Among his observations:

“Accurate and independently gathered information is as important to our democracy as is voting.”
“The most important thing that we do is give people independently gathered facts and information they can compare with the government’s version of events.”
“Journalism is not about scratching the surface; journalism is about getting beneath the surface.”
“The key to good reporting is not asking the question. It’s listening to the answer.”
“Face the Nation is about moving the story forward — not about what happened last week, but what will happen next week. Some things just can’t be explained in 140 characters.”

Schieffer was interviewed by Louise Dufresne, an associate producer at Face the Nation and an NLP journalist fellow. She first became involved with NLP as a member of its youth advisory committee and was head of that panel while she was in college.

A reporter for more than half a century, Schieffer, 77, is in his 45th year at CBS News, where he has won many of broadcast journalism’s highest honors, including eight Emmy awards. In 2008, he was named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress.

Prior to joining CBS in 1969, he was a reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where he was the first reporter from a Texas newspaper to report from Vietnam.

During the NLP event, Schieffer discussed the role of local newspapers as a watchdog over city and state governments. If these publications disappear, he warned, “we will have corruption on a scale we’ve never seen.”

News Literacy Project to launch professional development for teachers nationwide

The News Literacy Project is launching a series of online professional development workshops for teachers nationwide who are interested in introducing news literacy into their classrooms. The first workshop lesson will be Nov. 12.

The series, Teaching News Literacy, is part of NLP’s new fee-for-service program that includes its classroom and after-school programs, as well as in-person professional development, in the project’s major markets of New York City, Chicago and the Washington, D.C., region.

Prices for both online and in-person professional development are modest and provide educators with a foundational understanding of this vital 21st-century subject area. Workshop participants will also receive guidance on a collection of free tools and resources that will help them immediately begin incorporating news literacy in their classrooms.

The online series will begin Nov. 12 with an overview of news literacy. Each lesson will be one hour long and will be led by Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president for educational programs, and other experienced NLP trainers.

The other online lessons will be:

Dec. 10, 2014: “Exploring Bias”
Jan. 14, 2015: “News Literacy and Civic Engagement”
Feb, 18, 2015: “21st-century Trends, Tools and Skills”

Educators can register here for the entire series for $95 or for individual sessions for $30 each.

Schools in New York City, Chicago and the Washington, D.C., region that are interested in bringing NLP trainers to their school for customized, in-person professional development training can inquire here. In-person training includes a comprehensive 90-minute overview of news literacy and three topic-specific sessions, chosen from the list below:

“News Literacy and Civic Engagement” – Explore the role of news and information in today’s civic life.
“News Analysis” – Learn about key concepts of news literacy and how students can use them to evaluate the credibility of information.
“21st-Century Information Trends” – A summary of current trends and tools in today’s digital media. landscape with tips on how to help students be smarter, more savvy consumers of information.
“The First Amendment” – Learn how to use historic case studies of investigative journalism to teach students about the First Amendment and the watchdog role of the press.
“Exploring Bias” – Understand the journalistic ideal of neutrality and explore different types of bias to enable participants to structure their own learning experiences to help students develop their understanding of this complex topic.
“PBL Approaches to News Literacy” – Use project-based learning principles to help guide news literacy education.
“Fact-Checking” – Review tools and platforms to support fact-checking activities.
“Integration and Inter-Disciplinary Strategies” – Discover best practices for integrating news literacy learning in a semester or school year across various subject areas.
“Creation Session” – Develop original news literacy lessons with guidance and direction from NLP staff.
“Student Journalism and Media-Making” – Empower teachers to help students apply news literacy learning by creating their own projects.

For further information, or to register, contact Nell Lennon at [email protected].

Kiwanis Club of Washington, D.C., awards the News Literacy Project a $10,000 grant

The Kiwanis Club of Washington, D.C., has awarded the News Literacy Project a $10,000 grant to support a classroom program at a public school in the District during the 2014-15 school year.

The grant will enable an under-resourced school to offer NLP’s curriculum, including visits by journalist fellows. To date, NLP has partnered with four public and charter schools in Washington.

Founded in 1917, the Kiwanis Club of Washington, D.C. is part of Kiwanis International, a global organization dedicated to serving the children of the world.

“We look forward to this partnership with the News Literacy Project in support of students in the District of Columbia,” said Brian Egger, president of the Kiwanis Club of Washington, D.C. “Kiwanis seek to improve the lives of children in D.C., and we are proud to be supporting this mission.”

Demonstrating impressive impact in all NLP programs

Quantitative and qualitative information from students and teachers gathered throughout the 2013-14 school year consistently shows that NLP’s programs are achieving their goals by changing students’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviors about news and information.

Detailed reports compiled by Anita Baker, the project’s evaluation consultant, reflect the impact of NLP’s classroom, after-school and digital programs in middle schools and high schools in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland. This was the most finely tuned set of surveys that NLP has used.

“The results show that NLP is consistently reaching its goal to help students navigate news and information in the digital world,” Baker said. “Gains were again emphatically confirmed by teachers. Further, students from both the classroom and digital unit programs and from both high schools and middle schools consistently gave NLP high marks and were able to articulate what they learned and why they found NLP so useful.”

She said the reports were based on “a very robust set of data covering all of NLP’s programs in numerous schools across multiple cities, involving many teachers and more than 2,000 students, with extremely consistently positive findings throughout.”

Because of NLP, the reports found, students increased their knowledge of the First Amendment and the watchdog role of the news media in a democracy and gained greater understanding of the primary purpose of advertising and the importance of knowing who created an online video in order to assess its credibility.

Students’ changes in attitudes are reflected in their increased value of a free press and its role in a democracy, an increased sense of responsibility in creating and sharing reliable information, and greater appreciation for exercising civility, respect and care in online communities.

In terms of behaviors, students who took an NLP unit said they were more interested in the news and consumed it more frequently, especially in newspapers; were more inclined to check the credibility of news or information before sharing it; and were more likely to vote in elections.

In addition, more than 75% of the high school students who did NLP classroom units in the 2013-14 school year and completed our surveys said they gained the following: a basic understanding of what news literacy is and why it matters; an appreciation for the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment; the ability to seek out news that will make them more knowledgeable about their communities, the nation and the world; and a greater understanding of what distinguishes quality journalism from other sources of news and information.

The student data are supported by the extremely positive results from educators. Teachers who completed surveys overwhelmingly said that upon completing NLP units, their students demonstrated a gain in their ability to identify credible information and appreciation, awareness and knowledge of the news literacy concepts introduced by NLP.

Nearly all the teachers said that the NLP curriculum had helped them meet required teaching standards and that they would continue to use news literacy lessons in their classrooms even if they were unable to partner with NLP.

The reports also contain extensive comments by students and teachers as well as the results of surveys of NLP journalist fellows who made in-person and remote presentations. To see a summary of the findings, click here.

New York program to expand reach with new staff member

NLP is pleased to announce the hiring of Tamara Johnson as the project’s new full-time program coordinator in New York, NLP’s third hire since the spring.

Tamara started on Aug. 25, just ahead of the new school year, which officially kicks off on Sept. 4. She will work with Darragh Worland, New York program manager, to expand the program’s reach in New York City. Tamara was selected from an impressive and diverse field of more than 160 applicants based on her broad experience in education, journalism and program coordination.

Prior to joining NLP, Tamara ran a public education and outreach program at the New York Academy of Sciences, along with a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) mentoring program for undergraduate women. Her varied background also includes stints as an assistant editor at Dance Magazine, a crew member on a scientific charter vessel traveling from the Galapagos Islands to New Zealand, and a researcher collaborating with Chinese and Indian students under a Ford Foundation fellowship to explore the relationship between news media and the formation of political identities.

“I’ve always been a news junkie,” Tamara said. “As the world produces the first digital natives, I believe news literacy education is more important than ever.”

Tamara holds a bachelor’s degree, with honors, from SUNY Binghamton, where she majored in philosophy and neuroscience. In December, she will complete her master’s degree at The New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs. Her position at NLP is funded with support from the Ford Foundation and the David and Katherine Moore Family Foundation.

Connie Lesch also joined NLP this summer as a part-time executive assistant to the president. She has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit marketing and public outreach, and has also served as a volunteer on community and school boards. Connie has a master’s degree in business administration from Rice University.

As reported in the April newsletter, Nell Lennon, a seasoned and highly successful sales executive, joined NLP this spring as our first vice president of sales and marketing. After receiving her sales training with Xerox, Nell spent a decade at The Washington Post, where she “fell in love with the industry” and worked her way up to become the first female assistant director for display advertising. She has since held senior sales positions in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors selling educational programs to schools.

NLP president discusses news literacy on The Diane Rehm Show

Alan C. Miller, NLP’s president and founder, discussed NLP and news literacy on The Diane Rehm Show on public radio this morning.

You can catch the podcast here. The focus of the show was: “News Literacy in the Digital Age: Americans have access to more news than ever before. But polls suggest trust in our sources of information is at a record low.”

Miller and three other distinguished guests engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about public distrust of the news media, the role of social media, coverage of the fallout from the shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri, and how consumers can find credible information.

At the show’s conclusion, Miller explained how NLP’s educators and journalists teach news literacy in middle and high schools.

Rehm responded, “I wish you all success because I think the entire population at this point needs something like that!”

The show is produced by WAMU, the Washington-based NPR affiliate, and is syndicated to 250 stations nationwide with a weekly radio audience of almost 2.6 million. Rehm received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama last month.

The other guests were Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute; Amanda Ripley, a feature writer for Time magazine and The Atlantic and the author of a widely discussed book on public education; and Andy Carvin, a former NPR reporter and social media pioneer who is now at First Look Media, a nonprofit journalism startup.

Elizabeth Marino joins the News Literacy Project’s staff in Chicago

Elizabeth Marino, an experienced classroom teacher, has joined the News Literacy Project as program coordinator in Chicago. She will oversee expansion of NLP’s digital unit and work with other youth media programs throughout the city.

“The addition of Elizabeth to our team is particularly exciting given the crossroads NLP is at as an organization,” said Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president for educational programs. “She will play a vital role in ensuring that every learning experience that NLP offers — from the new open content on our website to our new program content — meets the needs of students and teachers in today’s classrooms.”

Elizabeth was a consultant to NLP’s Chicago program from August to December 2013. Previously, she taught English for 14 years and has extensive experience in curriculum development and the Common Core State Standards.

Elizabeth will focus on expanding NLP’s digital unit beyond Chicago Public Schools and working with grantees of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation’s “Why News Matters” initiative. Her part-time position is funded by the foundation.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to be part of the team and am ready to hit the ground running,” she said. “It’s wonderful to work for an organization that I fully believe in and can pour my heart into.”

She is the fourth NLP staff member in Chicago, joining Adams; Tim Mata, NLP’s national digital coordinator; and Mary Owen, the Chicago program manager. She is NLP’s ninth staffer nationally.

Elizabeth started her career in education in Columbia, Missouri, where she spent 10 years as an 8th-grade English teacher. In 2009, she moved to Thea Bowman Leadership Academy in Gary, Indiana, and created the 12th-grade English curriculum at the relatively new charter high school.

In 2011, she moved to the Bishop Noll Institute in Hammond, Indiana, where she taught English and became chairwoman of the Common Core Committee that led the adoption of the standards at the school. In 2012, she was appointed dean of academic affairs and admissions coordinator at Bishop Noll.

Asian American Journalists Association offers summer internship

The Asian American Journalists Association is looking for 42 high school students for its 2014 journalism workshop at Emerson College in Boston this summer.

The JCamp program will run from July 29 to Aug. 3 and is open to teenagers with an interest in broadcasting, newspapers, magazines, photojournalism or online media. Freshmen, sophomores, and juniors of all races and ethnicities are encouraged to apply. All expenses are paid for attendees.

The camp offers hands-on training from professional journalists and an opportunity for students to work collaboratively. The curriculum includes lectures and field trips. AAJA hopes that training multicultural journalists will lead to a more accurate portrait in news reports of persons and communities of color. The application deadline is March 16.

Past JCamp speakers have included Gwen Ifill of PBS NewsHour and Washington Week; New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.; Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of the NBC Nightly News; Ed Bradley, a former correspondent for 60 Minutes; Carl Bernstein, a former reporter for The Washington Post; and Carole Simpson, a former ABC News reporter and anchor. AAJA has endorsed the News Literacy Project since 2008.

News Literacy Project event packs GW’s Lisner Auditorium

Three of Washington’s leading journalists discussed “America’s Changing Role in the World and How the Press Covers It” before an audience of more than 1,100 at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium on Nov. 13.

The panel featured Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist at The New York Times, and Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent at NBC News and host of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports. It was moderated by Gwen Ifill, co-anchor of PBS NewsHour and moderator of Washington Week.

The event was produced by the News Literacy Project in partnership with GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

Qualcomm and The Washington Post were the lead sponsors.

This was NLP’s seventh such forum in the past five years.

NLP journalist fellow offers tips on photographing a neighborhood

David Gonzalez, a co-editor of Lens, the visual journalism blog of The New York Times, visited an 8th-grade American studies class at De La Salle Academy on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on May 15 to offer the students guidance and feedback on their photojournalism projects.

For their final project in the NLP unit, students studied social welfare issues through the lens of a camera, taking photographs that examined topics such as housing, education and income disparities in their school’s neighborhood and the city at large.

During his visit, Gonzalez — one of the first NLP journalist fellows in New York City — reviewed students’ photographs and shared how the standards of journalism are applied to stories told through the medium of photography. “Look at the variety of life, though,” he said. “Just because you’re photographing a ‘poor neighborhood,’ you don’t want to make everybody look broke down. You want to show the range of life. Just because people are poor doesn’t mean they have no dignity.”

For more, check out the video.

Veronica Conforme joins the News Literacy Project’s board

Veronica Conforme, a vice president at the College Board and the former chief operating officer of the New York City Department of Education, has joined the News Literacy Project’s board.

“The board is fortunate to be gaining an educator with Veronica Conforme’s insight, experience and reputation,” said NLP board chairman John Carroll. “Our success depends on America’s schools, and Veronica’s counsel will be invaluable.”

Conforme joins a distinguished and engaged group of current and former journalists, educators and corporate leaders.

“I am honored and excited about joining the board of the News Literacy Project, and to help champion the critical work the project is doing with our youth,” she said.

“As our students rise up to the challenge of higher standards and get ready to go to college, career skills like critical thinking and analyzing from fact-based sources are even more essential to their success. The News Literacy Project supports students, teachers and schools to achieve this goal.”

Conforme is head of the College Board’s Access to Opportunity campaign, which helps at-risk students succeed in AP courses, explore college options and attend colleges where they are equipped to succeed.

She joined the College Board in May 2013 after a decade with the New York City Department of Education (DOE), where she most recently served as chief operating officer, advising the chancellor and directing the work of the finance, technology, fundraising, operations, communications and public relations teams. She previously was the DOE’s chief financial officer and the deputy chief schools officer for operations, overseeing the day-to-day activities of the city’s 1,700 public schools.

The News Literacy Project is active in middle schools and high schools in New York City as well as in Chicago and the Washington, D.C., region.

Sun-Times Foundation awards NLP $25,000 matching grant

The Sun-Times Foundation in Chicago has awarded the News Literacy Project a $25,000 matching grant to encourage additional individual, corporate and foundation contributions to NLP.

The initial $1,000 of the donation counts toward the match, which runs through Dec. 5. Jim Kirk, the publisher and editor in chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, announced the grant at a VIP breakfast event at the Sun-Times on Sept. 9. The guests were participants and supporters of NLP and other leaders in Chicago’s educational, philanthropic and business communities. The Sun-Times is among NLP’s 24 participating news organizations.

“We are to award a matching grant to the News Literacy Project in support of its mission to partner with the journalism community to teach students how to sort fact from fiction in the news, a critical skill in this digital age,” said Michael W. Ferro Jr., chairman of the Sun-Times’ parent company, Wrapports LLC.

Ferro is also a member of the Sun-Times Foundation’s board. The foundation is run in conjunction with the Chicago Community Trust.

NLP to sponsor major event at George Washington University on Nov. 13

NLP’s major fall event in Washington will be a panel discussion on “America’s Changing Role in the World and How the Press Covers It” on Wednesday, Nov. 13, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, 730 21st St. NW.

Gwen Ifill of PBS is the moderator; the panelists are Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist at The New York Times; Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent with NBC News and host of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports; and Michael Gerson, a nationally syndicated columnist with The Washington Post. Qualcomm and The Washington Post are platinum sponsors; ABC News and José Andrés’ ThinkFoodGroup are silver sponsors.

The event is free, but seating is limited.

For more information or to reserve tickets, please visit Lisner Auditorium’s website.

Sign up now for the 2013 YJDP-News Literacy Project summer workshop series

The News Literacy Project and The Washington Post’s Young Journalists Development Program are presenting a series of innovative workshops for high school students this summer.

Students will learn critical-thinking skills necessary to sort fact from fiction as consumers and creators of news and information in the digital age. Participants will engage with leading journalists from The Washington Post and experienced NLP staff. Light refreshments will be provided. To learn more, visit www.washingtonpost.com/youngjournalists.

Fast facts:

* Students can register to attend one of the following workshops: Saturday, June 29-Saturday, July 20

* Sessions will run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at The Washington Post building located at 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the (Red line) Farragut North and (Blue and Orange lines) McPherson Square Metro stations.

* The workshops are FREE and open to Washington area high school students.

* Seating is limited to 30 people on a first-come, first-served basis, so sign up today!

Note: Journalism advisers are welcome to attend and observe sessions, if space is available.

* To register, contact: [email protected]

For more information, contact: Jaye P. Linnen, 202-334-4917, [email protected]

NLP featured on public radio in Washington, D.C.

The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU, a public radio station in Washington, D.C., devoted an hour Monday afternoon to a segment on the News Literacy Project and news literacy.

Alan C. Miller, NLP’s president and founder, was joined on the show by Matea Gold, a Los Angeles Times reporter and one of NLP’s most active journalist fellows, and Scott Menscher, who teaches a course on mass media at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn and is currently using the NLP curriculum.

The show included a discussion on news literacy with the show’s host, Kojo Nnamdi, and responses to calls from listeners.

Through its partnerships with middle schools and high schools in the District of Columbia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia, along with schools in New York City and Chicago, NLP is reaching more than 3,800 students this school year.

Gold has made presentations in NLP schools in New York City, Washington and Montgomery County, Maryland, and has appeared via Skype in schools in Chicago. She is also featured in a narrated video that is part of NLP’s digital unit.

Eric Nadelstern joins the News Literacy Project’s education advisory committee

Eric Nadelstern, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a former deputy chancellor of the New York City schools, has joined the News Literacy Project’s education advisory committee.

Nadelstern has been familiar with NLP since its early stages in New York City schools. Now in its fifth year, NLP is working with 11 schools in four of the city’s five boroughs.

“The News Literacy Project teaches students the critical 21st-century survival skill of finding truth and wisdom in the news media they are bombarded with each day,” he said. “In doing so, this highly effective educational organization serves to ensure the future of our free and democratic society.”

Nadelstern is a professor in the Education Leadership Program and director of the Summer Principals Academy at Teachers College.

From 2009 to 2011, he served as deputy chancellor for the Division of School Support and Instruction in the New York City Department of Education, overseeing instructional and operational support to the city’s 1,700 schools. He began his career teaching English as a second language at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and held a wide variety of positions of increasing responsibility during his 39 years with the city school system.

He is the author of 10 Lessons from New York City Schools: What Really Works to Improve Education, published in 2013 by Teachers College Press.

Other members of NLP’s education advisory committee are Frank W. Baker, a national media literacy consultant; Bob Jervis, a faculty member at Goucher College and NLP’s former curriculum developer; Kelly McBride, a senior faculty member for ethics at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and a former NLP board member; and Jay McTighe, an internationally recognized educational consultant and co-author of Understanding by Design, which is widely used by teachers to develop curricula.

News Literacy Project staffers featured in journalism publications

NLP staffers are prominently featured in two journalism publications this month.

The cover story in the May/June issue of the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) quotes Alan C. Miller, NLP’s president, and the spring issue of Inside Story, the magazine of the City University of New York’s graduate school of journalism, includes a feature about Elis Estrada, NLP’s New York program assistant.

The CJR article, “Streams of consciousness,” is a comprehensive examination of how young people get their news in the digital age and what this will mean for the future of journalism; it includes Miller talking about how snippets of text or videos, taken out of context, can be misleading. A sidebar, “That’s incredible,” leads with a quote from Miller:

“‘A lot of students believe all news is created equal,’ says Alan Miller of the News Literacy Project, which helps kids learn to assess the information they encounter. ‘At a younger age, they sometimes believe that if someone put it online, it must be true.’ Older high-school students grow more wary of ‘bias, whether personal, commercial, or ideological.’”

CJR is one of the leading journalism reviews in the country.

The CUNY magazine feature, “On the Job,” focuses on Estrada, a graduate of class of 2011, who divides her time between NY1, a local 24-hour cable news channel, and the News Literacy Project. The report traces Estrada’s interest in journalism to the year that she spent as a member of AmeriCorps assisting low-income families in Brooklyn and her dismay at the lack of media coverage about their neighborhoods.

At NY1, Estrada is an associate producer on the consumer investigative unit, NY1 for You, and also works with the station’s education reporter. She produced much of the station’s coverage of Hurricane Sandy.

At NLP, she shares her experiences as a journalist and works with teachers and other journalists at De La Salle Academy, a middle school in Manhattan, and the Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn.