The sessions will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 16, and Saturday, Aug. 6. Students should register for only one session; each will cover similar ground.

The sessions will combine some of NLP’s most successful classroom lessons and presentations from experienced NLP journalist fellows from the Post, the Los Angeles Times and National Journal. The workshops will focus on how to discern verified, credible information from raw information, opinion and misinformation and will deal with such topics as viral email, YouTube and investigative reporting. They will be led by News Literacy Project staff as well as the journalists.

The journalists who are expected to participate are James Grimaldi and DeNeen Brown of The Post, Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times and Kathy Kiely of National Journal. All are volunteer fellows with the News Literacy Project.

About 30 students from the Washington area and around the country will participate in each workshop. They are being offered for free on a first-come, first-serve basis. To register, contact Alan Miller at [email protected] or Jaye Linnen at [email protected]. The Post is located at 1150 15th St. NW in Washington, D.C.

Refreshments for the event are being donated by Spring Mill Bread Co. and Honest Tea, both of Bethesda, Maryland.

Work done by NLP students and interviews with students who have completed the NLP unit in New York City, Chicago and Bethesda, Maryland, will be featured on the film’s social action campaign website.

A video about the News Literacy Project will be included as a DVD extra when the Page One DVD is released in the fall. The video, produced by NLP, focuses on NLP’s impact on students in its three regions in the past three years.

The News Literacy Project was invited to be part of the social action campaign by Participant Media, one of the producers of Page One. Participant has also produced An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for “Superman,” Food Inc., The Soloist and other critically acclaimed films and has created social action campaigns for them as well.

Page One is a behind-the-scenes look at a tumultuous year in the life of media reporters and editors at The New York Times. It follows the journalists as they grapple with challenges as varied as dealing with WikiLeaks and utilizing new platforms such as Twitter and tablet computers, even as their own newspaper struggles to stay vital and solvent amid the upheaval in the media industry.

Participant Media’s social action campaign for Page One will focus on the importance of knowing the original source of the news a person reads, watches, hears and posts online and the difference between original reporting and commentary.

“NLP will provide our students with the critical thinking and analytical skills they need to be successful in college and in life,” said Jennifer C. Niles, E.L. Haynes’ founder and head of school.  “Participation in this project will help E.L. Haynes fulfill our mission.”

That mission is for each student at E.L. Haynes — regardless of race, socioeconomic status or home language — to reach high levels of academic achievement and be prepared to succeed at the college of his or her choice. Washington’s first year-round public school is moving steadily toward this goal through its program based on nationally recognized best practices for advancing student achievement; in four years, the percentage of its students scoring “proficient” or “advanced” in math increased 39% and in reading, 27%.

Founded in 2004, E.L. Haynes has enrolled 600 students from pre-school through eighth grade in the 2010-11 school year. It will add a grade each year and will have its first graduating seniors in the 2014-15 school year.

The school is named for Dr. Euphemia Lofton Haynes, the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics. She was a teacher in the District of Columbia’s school system for 47 years and was the first woman to serve as president of the District of Columbia Board of Education.

In the 2010-11 school year, the News Literacy Project is reaching more than 1,700 students through its work with 30 teachers in 12 schools in Bethesda, New York City and Chicago. It expects to increase its presence in all three regions during the 2011-12 school year.

Though NLP has been responsible for its own fundraising and program operations, Poynter handled the project’s finances, payroll and benefits as its designated 501(c)(3) sponsor. The Tides Center, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, was NLP’s fiscal agent during its initial year.

The Internal Revenue Service approved NLP as an independent nonprofit on March 11. NLP completed its transition with Poynter this in April.

“This is an important milestone in extending the program to more students and teachers and also to more parts of the country,” said NLP board chairman John S. Carroll.

“We’re grateful to the Poynter Institute the invaluable help it’s provided during NLP’s formative years.”

Becoming independent shifts legal and fiscal responsibility to the News Literacy Project’s board, whose members include national leaders in the fields of journalism, education and public relations.

During the process of applying to the IRS and taking other steps necessary to operate independently, NLP has been represented on a pro bono basis by the Washington office of the law firm of Dickstein Shapiro LLP. Attorneys Peter Kadzik, Jonathan Levi and Alicia O’Brien have been especially helpful in guiding the project through this process.

NLP is working with 30 teachers in 12 middle schools and high schools in New York City, Chicago and Bethesda, Maryland, to reach more than 1,700 students this school year. It plans to expand in each region in the 2011-12 school year.

NLP brings seasoned journalists into the schools to give students the tools to discern credible information from rumor, opinion, misinformation and propaganda.

The seven-minute piece captures the project’s impact in schools in New York City, Chicago and Bethesda, Maryland, through interviews with principals and students, photos and excerpts from student projects in each location.

The featured student projects are a mini-documentary, “East Harlem IS,” produced in 2009 by middle school students at East Harlem’s STARS Prep Academy MS 45 with NLP journalists in an after-school program; an audio report, “Peer Pressure,” created in 2010 by middle school students from the Reavis School in Chicago with NLP journalists; and a rap, “Wikipedia Rap,” and a song, “It’s the First Amendment,” written and performed by students from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

The video was first shown at a national conference on news literacy at Stony Brook University on March 17. It was edited by Darragh Worland, NLP’s New York coordinator, who is a multimedia educator and a former broadcast journalist.

The event, which was supported by Skype, brought middle school students in Chicago and high school students in New York together online to connect with NLP fellow Don Bartletti, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times, who presented a lesson from his home in San Diego.

The occasion marked an important milestone in the News Literacy Project’s efforts to develop its use of digital resources as it seeks to expand its model to get to scale.

The event spanned four time zones and both coasts as students at the Facing History School on the West Side of Manhattan and students from Perspectives Middle Academy and the Reavis School on Chicago’s South Side talked with Bartletti in San Diego.

Skype donated webcams, premium vouchers and an ethernet cable to make the event possible and dispatched a video crew to document the landmark occasion in New York.

After participants in each city greeted everyone, Bartletti introduced the students to his work on a series of reports about young migrants traveling from Central America to the Texas border. The series, written by Sonia Nazario and later published as a book titled Enrique’s Journey, required Bartletti to ride on the tops of freight trains with the youths to document their dangerous passage. The core of his lesson dealt with the ethics of photojournalism and the lengths to which photographers and reporters go to accurately capture individual stories and events for their readers and viewers.

“I use my camera as a witness — to show you what the world looks like,” Bartletti told the students in New York and Chicago. “A photograph can sometimes be a story in itself.”

He also emphasized that journalists do not alter or influence their photos in any way.”This is the ethics of photojournalism that I want to impress on you: We, as journalists, want to watch the world happen—we don’t want to make it happen,” Bartletti said. “My photos are true.”

In Chicago, the call was part of a second annual news literacy conference involving two schools participating in the Elev8 Program: the Reavis School and Perspectives Middle Academy. Students and teachers from the schools reflected on their experiences with the NLP unit this spring and shared some of their final news literacy projects.

Perspectives students, who completed the NLP unit as part of their social studies classes in select sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade sections, shared a news literacy rap, an editorial cartoon and a letter to a local newspaper reporter and the reporter’s response. The Reavis students — also a mix of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders — shared a broadcast report on the effect of video games on youth that they produced collaboratively as part of an NLP-supported after-school program.

In New York, about 20 ninth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students gathered at Facing History School for the Skype event. The ninth- and 10th-grade students prepared for the call with a one-day lesson on immigration and also read the award-winning series in the Los Angeles Times. As part of their curriculum, the students read excerpts from Enrique’s Journey during a unit on immigration. The Skype event was a rare opportunity for the students to hear directly from the journalist whose work they had studied.

“It was a wonderful experience for me and my students,” said Facing History teacher Carolyn Casale.

His topic was “Teaching the Next Generation How to Know What to Believe in a Digital World.”

While at Bemidji, Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times, also led student workshops on investigative reporting and news literacy.

“I have received nothing but positive feedback from students, faculty and administrators,” said Carla Norris-Raynbird, sociology program coordinator for the Center for Environmental, Earth and Space Studies, Economics and Sociology at Bemidji and the conference organizer. “I cannot recall a speaker who has had this kind of effect on so many … and at so many different levels.”

Miller, other NLP staff members and the project’s journalist fellows are available for speaking engagements at colleges, universities, secondary schools and other venues. Topics they can address include NLP’s four pillars:

• Why news matters.

• The importance of the First Amendment and a free media in a democracy.

• How to know what to believe.

• The challenges and opportunities created by the Internet and digital media.

AOL sets aside space on its homepage daily for a vetted charity or nonprofit that offers a message with national appeal.

The NLP cause module will expose the project’s mission to a large number of visitors to AOL.com and enable them to make online donations. The cause module averages between 4,000 and 7,000 clicks a day, according to AOL.

The NLP cause module will run for 24 hours with the project’s logo, a donation link and a link to our web page.

“We are honored to partner with the News Literacy Project and leverage our world-class Univision News organization to help students across the country understand the importance and value of news consumption in their educational development,” said Isaac Lee, Univision’s president of news. “This collaboration extends our mission of informing, entertaining and empowering our community.”

The company’s assets include Univision Network, the most-watched Spanish-language broadcast television network in the U.S.; TeleFutura Network, a general-interest Spanish-language broadcast television network; Galavisión, the country’s leading Spanish-language cable network; Univision Local Media, which owns and/or operates 62 television stations and 70 radio stations in major U.S. Hispanic markets and Puerto Rico; and Univision Interactive Media, which includes Univision.com, the leading Spanish-language Internet destination in the U.S.

Univision is the 20th news organization to join the News Literacy Project. The others are The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Associated Press, NPR, CNN, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, ProPublica, Slate, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Chicago Sun-Times and WTOP radio.

More than 175 journalists have enrolled in NLP’s online directory. These journalist fellows have made presentations in numerous classrooms, worked with students on multimedia projects in extended-day and after-school programs, and helped produce NLP’s video reports. They also have been featured at special events.

NLP is working with 28 teachers and more than 1,700 students in 12 schools in New York City, Chicago, and Bethesda, Maryland, during the 2010-11 school year.

“In this new media age, the old, basic tenets of journalism are as important as ever,” said Mike McMearty, news director of WTOP. “If the News Literacy Project can instill the values of objective, fact-based journalism into the minds of our young students, then the staff at WTOP Radio can only stand and applaud the effort.”

WTOP (103.5 FM in the Washington area) joins The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Associated Press, NPR, CNN, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, ProPublica, Slate, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Bloomberg, Reuters and the Chicago Sun-Times as a participating news organization.

More than 175 journalists have enrolled in NLP’s online directory. These journalist fellows have made presentations in numerous classrooms, worked with students on multimedia projects in extended-day and after-school programs, and helped produce NLP’s video reports. They also have been featured at special events.

NLP is working with 28 teachers and more than 1,700 students in 12 schools in New York City, Chicago, and Bethesda, Maryland, during the 2010-11 school year.

The series of lectures, workshops and discussions was organized by the News Literacy Project and two of its volunteer journalists on the AP staff, assistant central editor Anna Johnson and central region editor David Scott.

After giving the students a tour of the newsroom, Johnson spoke about her experiences covering the 2009 presidential elections in Iran. She noted that the widespread media blackout while she was there gave her a renewed appreciation of the importance of the First Amendment in the United States.

“Imagine if one day you woke up and your cell phone couldn’t make calls; you could no longer look at news websites and other sites like Facebook on the Internet; you couldn’t text, you couldn’t email, you couldn’t IM. And television stations no longer worked,” said Johnson, recounting what she experienced the day after violence broke out in Tehran.

Students then discussed the power of information and the reasons why the Iranian government — along with those, more recently, in Egypt and Libya — went to such lengths to stop their people from communicating. Johnson closed by reminding students of the importance of credible information to American democracy.

In a second lesson focused on the importance of maintaining standards in a competitive breaking news environment, David Scott explained that even though the concept of reporting is simple (“Talk to people, write down what they say, and tell others”), the process of confirming the details is actually quite complex.

Using the recent shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as an example, Scott reviewed how the story broke and explained why the AP was not among the first news organizations to provide reports on Giffords’ condition.

“It’s all about the information that you get and about asking ‘Who are you? How do you know? Are you in a position to know?’ and ‘Are you sure?’” Scott said. “In this instance, we weren’t sure, so we waited.”

As a result, the AP was not among those news organizations that initially reported, incorrectly, that the Arizona Democrat had died.

After the morning sessions, Northside students and AP journalists chatted over lunch, where student photographers’ questions to multimedia editor Shawn Chen and staff photographer Charles Rex Arbogast about their work led to a spirited conversation about photo permissions and copyright.

In the afternoon, the students attended smaller breakout sessions that targeted specific journalism skills. A group of student section editors and reporters worked with AP editors Chris Sundheim and Tim Jacobs on organizing information and writing solid news reports with effective leads. Sundheim and Jacobs have been serving as editorial advisers to Northside’s student newspaper, The HoofBeat, and during the workshop were able to refer to stories written by the students.

A second breakout session was led by AP videojournalist Robert Ray, who talked about the importance of visual elements in news stories as well as the increasing importance of offering multimedia content.

The final component of the day was a discussion and Q&A session with veteran journalists Tom McCarthy, Hugh Dellios, Sharon Cohen and Michael Tarm. The panel, representing more than 75 years of collective journalism experience, fielded questions on topics as diverse as WikiLeaks, the challenge of breaking in to the business as a young reporter, and the ways the news industry is adjusting to changes brought by the digital age.

After the event, which also was supported by the McCormick Foundation, the response from the journalists in AP’s newsroom — even those who didn’t directly participate in the event — was as positive and animated as that of the students and teachers at Northside. Though the News Literacy Project typically focuses on bringing journalists into the classroom to teach, it turns out that bringing the classroom to journalists is valuable as well.

Whitman was the site of one of NLP’s first three pilot programs, and the project is now in its third year at the school. It will reach more than 350 students in AP government and 11th-grade English classes this school year.

The project also held a series of three public events featuring prominent journalists and other public figures at Whitman last year. More than 400 adults and students attended each of the Fall Forum presentations.

In its “Best of Bethesda” issue, the magazine cites Whitman for its academic record, drama and music programs, and sports teams. The short profile of Whitman includes the following:

“Extracurricular activities also enrich students by exposing them to other viewpoints. One example: The school’s participation in the News Literacy Project has brought in renowned journalists and other media figures for forums with students and parents. ‘To have something like that in our backyard is phenomenal,’ PTSA co-president Robin Rosenblum says.”

Whitney Allgood will be NLP’s first chief of staff. She will oversee day-to-day operations and help to enhance NLP’s curriculum materials, assessment processes and educational model.

Darragh Worland, a journalist and multimedia educator and consultant, is the project’s second New York program coordinator. She will work to expand NLP in New York City schools and with other partners and assist with video and other multimedia initiatives. She succeeds Melissa Nicolardi, NLP’s original New York coordinator, who is returning to school full-time to complete a master’s degree.

“We were fortunate to have a strong pool of applicants, which yielded two outstanding new employees,” said John Carroll, chairman of the NLP board. “I’m confident that Whitney, serving as deputy to the NLP founder, Alan Miller, will help us accelerate our expansion nationally. In New York, Darragh will provide the strong leadership we’ll need to build upon our already substantial presence.”

Whitney and Darragh join NLP president and CEO Alan C. Miller, curriculum director Bob Jervis, program coordinator Kate Ferrall and Chicago program manager Peter Adams. The project is beginning its fourth year.

Before joining NLP, Whitney was the director of assessment and accountability at the District of Columbia’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education, where she managed contracts to develop, produce, administer and score state tests for students in all D.C. public and charter schools. She also facilitated the adoption of national Common Core Standards and contributed to the District’s selection by the U.S. Department of Education as a Race to the Top grantee.

She previously spent two years as a fellow with the Strategic Data Project at Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research. The Gates Foundation-funded project seeks to improve student achievement by promoting evidence-based decision-making. As a fellow, Whitney worked in the Office of Accountability at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Schools.

Whitney began her career as an English and social studies teacher. A graduate of the University of Florida, she has a master’s degree in secondary English education from Rollins College and a doctorate in educational policy from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University.

Darragh worked for six years at NY1 News, a Time Warner-owned cable outlet that covers the city, and then as a senior producer for MSN Money, where she covered the financial crisis, shooting and producing video features for the web. She also freelanced for Fox News for three years as a web news editor and reporter.

Since 2007, Darragh has been an adjunct assistant professor at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, where she has worked on the Local East Village blog in partnership with The New York Times. In 2010, ABC News retained her to train its staff in digital video production as part of the organization’s move toward a “digital journalist” model.

She has also designed and taught online and in-class multimedia courses for Mediabistro to help print journalists and communications professionals around the world keep pace with the changing media landscape.

Darragh is a graduate of the University of Toronto, where she studied English and drama, and has a master’s degree in journalism from NYU.

Both positions are funded through a three-year grant from the Charles H. Revson Foundation in New York City.

McTighe and his colleague Grant Wiggins are the authors of the best-selling Understanding by Design, which seeks to improve student achievement by first planning a curriculum based on the goals of what students need to learn and then building activities to achieve that result.

Their framework also stipulates that “a primary goal of education should be the development and deepening of student understanding. Students reveal their understanding most effectively when they are provided with complex, authentic opportunities to explain, interpret, apply, shift perspective, empathize, and self-assess.”

McTighe has co-authored 10 books and is well known for his work with thinking skills, having coordinated statewide efforts in Maryland to develop instructional strategies, curriculum models and assessment procedures to improve the quality of student thinking. He has made presentations in 47 states and in 18 countries on five continents.

McTighe has served an informal adviser to the News Literacy Project for the past two years, and NLP’s Classroom Guide was developed using the principles of Understanding by Design. Robert Jervis, the former coordinator of social studies in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and an associate of McTighe’s, is NLP’s curriculum director.

In the article, students, a teacher and a parent discuss how NLP has sparked their interest in the news and connections to the wider world.

“I used to only watch the news when I would see violence and kids getting shot in my neighborhood,” said Alyssia Nunley, 12, a student at Marquette Elementary School. But she said that after participating in NLP for the past two years, “I started watching the news more often and talking about it with my family.”

As a result, she said, “I feel smarter and more associated with what’s going on around me.”

The project, now in its first full year in Chicago, is partnering with Marquette and six other middle schools and high schools and has launched a pilot with the Chicago Public Library’s YOUmedia program. It expects to reach more than 1,200 students this school year.

Jamiyha Williams, 11, a sixth-grader at Marquette, said the NLP unit had prompted her to be a more engaged consumer of the news.

“I now watch the news with my dad,” she said. “My dad reads the newspaper every day and I say, ‘Dad, let me read the newspaper when you’re done with it.’ I write down some interesting facts from it.”

NLP’s major supporter in Chicago is the McCormick Foundation; additional support is provided by the Chicago Tribune Foundation and LISC/Chicago. LISC is also a partner in three middle schools, including Marquette.

“There may be no more critical link to the next generation of readers than the News Literacy Project,” said John Barron, publisher of the Sun-Times.“It provides vital information about trusted sources … and about trusting sources,” he added. “Equally important, it fosters an invaluable person-to-person connection between media professionals and the coming wave of news consumers. We at the Chicago Sun-Times and Sun-Times Media are proud to partner with the NLP.”

More than 175 journalists have enrolled in the News Literacy Project’s online directory. These journalist fellows have made presentations in numerous classrooms, worked with students on multimedia projects in extended-day and after-school programs, and helped produce NLP’s video reports. They also have been featured at special events.

NLP is partnering with seven middle schools and high schools in Chicago this school year. It will work with at least 25 teachers and 1,700 students in 12 schools in Chicago, New York City and Bethesda, Maryland, in the 2010-11 school year.

The 4½-minute video also includes a rap and a song written and performed by high school students as their final projects for the NLP unit.  The featured students are from the Perspectives Charter School and The Reavis School in Chicago, Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School in Brooklyn, New York. Teachers from all four schools are included. “Wikipedia Rap,” which opens the video, and the song “It’s the First Amendment,” which closes it, were done by AP government students at Walt Whitman High School.

One of the country’s most prominent media and communications executives, Baer has extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. From 1994 to 1997 he was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, serving first as the president’s chief speechwriter and later as the White House’s director of strategic planning and communications.

“Don is the original renaissance man, with deep experience in journalism, media, marketing, government, communication and business strategy,” said NPR President Vivian Schiller, who chairs the News Literacy Project’s board. “He has a big creative brain and will no doubt contribute immeasurably to our efforts.”

At Burson-Marsteller, which he joined in 2007, Baer provides strategic counsel to a global client list that includes many corporate and not-for-profit entities. He is also chairman of the market research firm Penn Schoen Berland.

From 1998 to 2007, Baer was senior executive vice president for strategy and development at Discovery Communications, home of the Discovery Channel and media properties in more than 170 countries. He has also been a top editor at U.S. News and World Report and has worked as a media lawyer.

He is the fourth prominent addition to the News Literacy Project board since June, joining Leslie Hill, a former member of the Dow Jones board; Alison Bernstein, a former vice president at the Ford Foundation; and Gwen Ifill of Washington Week and the PBS NewsHour.

The piece, “Peer Pressure,” was produced by nine middle school students in the spring of 2010. Three seasoned radio journalists and NLP fellows — Natalie Moore and Lynette Kalsnes, both of WBEZ public radio, and Irene Tostado of Univision — worked with the students to help them plan and produce the six-minute radio report.

After hearing the piece, the NewsHour Extra editor asked to profile two of the students who worked on the project. Courtney Griffin and Deanna James both put together a reflection piece to accompany an embedded copy of the actual report. They did this in a very short amount of time, and on deadline — just like journalists.

Both Courtney and Deanna report an increased interest in journalism as a result of their participation in NLP and their work on this report. Courtney, now a freshman in high school, is interested in studying journalism in college, and Deanna, a seventh-grader, is looking forward to participating in the News Literacy Project again this spring.

In the 2010-11 school year, NLP will work with at least 25 teachers in at least 11 schools to reach nearly 2,000 students — significant increases in all three areas.

It is also introducing a thoroughly revised Classroom Guide, new lesson plans and improved primers for teachers, journalists and NLP coordinators. It has enhanced its assessment process for students and teachers as well.

In New York City, NLP’s new partners are the Frances Perkins Academy, a high school in Brooklyn, and the School for Global Leaders, a middle school on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. It also is working with the Facing History School on the West Side of Manhattan for the third year.

“One of the goals we have for our students is for them to become critical thinkers and informed viewers of media,” said Carry Chan, the founding principal of the School for Global Leaders. “It is our hope that the News Literacy Project will be influential in promoting awareness of media, how to effectively interpret different types of media and use various perspectives to form their own opinions.”

In Chicago, NLP has added two new schools to the four that are returning to the program for a second year. The additions are the Chicago Military Academy, a high school, and the Nightingale School, a middle school.

Located in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s near South Side, the Chicago Military Academy at Bronzeville (CMAB) was the first all-Junior ROTC public high school in the country when it opened in 1999. It uses the military model to prepare students for college (though most graduates do not participate in college ROTC programs or join the military).

The Nightingale School has been serving the Gage Park neighborhood since its opening in 1925. The News Literacy Project is working with eighth-grade language arts teacher Brandon Barr to help Nightingale students meet state standards in reading and writing for information.

Barr says he recognizes that “the world of news-gathering and -sharing is rapidly changing” due to the prominence of “blogs, wikis, [and] other forms of digital media that relay news in a personal format. Students need to be taught to navigate these uncharted waters with skills appropriate to the discipline and knowledge of traditional media practices. It is my hope that by partnering my classes with the News Literacy Project, my students will be fully equipped to adapt to the changing demands of the media world.”

In Bethesda, NLP begins its third year in Advanced Placement government classes at Walt Whitman High School. It is also expanding to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, working with students in English and social studies classes.

“NLP has given students the tools to distinguish fact from fiction, opinion from propaganda and how to use and produce credible information in our digital age. The instruction has helped bring an understanding of the First Amendment and an appreciation and value of a free media,” said Walt Whitman Principal Alan Goodwin. “Perhaps most importantly, NLP provides students with lifelong critical-thinking skills that help make our students become more engaged citizens and better-informed voters.”

The six-minute video provides an overview of NLP and takes viewers into the classroom with its teachers, journalist fellows and students. It also includes music for an original song written for NLP, “Check It Out.”

The video was produced by NLP staff in collaboration with volunteer participants from The New York Times, 60 Minutes, NPR and the Los Angeles Times. ABC News provided video footage.

“Check It Out” was written and performed by Bob Baker, a former Los Angeles Times editor and reporter. It is based on the journalism axiom “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

“Reuters is proud to be part of this initiative,” said Martin Howell, head of editorial learning for Reuters in the Americas.

“It is essential that new generations not only know about the importance of a thriving and diverse media industry but that they can also tell the difference between opinion-based and fact-based journalism,” he said. “Our journalists understand the importance of sharing their experience and tackling these critical questions with students and do so in many parts of the world.”

Reuters is part of Thomson Reuters, a leading source of news and information for businesses and professionals worldwide. Thomson Reuters employs 55,000 people and operates in over 100 countries

More than 160 journalists have enrolled in the News Literacy Project’s online directory. These journalist fellows have made presentations in numerous classrooms, worked with students on multimedia projects in extended-day and after-school programs and helped produce NLP’s video reports. They also have been featured at special events.

NLP will work with at least 25 teachers and 1,600 students in 10 middle schools and high schools in New York City, Chicago and Bethesda, Maryland, in the 2010-11 school year.

“We are delighted to welcome Gwen,’’ said NPR President Vivian Schiller, who chairs the project’s board. “Her outstanding work, renown and expertise as a journalist and her stellar personal qualities make her a superb addition. We look forward to Gwen’s role in directing the project as it grows and increases its impact in the future.”

Ifill has already participated in the News Literacy Project as a co-host of an event in the spring of 2009 and has spoken to classes at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, as a journalist fellow. She is a featured speaker at one of NLP’s three upcoming Fall Forum events in Bethesda.

“As the information industry shifts and expands, it is more essential than ever that we teach the next generations of news consumers the difference between the credible and the incredible,’’ Ifill said. “As journalists, we must save ourselves.”

Ifill is the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and a senior correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, both on PBS. The author of the 2009 best-seller The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, she has covered six presidential campaigns and moderated the vice presidential debates in 2004 and 2008.

She joined the two PBS news programs in 1999. She previously was chief congressional and political correspondent for NBC News, White House correspondent for The New York Times, and a local and national political reporter for The Washington Post.

In 2008, Washington Week was presented with a George Foster Peabody Award for its “reasonable, reliable contribution to the national discourse” during the 2008 presidential campaign, including a “road show” tour to eight cities around the country. The award citation called the show “the gold standard” of public affairs programming.

“At a time when there are fewer and fewer ‘gatekeepers’ and more and more sources of information, it is critical that students learn how to distinguish verified information from untested messages, opinion, advertising and propaganda,’’ said Sean McManus, president of CBS News.“I look forward to the participation of CBS News staff members, and to making our facilities available to students and other participants.”

CBS News joins The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, NPR, CNN, ABC News, NBC News, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, ProPublica, Slate and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting as a participating news organization. The CBS news magazine 60 Minutes is also a participant.

More than 150 journalists have enrolled in the News Literacy Project’s online directory. These journalist fellows have made presentations in numerous classrooms, worked with students on multimedia projects in extended-day and after-school programs, helped produce NLP’s video reports and been featured at special events.

The video focuses on seven exemplary projects that ninth- and 10th-grade students completed in the spring of 2009 as part of the News Literacy Project unit in their AP government classes. The students were assigned to create works that reflected what they had learned and what they wanted to share about news literacy. The projects featured in the video include videos, raps, an online game and a board game.

The seven-minute video was produced by NLP staff in collaboration with volunteer journalist fellows from The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and the cooperation of CNN. Former ABC News correspondent Lynn Sherr, a News Literacy Project fellow, did the narration. The original music was composed and performed by Whitman students.

“We are honored to have two such distinguished leaders in the fields of journalism, education and philanthropy join us,” said Vivian Schiller, the project’s chair and the president of NPR. “We look forward to their valuable contributions as the project builds on its strong start to become an established national program and a leader in the emerging field of news literacy.”

Bernstein is a vice president of the Ford Foundation, where she heads the Education, Creativity and Free Expression program. In this position, which she has held since 1996, she oversees the direction, conduct and evaluation of the Foundation’s work in the United States and internationally in the fields of education and scholarship, arts and culture, media, religion and sexuality.

She joined the Foundation in 1982 as a program officer and served as director of the Education and Culture program from 1992 to 1996. In August 2010 she will join Spelman College in Atlanta as a visiting professor, holding the William and Camille Cosby Endowed Professorship. She is the co-author of three books and numerous journal articles and is a trustee of Bates College.

The Ford Foundation has awarded two grants to the News Literacy Project.

Hill served on the Dow Jones & Co. board of directors from 1997 to 2007.  She is a member of the Bancroft family, which owned The Wall Street Journal prior to the sale of Dow Jones to Rupert Murdoch in 2007. With other family members, she is a founding partner of the Newseum.

She also serves as an advisory board member for a committee of the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit policy research center based in Santa Monica, Calif. A retired pilot for American Airlines, she is an active community volunteer in her home town of Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Bernstein and Hill join a board that has guided the project through its inception and rapid growth in its first 2½ years. In the 2009-10 school year, the News Literacy Project worked with 17 English, government and history teachers and 75 journalists to reach more than 1,200 students in seven schools in New York City, Chicago and Bethesda, Maryland.

“We believe in the future of fact-driven news in a world where people are bombarded with information,” said Mike Tackett, Bloomberg’s Washington bureau chief and managing editor. “This program is training a new generation of students to appreciate quality journalism and consume and create credible information.”

Bloomberg, which is headquartered in New York City and has bureaus worldwide, joins The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Associated Press, CNN, NPR, ABC News, NBC News, CBS’ 60 Minutes, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, ProPublica, Slate and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting as a participating news organization.  More than 150 journalists have enrolled in the News Literacy Project’s online directory.

In “News Literacy Project: Students Figure Out What News and Information to Trust,” NLP founder and executive director Alan C. Miller describes NLP and takes the reader into the classroom, focusing on journalists’ presentations and students’ responses.

“My experience has underscored the importance of the project’s mission,” Miller writes. “Without a demand for quality journalism (on any platform) from the next generation, what future will it have?”

In a sidebar, “Critical Thinking About Journalism: A High School Student’s View,” Whitman student Lucy Chen discusses her experience with NLP and its impact on her, including her decision to join the staff of the student newspaper.

“I grew more skeptical about the facts I read or hear, especially those I find online, where anyone can post information about anything,” writes Chen, who recently completed her sophomore year. “The guidelines presented in the unit helped me determine whether a source was accurate and reliable — and knowing this made me better at selecting information in an ever-widening sea of sources.”

The project reached about 625 students in social studies and English classes in the ninth, 10th and 12th grades at Whitman this year. It plans to embark on its third school year at the school in the fall. Whitman is one of seven participating schools in Bethesda, New York City and Chicago.

Nieman Reports — the nation’s oldest magazine devoted to a critical examination of journalism — is published quarterly by the Nieman Foundation.

Established in 1938, the foundation administers a mid-career fellowship program for journalists. More than 1,300 participants from 88 countries have received Nieman Fellowships and completed a year of study and exploration at Harvard.

“The Ford Foundation is pleased to support the work of the News Literacy Project to equip students with the critical skills to judge the integrity of the vast amounts of news and information on the Web. This work is fundamental to a functioning democracy, which needs active and informed citizens,” said Calvin Sims, the Ford Foundation’s program officer for news media and journalism.

“The digital divide is not only between those who have access to the Internet and those who don’t; it’s also between those citizens who have the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction on the Web and those who don’t,” he said.

NLP, which is completing its first full year in classrooms, is undertaking a campaign to match the Ford grant over the next year through individual, corporate and philanthropic gifts.

“This is a powerful vote of confidence in NLP and a terrific opportunity to raise new resources, diversify our funding and increase our reach in the year ahead,” said NPR President Vivian Schiller, who chairs the project’s board.

In just over two years, the News Literacy Project has quickly become a national force in promoting news literacy, providing middle school and high school students with the critical skills to sort fact from fiction in the digital age. NLP is reaching nearly 1,500 students in New York City, Bethesda, Maryland, and Chicago and transforming the way they consume and create information as they navigate a tsunami of sources of widely varying professionalism, accountability and reliability.

Lucy Chen, a sophomore at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, recently observed that NLP’s lessons “directly relate to my life, my decisions, and my observations of the world around me. I learned about the importance of accurate news, the implications of the First Amendment protection of free speech, the guidelines for finding trustworthy information, and the challenges of living in a digital world.”

NLP is seeking to raise additional funds to:

• Expand to new schools within its existing markets and add new markets.
• Extend its reach through online initiatives that engage students with journalists and each other, showcase student work and connect students nationwide through social media.
• Further refine its curriculum materials, training and assessment processes.
• Raise national awareness of the vital importance of news literacy.

If you would like to help us meet the Ford Foundation’s challenge, you can do so by making a secure gift online through our donate button on our homepage. You can also do so by sending your check — made out to The Poynter Institute/News Literacy Project — to our fiscal agent: The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 801 Third Street, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33701.

Thank you!

“With actual news, and items that look suspiciously like news, coming at us all day from a variety of outlets, how do we know what to trust?” asks the article, which appeared in almost 1.9 million papers distributed nationwide and on USA Today’s website.

“How do we distinguish credible information from raw information, misinformation and propaganda? And if all information is created equal, as the flattened informational landscape sometimes suggests, why would anyone seek out quality journalism — especially if we think it’s all driven by bias anyway?”

The column was written by Miller, who won the Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and Brent Cunningham, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review.

They note that the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan, released March 17, offers an important opportunity to increase the availability of news-literacy education to millions of students. The plan, authorized in the $787 billion stimulus package last year, calls for extending high-speed Internet access to the entire country.

Their column cites recent research that supports the need for news literacy education for students:

• A survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 70 percent of respondents feel overwhelmed by the amount of news and information from different sources, and 72 percent think most sources of news are biased.
• A study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that 8- to 18-year-olds spend an average of 7 hours, 38 minutes each day on entertainment media. It also found that “use of every type of media has increased over the past 10 years, with the exception of reading” — and reading, of course, includes newspapers and magazines.
• A 2007 study by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government found that many American teens and young adults are “ill-equipped to process the hard news stories they encounter.”

“The nascent news-literacy movement has begun to address this with two projects — the Center for News Literacy and a news literacy course at Long Island’s Stony Brook University and the News Literacy Project, which is in seven middle schools and high schools in New York City, Bethesda, Md., and Chicago — that are giving students the skills and the motivation to judge the reliability and credibility of news in all its forms,” the article says.

“Sustaining serious journalism in the digital age is a topic of considerable discussion and experimentation, most of which focuses on the product itself — the supply side of the information equation. But there will be no solution without demand from a citizenry that understands and values quality journalism.”

The Pulitzer Center is an innovative nonprofit leader in supporting the independent international journalism that U.S. media organizations are increasingly less able to undertake. It focuses on underreported topics, promoting high-quality international reporting and creating platforms that reach broad and diverse audiences. Reports it has funded have appeared on PBS NewsHour and in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor and The Huffington Post.

The Pulitzer Center will inform its participating journalists about the opportunity to volunteer with the News Literacy Project. NLP, in turn, is introducing the Global Gateway, the Center’s educational program, to its schools. This program provides the opportunity for students to engage with Center-supported reporting and journalists, both online and through school visits, and to report on the local implications of the global issues introduced.

“The Pulitzer Center is committed to producing quality journalism and fostering an appetite for global reporting among the next generation,” said Jon Sawyer, the center’s executive director. “We are pleased to support the News Literacy Project’s work to help students become more informed consumers of media.”

It is now active in extended-day programs as well as in the classroom.

After completing a sixth-grade pilot at Marquette Elementary School in December, NLP plans to also work with seventh- and eighth-grade students there this spring. The two new schools are the Calumet campus of Perspectives Charter Schools and the Reavis School in the Grand Boulevard community.

All three Chicago schools are working with LISC/Chicago, the News Literacy Project’s local partner. The Robert R. McCormick Foundation is the project’s major funder in Chicago; the Chicago Tribune Foundation has also provided financial support.

The expansion into seventh and eighth grades at Marquette marks NLP’s first interdisciplinary approach to its curriculum. English and social science teachers plan to collaborate on the unit, with each focusing on those elements of the curriculum that fit their respective subject matter. This approach will allow for greater flexibility for teachers to integrate NLP activities and journalist presentations with their subject matter.

At Perspectives Middle School in Calumet, NLP is teaming with teacher Eron Powell to introduce the curriculum to the entire eighth grade, and is also partnering with another faculty member, Traci Norman, to improve and expand the school’s newspaper, The Warrior News. ELEV8, an Atlantic Philanthropies-funded program that provides integrated services, including health care and after-school opportunities, is a partner in this initiative. ELEV8 site director Tenisha Jones describes the News Literacy Project as “an immense opportunity” that will give students real-world learning experiences and help them “gain confidence in their skills by working with journalists who are in the field daily.”

The Reavis extended-day program kicks off Feb. 17. NLP will partner with humanities teacher Miles Wieting on a two-month course on news literacy. After students learn the basic elements of journalism and use these concepts in activities, they will work with volunteer journalist fellows to create a final project that demonstrates engagement and understanding.

“I am so excited about the News Literacy Project being a part of the ELEV8 enrichment programs at Reavis,” said ELEV8 site director Syda Segovia-Taylor. She said the program would permit students to use their talents to “help the community move forward” while revealing “the reporters, journalists, and scribes of Reavis.” The “experience of sharing their voices and thoughts with others” will also open the door to journalism as “a potential career path,” she said.

Eleven months after launching our inaugural pilot, we look back upon a year of extraordinary progress. We now have programs under way in New York City, Bethesda, Maryland, and Chicago and plans for expansion in the months ahead.

In the past year, we:

• Reached more than 1,200 students in six middle schools and high schools and worked with 16 history, government and English teachers in three regions.
• Engaged more than 70 volunteer journalists in our classroom and after-school programs, video productions and special events.
• Demonstrated that our innovative model and original curriculum heightens students’ understanding of what to believe in a digital age. From sixth to 12th grade, from English to social studies, we’ve proven NLP’s ability to give students critical-thinking skills that help them consume and create credible information.
• Produced three videos that capture our first month in the classroom (“Check It Out”), exemplary student projects (“Students as Teachers”) and the work of students in our after-school apprenticeship program (“East Harlem IS.”) Each is available on our website and YouTube channel.

The coming year promises to be one of significant growth. We are poised to add teachers and schools in New York, Maryland and Chicago, expand to Los Angeles and use video and digital media to reach students coast to coast.

We want to thank NLP’s numerous participants, supporters and friends for your valuable contributions to making the past year so successful. Whether you have personally been involved with our program, or your organization is a participant, or you have generously provided funding or donated in-kind services, you have our deep appreciation.

We look forward to continuing to work with you in the year ahead.

Best wishes for the New Year!

Vivian Schiller, chair

Alan C. Miller, executive director

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., NPR President Vivian Schiller and ABC News President David Westin co-hosted the event. Schiller chairs the News Literacy Project’s board; O’Brien is a board member.

At the Time Warner reception (from left): NPR President Vivian Schiller, who chairs the News Literacy Project board; NLP board member Soledad O’Brien of CNN; and NLP founder Alan C. Miller.

The program highlighted NLP’s work at the Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School, a middle school in Brooklyn, and the Facing History School, a high school in Manhattan – two of the three schools (the third is in Bethesda, Maryland) where the curriculum was implemented in the spring of 2009. NLP is continuing to work in those three schools and has expanded to two additional schools in Maryland and Chicago.

It is also involved with an after-school program in East Harlem.

The News Literacy Project creates partnerships between teachers and journalists in middle schools and high schools to give students the critical-thinking skills to determine what information is credible amid the myriad sources available to them in today’s digital world. It also aims to spark students’ interest in news that has a public purpose.

“They are learning critical-thinking skills that will make them better students today and better-informed citizens tomorrow,” Alan C. Miller, NLP’s founder and executive director, told more than 100 guests at the Time Warner Center.

NLP, he said, will reach well over 1,000 students in three schools in New York, two schools in Maryland and several schools in Chicago in the 2009-10 school year. It has already partnered with 15 English, history and government teachers across seven grade levels and involved more than 50 journalists in its classroom and after-school programs and multimedia productions. Nearly 150 journalists have enrolled in its online directory.

Kristina Wylie, a teacher at the Facing History School, and students who have taken the NLP unit at FHS and Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School discuss their experiences.

Guests heard about NLP’s value and impact firsthand from four students and a teacher who participated in the pilot programs: Kristina Wylie, an English teacher at Facing History; Anabel Rivas, a Facing History graduate who participated in the unit last spring, and Jonathan Soto, Chanel Spring and Jessenia Caraballo, eighth-grade students from Williamsburg who are doing the project for the second year.

The guests also viewed NLP’s initial video, “Check It Out.”

Among those attending the event were Katharine Weymouth, publisher of The Washington Post; Laura Walker, president and CEO of WNYC; Janet Robinson, president and CEO of the New York Times Co; Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times; Alexandra Wallace, vice president of NBC News; and Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor of The Associated Press.

Also present were Alison Bernstein, vice president of the Ford Foundation; Richard Edelman, president of Edelman public relations company; and actor Richard Thomas. Karen Dunlap, president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the News Literacy Project’s partner and fiscal agent, was there as well.

With all those bold-face names in attendance, it’s only fitting that the event was the subject of an item in a New York gossip column, Mediabistro.com’s FishbowlNY!

In an innovative effort to help them sort fact from fiction in the digital age, the News Literacy Project is teaming with one of LISC/Chicago’s five Elev8 schools to launch its Chicago pilot project with an event featuring Clarence Page, the Pulitzer-Prize winning Chicago Tribune columnist.

Clarence Page talks with Marquette students at the kickoff event.

The program brings professional journalists into middle school and high school classrooms, where they give students the tools to appreciate the value of quality news coverage and to encourage them to consume and create credible information across all media.

Students learn how to distinguish verified information from unfiltered messages, opinion, advertising and propaganda — whether they are using search engines to find websites on a particular topic, assessing a viral e-mail, watching television news or reading a newspaper.

“The explosion in the number of information sources makes it harder for people to distinguish among journalists, information spinners and citizen voices,” said David Hiller, president and CEO of the McCormick Foundation, NLP’s major funder in Chicago.

“It is important that students learn how to be savvy consumers of news, so they become more informed decision makers and active participants in our democratic society.”

The Chicago Tribune Foundation is also providing financial support.

The News Literacy Project pilot is being launched at Marquette Elementary School in Southwest Chicago. Teacher Courtney Rogers is introducing NLP’s original curriculum in five sixth-grade classes this month. Journalists will make their initial presentations in these classes in late October.

NLP is partnering with the Chicago office of LISC, a national not-for-profit organization that provides capital and other resources to support the comprehensive development of healthy, stable neighborhoods. LISC/Chicago is considered a national model.

Marquette is one of five inner-city middle schools that LISC is engaged with through the Elev8 program, which brings integrated services, including health care and after-school opportunities, to middle school students.

“The news literacy program must become an essential part of our schools’ curriculum in this age of the knowledge economy,’’ said Andrew J. Mooney, executive director of LISC/Chicago. “We’re delighted to be able to bring it to the communities LISC supports in Chicago.”

NLP completed its initial pilots in middle schools and high schools in New York City and Bethesda, Maryland, last spring and is working in four schools there this fall.

A dozen major news organizations — including The New York Times, NBC News, CNN, NPR, The Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune — have enlisted as participants. Reporters, editors, producers and correspondents from these organizations are among more than 125 prominent journalists, including winners of print and broadcast journalism’s most prestigious awards, who have volunteered to serve as fellows.

The journalists help give students the tools to appreciate the value of quality news coverage. Students learn how to distinguish verified information from unfiltered messages, opinion, advertising and propaganda — whether they are using search engines to find websites on a particular topic, assessing a viral e-mail, watching television news or reading a newspaper.

NLP is forging partnerships between active and retired journalists and social studies, government and English teachers. It is focusing on the importance of news to young people, the role of the First Amendment and a free media in a democracy and the tools needed to discern reliable information amid the myriad sources available today.

It is spearheaded by Alan C. Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter with the Los Angeles Times. The board is chaired by Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of NPR. Former Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll is vice chairman. The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is the project’s partner and nonprofit fiscal agent.

“The News Literacy Project is designed makes sure that the next generation of Americans can discern all the information coming at them, so that they can become knowledgeable and active citizens,” Schiller said. “We’re thrilled to expand our project to the students of Chicago”

Four major national journalism organizations have endorsed NLP: the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Clarence Page is a syndicated columnist and a member of the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board. His column won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1989. During his almost three decades at the Tribune he covered a variety of beats, including police, religion and neighborhood news. He also served as a foreign correspondent and worked as an assistant city editor and an investigative reporter. His column is syndicated in about 150 papers. He has appeared on The McLaughlin Group, The Chris Matthews Show, National Public Radio and PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Students at Marquette Elementary School.

A multicultural neighborhood school on Chicago’s Southwest side, Marquette is an International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme school, providing a rigorous interdisciplinary approach to learning that encourages critical thinking. It has joined with the Southwest Organizing Project in one of five school-community partnerships participating in Elev8, which is funded by Atlantic Philanthropies.

“Our students are excited to be the first participants in Chicago in the News Literacy Project,” Marquette Principal Paul O’Toole said. “They are looking forward to meeting Clarence Page and hearing firsthand from him about his past experience in news media and his advice for the future.”

The McCormick Foundation is a nonprofit organization committed to strengthening our free, democratic society by investing in children, communities and country. Through its grant-making programs, Cantigny Park and Golf, museums, and civic outreach program, the Foundation helps build a more active and engaged citizenry. It was established as a charitable trust in 1955 upon the death of Col. Robert R. McCormick, the longtime editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune. The McCormick Foundation is one of the nation’s largest charities, with more than $1 billion in assets.

Click here to read the McCormick Foundation’s blog item about the event.

Click here to read the LISC/Chicago article about the event.

It does so as the national program plans to launch a pilot project this fall in Chicago.

“The Chicago Tribune is pleased to partner with the News Literacy Project and looks forward to helping the students and teachers at the participating schools,’’ said Gerould W. Kern, editor of the Tribune. “The mission of the News Literacy Project complements the aims of our newsroom and the volunteer work already being done by many on our staff.”

NLP has received grants from the McCormick Foundation and the Tribune Foundation to expand to Chicago this fall. It is partnering there with LISC/Chicago, which is part of a national organization that provides capital and other resources to support the comprehensive development of healthy, stable neighborhoods.

The Chicago pilot will be based at Marquette Elementary School, one of five public middle schools in which LISC is working to create new opportunities for students. Marquette, located on Chicago’s southwest side, prides itself on an interdisciplinary approach to learning that encourages critical thinking. It is an International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme school as well.

“We are very excited to be a participant in the News Literacy Project,’’ said Marquette Principal Paul O’Toole. “Today’s students need to be able to not only discern fact from fiction, but also news from blogs and facts from opinion. Students are savvy about how to access today’s technological media, but not savvy enough to interpret the plethora of information that these media convey.”

In doing so, he signed a proclamation that extols the fundamental objectives shared by the News Literacy Project and other news literacy efforts nationwide.

“An informed and educated citizenry is essential to the functioning of our modern democratic society,” the president said in the proclamation, dated Oct. 1. “I encourage educational and community institutions across the country to help Americans find and evaluate the information they seek, in all its forms.”

He said that “we now live in a world where anyone can publish an opinion or perspective, whether true or not, and have that opinion amplified within the information marketplace.”

At same time, he added, “Americans have unprecedented access to the diverse and independent sources of information” to help them “separate truth from fiction, signal from noise.”

Educational institutions “must be aware of — and adjust to — these new realities,” he said, noting that such critical thinking skills are especially important for students.

“In addition to the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, it is equally important that our students are given the tools required to take advantage of the information available to them,” he said. “The ability to seek, find, and decipher information can be applied to countless life decisions, whether financial, medical, educational or technical.”

National Information Literacy Awareness Month is intended to highlight “the need for all Americans to be adept in the skills necessary to effectively navigate the Information Age,” he said.