If you teach civics or social studies, encourage your students to identify their elected officials — local, state and national — and to use social media to follow what those officials are doing. This connectedness presents several unique educational opportunities.

Check out ProPublica’s Represent, where users can easily find the names of their senators and House members and get in-depth information about a wide range of political and social issues. Or look at Common Cause, a national watchdog organization that also has local offices in 35 of the 50 states. Another way to stay informed is to set up news alerts on Google News and other news aggregators.

Ask your students to track the social or political issues that are most important to them. Which issues get more attention from elected officials? Are the officials asking for — and responding to — their constituents’ thoughts and opinions, or are their accounts more “one-way”? Do they share verified information? Do they ever share inaccurate information — and if they do, do they acknowledge it if it’s pointed out?

Or consider this: If the official disagrees with a post or tweet, does he or she delete the post or block the person? In June 2017, ProPublica described how elected officials and government agencies — from President Donald Trump to city police departments in Seattle and Honolulu — were blocking their critics on Twitter. A month later a group of Twitter users sued Trump for blocking them. ProPublica also filed a public records request with 22 federal agencies and all 50 state governors, seeking the names of people they had blocked on social media; the result, published in December 2017, was a list of about 1,300 people. This raises the question: Does deleting comments or blocking users violate the First Amendment’s protection of free speech?

Finally, have any of your elected officials tweeted something and then deleted it? Politwoops (run by ProPublica) tracks the “Tweets They Didn’t Want You to See” — both by people currently in office and by candidates for office. Use the site’s search function to find your officials and see whether they deleted any tweets; if they did, try to determine the importance of the deleted message.

Identifying your elected officials and following them on social media are the first steps to becoming informed about who represents you. The next step is learning how to engage with these officials in a responsible way.

Information is a fundamental element of democracy. It is the basis for our understanding of the world around us: how we analyze social issues, assess challenges, determine political priorities, form opinions and evaluate our options.

It is, in short, the raw material we use to make decisions and take action.

Civic engagement in the 21st century requires us to be knowledgeable — and critical — consumers of news and other information in what is, by many magnitudes, the largest and most complex information landscape in human history. The skills needed to become a “knowledgeable — and critical — consumer” are also the foundational skills for civic engagement in the digital age.

In future posts, I’ll be sharing ideas and resources to cultivate the connections between news literacy and civic engagement. As noted in a 2016 Pew Research Center study, civic engagement is closely tied to local news habits. People who read, watch and value local news tend to vote regularly in local elections and have stronger connections to their communities — two key measures of the civic engagement that we want to encourage in students.

According to The 2006 Civic and Political Health of the Nation — a report by Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) — civic engagement can be defined by three types of activities:

The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) issued a statement earlier this evening, and here is our response. See our previous post for further background.

In contrast to the UNAOC statement, here is what happened:

• The event was planned for four months without any suggestion of a conflict. In multiple conversations on Tuesday, in which he asked us to edit or withhold our videos, Jordi Torrent, the project manager for media and information literacy at UNAOC, never mentioned a conflict with another event, a decline in registrations for the event or any panelists withdrawing. On April 30, he told me that 160 people had registered for the event, over the capacity for the room and exceeding his goal of 150 registrations.
• NLP submitted the videos (total length of 4½ minutes) in advance on Monday, as requested. At no time were we told that they needed prior approval or might be censored. We would not have agreed to such terms.
• In two conversations on Tuesday, Torrent said that UNAOC might need to cancel the event if NLP did not agree to edit a video initially to remove the reference to Turkey and, subsequently, to not show any videos. Only on Wednesday morning, after NLP refused to accept these conditions, did he say that, following a long discussion with his supervisors, UNAOC had decided to postpone the event. “The official reason,” he said, “is because we are competing with an event on press freedom that the Secretary General is organizing at the same hour.” I told him that we would need to state the real reason for this action, and he said he understood and apologized.
• In our initial conversation on Tuesday, Torrent told me that UNAOC had already edited the introductory video — without NLP’s permission — to remove the reference to one country. He asked me to agree to this “as a favor” and said he was “embarrassed” to do so.
• Simultaneously, UNAOC sent NLP the edited video with an eight-second reference to journalists arrested in Turkey seamlessly deleted but leaving mention of cases of restrictions on press freedoms in Mexico and Russia. Torrent asked me to view this during this conversation and said that this video — and two others featuring journalists from Russia and Pakistan discussing restrictions on press freedom in their countries — would be acceptable to show if we agreed to this single edit.
• In a subsequent conversation, he explained Turkey’s role as one of two countries (along with Spain) that had proposed the creation of UNAOC in 2005. He said the situation reflected “a deeper political issue that we need to see how to handle.” If the video was shown unedited, he said, “I know it will cause problems for us … I am enraged about it and I don’t feel good about it. I am stuck with it for now.”
• After conferring with his supervisors, Torrent asked NLP to refrain from showing any videos. “We are not the agency in the U.N. to discuss these issues,” he said. “To single out countries puts us outside of our mandate.” If NLP was willing to proceed with the panel, he said, “the conversation could still be open.” He also said, “It will be great if we find a solution.”
• When I told Torrent that we would not delete the reference to Turkey, he ended the conversation this way: “I fully understand and I support you.” He said he would inform his supervisors and let them make the decision. “Whatever will be, will be,” he said. “I can tell them I tried.”
• Torrent never expressed a concern about the accuracy or quality of the opening video. “It’s a beautiful video,” he said. “It’s a great video. It’s very nicely done.”
• No members of the panel I was moderating canceled before the event. They included Brian Stelter, CNN’s senior media correspondent and host of Reliable Sources, a weekly show on media issues; Farnaz Fassihi, senior writer at The Wall Street Journal; Patrick Butler, vice president of programs at the International Center for Journalists; Maria Salazar-Ferro, emergencies director at the Committee to Protect Journalists; and Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck, director of Lie Detectors, a European educational program. Nor was I told that any members of the second panel, to be moderated by Torrent, were unable to attend.
• We have no intention of participating in a future event on world press freedoms with UNAOC.

Update May 3, 12:00 p.m.: The presentation we had planned to make at the UNAOC event is now at the end of this blog post.

Update May 3, 9:45 a.m: The second paragraph was revised to clarify that the remarks on restrictions in press freedom in certain countries were written by NLP and are not the opinion of the lesson host.

The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) indefinitely postponed an event at the U.N. tomorrow to observe World Press Freedom Day after the News Literacy Project (NLP) refused UNAOC’s request to remove references in our presentation to several countries where press freedom is limited.

The references are in videos from a new lesson on international press freedoms in our Checkology® virtual classroom, which I was planning to introduce at the event. The videos include remarks, written for the lesson by NLP and presented by lesson host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson of NPR, about severe restrictions on press freedom in Turkey, Mexico and Egypt and comments by Russian and Pakistani journalists describing the challenges they face.

NLP submitted the presentation to UNAOC on Monday so it would be ready to be shared with the audience. A UNAOC official then asked us to delete the reference to Turkey — which, along with Spain, had proposed the creation of UNAOC in 2005 — and the official later insisted that NLP not share any of the video clips.

I could not permit this censorship of our presentation due to the stated concern that it would offend one or more countries engaged in repression and violence against journalists. We at NLP find UNAOC’s decision particularly ironic because the event was to celebrate World Press Freedom Day. We had not discussed prior review of our presentation with UNAOC and would not have agreed to participate if it had been asked.

I was to serve as moderator of a panel focusing on “the role of press freedom internationally” and highlighting “NLP’s new lesson on world press freedoms,” according to UNAOC’s announcement of the event. Participants were to include Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s Reliable Sources; Farnaz Fassihi, senior writer at The Wall Street Journal; and staffers from the International Center for Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Lie Detectors, an educational program.

In an email today, UNAOC told the panelists and more than 150 registered attendees that the long-planned event was being postponed “until future notice” because of another event at the U.N. scheduled at the same time.

NLP’s partnership with the Pulitzer Prizes continued to grow in impressive fashion yesterday as NLP students asked most of the questions at a news conference that followed the announcement of this year's Pulitzer Prize winners.

Students at The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria — all of whom have used NLP’s Checkology virtual classroom — attended the announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia University on April 16. Afterward, they met with Dana Canedy (back row, in red), the Pulitzer Prizes’ administrator.

More than a dozen NLP students from several New York City public schools attended the event at Columbia University. Four students who have completed lessons in NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom were among those who asked questions of Pulitzer Prize Administrator Dana Canedy.

Tenzin Choezin, a ninth-grader at The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria, was the first questioner: “What advice do you have for aspiring female journalists?”

“I hope you are an aspiring young journalist, because that was a great question and we can use people like you,” said Canedy, who spent more than two decades as a reporter and editor at The New York Times and was the lead journalist for a Times series that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2001. “Whether it’s journalism or any other profession, find something that you’re impassioned about and stick to it. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do it.”

The students’ invitation to attend the Pulitzer Prizes announcement was part of a deepening partnership that began last week when Canedy participated in a Virtual Visit with Premium subscribers to NLP’s Checkology virtual classroom. Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at The Washington Post and the chair of the Pulitzer board, and Alan C. Miller, the founder and CEO of NLP and a Pulitzer winner with the Los Angeles Times, held a second Virtual Visit yesterday before this year’s winners were announced.

A third Virtual Visit is planned for May 30, when the prizes will be awarded during a luncheon at Columbia’s Low Library. As part of the partnership, NLP will also receive access to the Pulitzer Prizes’ digital archive when it is complete and plans to use it to supplement lessons in the virtual classroom.

Sonam Lhamo, another ninth-grader at The Young Women’s Leadership School, asked the final question yesterday: “How does it feel to be the first woman and person of color to serve as the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes?”

“I am so humbled and blessed and honored,” Canedy responded, adding: “Seeing you young ladies and some of the students here — if in years ahead you guys think, ‘You know what? I can do that too,’ then I’m proud of being a part of having you here today.”

Our partnership with the Pulitzer Prizes got off to a fine start on April 9 when Dana Canedy, the first woman and first person of color to serve as the prizes’ administrator, joined NLP’s Damaso Reyes for a Virtual Visit with Premium subscribers to our checkology® virtual classroom.

Another Virtual Visit is scheduled for Monday, April 16 (the day of the announcement of the 2018 prizes), with two Pulitzer Prize winners: Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, chair of the Pulitzer Prize board and the winner of the 2009 prize for commentary, and NLP founder and CEO Alan Miller, who won the 2003 national reporting prize as an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times. That same day, a group of NLP students will attend the announcement in person and have the opportunity to ask questions at the post-announcement press conference.

Finally, a Virtual Visit in May will feature several of this year’s prize winners, who will be in New York City for the annual Pulitzer luncheon at Columbia University.

“The work NLP is doing to help young people understand the value of news and high-quality information mirrors the Pulitzer Prizes’ dedication to highlighting the best of American journalism,” said Canedy, who spent more than two decades as a reporter and editor at The New York Times and was a lead journalist on the series “How Race Is Lived in America,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2001.

In addition, NLP is gaining access to the newly digitized Pulitzer Prize archives and will feature this prize-winning journalism as supplemental lessons in the checkology® virtual classroom. The two organizations will also work closely over the next year to offer in-person opportunities to students in the New York City area, as well as virtual opportunities to NLP’s global network of educators and students using the checkology® virtual classroom.

“NLP is excited to be working so closely with the Pulitzer Prizes and to give access to their archive — and to these unique opportunities — to the students who participate in our program,” Miller said.

Peter Kadzik, a partner in the Washington office of Venable LLP, is the newest member of the News Literacy Project board.

Kadzik (center) is joined by NLP’s Alan Miller and fellow board member Leslie Hill (right) at a reception for NLP supporters in February.

Kadzik’s association with NLP began with its creation in 2008, when he worked on its application for tax-exempt status as a nonprofit organization. He also was the founding chair of NLP’s D.C. advisory committee before resigning in 2013 to join the U.S. Department of Justice as principal deputy assistant attorney general for legislative affairs. From June 2014 to January 2017 he served as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legislative Affairs, where he managed the department’s relationships with Congress and advocated for its interests on Capitol Hill, including the confirmations of Loretta Lynch as U.S. attorney general, Sally Yates as deputy attorney general and James Comey as director of the FBI. Upon leaving government service, he rejoined the D.C. advisory committee.

“Now more than ever, it’s critical for students to understand how to evaluate the credibility of what they read online and in traditional media outlets — and question whether it is legitimate,” Kadzik said. “NLP provides students with the necessary tools to make these judgments. I was pleased to assist in the formation of NLP 10 years ago, and now I am proud to serve on its board and further its mission.”

Kadzik is a partner in Venable’s government division, focusing on the firm’s congressional investigations practice and working closely with the investigations and white collar defense, litigation and regulatory practices. Before joining the Justice Department, he spent more than 30 years as a partner at Dickstein Shapiro LLP, where, among other things, he advised nonprofit organizations and trade associations on a variety of legal and policy matters.

“Peter brings tremendous legal experience and knowledge to the board, as well as a broad network of contacts and a deep commitment to our mission,” said Gregory C. McCaffery, the CEO and president of Bloomberg BNA and the chair of the NLP board. “We very much appreciate all that he has already done for NLP and look forward to working closely with him in the future.”

Many of you know Flipboard as “the place to find the stories for your day, bringing together your favorite news sources with social content, to give a deep view into everything from political issues to technology trends to travel inspiration.”

/ Shutterstock.com

At the News Literacy Project, we know Flipboard as a strong supporter of our mission to make news literacy an integral part of the American educational experience.

So we’re extremely proud — and humbled — to announce that Flipboard, a privately held company, has donated 0.1 percent of its stock to the News Literacy Project.

“We appreciate this extremely generous gift, which will help us expand our reach and impact in the future,” said Alan C. Miller, NLP’s founder and CEO. “The donation is particularly meaningful given what Mike and Marci McCue have accomplished with Flipboard, including its commitment to sharing quality journalism and its use of humans to curate stories.”

This is the first time Flipboard has donated stock to a nonprofit, said Marci McCue, the company’s chief marketing officer. It did so, she added, because it’s important to understand not just the news, but the radical changes in the way news is now delivered.

“Having an organization like NLP help teachers stay on top of the shifting landscape in a neutral, factual way is a huge service to educators and students,” said Marci, who is also a founding member of our national advisory council.

Thank you, Flipboard!

Alisyn Camerota of CNN, Pierre Thomas of ABC News and Marci McCue, an executive at Flipboard, are joining the News Literacy Project as the inaugural members of NLP’s national advisory council.

Alisyn Camerota, the co-host of CNN’s “New Day,” visits the Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria in Queens, N.Y., to deliver a news literacy lesson for NLP. Photo by Damaso Reyes

The council will offer guidance on outreach and advocacy to NLP staff and board members and will support NLP financially and through introductions and appearances at events. Members will serve an initial term of four years.

Camerota is the co-host of CNN’s morning program, New Day. She joined CNN in 2014 after 16 years at Fox News Channel, where she was co-host of America’s News Headquarters, a co-anchor of Fox & Friends Weekend and a contributor to the Fox & Friends weekday franchise. As an NLP volunteer journalist fellow, she spoke to students at The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria in Queens, New York, in December 2017 and wrote about her experience for CNN.com.

“At a time when Americans are increasingly confused about which news outlets to trust, I am proud to be part of the News Literacy Project’s effort to empower students to differentiate between fact and fiction,” she said about her role on the national advisory council. “Not all news is created equal. The News Literacy Project is here to remind students of the vital role journalism, free speech and the First Amendment play in their lives.”

Thomas is the senior Justice Department correspondent at ABC News, where his work covering law enforcement, terrorism and homeland security has received some of broadcast journalism’s highest honors, including Emmy, Peabody and Alfred I. duPont–Columbia awards. Before joining ABC in 2000, he was a Justice Department correspondent for CNN and a reporter at The Washington Post. He was one of NLP’s earliest volunteer journalist fellows, participating in NLP’s classroom lessons in Washington, D.C., area schools and serving on NLP’s D.C. advisory committee.

More recently, Thomas interviewed student users of the Checkology® virtual classroom at an NLP reception in October 2017. A month later, he spoke about covering race and justice in America on behalf of NLP at the annual conference of the National Council for the Social Studies in San Francisco. “An informed citizenship is integral to democracy,” he told the educators, adding that NLP helps students to “master core skills about news literacy so they can make decisions about what to share, believe and act on.”

McCue is the chief marketing officer at Flipboard, a news and social media aggregator, where she supervises the development of all outbound communications, editorial curation, social media, public relations, product messaging and partner marketing, and consumer support. Before joining Flipboard, which her husband, Mike McCue, co-founded, in 2010, she held communications positions at Tellme Networks, Excite@Home and Adaptec.

“The News Literacy Project teaches fundamental civic values that need to be more deeply integrated into our educational curriculum,” she said. “I believe deeply in this mission and, as part of the NLP team, hope to encourage others to engage in the work ahead — ensuring that young people across the country understand what real news is and how essential it is to the life we enjoy in our democracy.” She and her husband recently supported NLP with a personal gift of $50,000.

Alan C. Miller, NLP’s founder and CEO, said he was looking forward to working with the council as NLP expands its programs across the United States and around the world. “The national advisory council will help us elevate our profile and command new resources at this crucial moment,” he said. “We’re honored to have Alisyn, Marci and Pierre as our initial members.”

Today is the 10th anniversary of the official launch of the News Literacy Project. We’ve come a long way in our first decade. Even more striking is how much the world around us has changed.

In April 2016, prior to the platform’s formal release, seniors in a journalism class at Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in New York City were among the first to try NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom.

I had left my 21-year career at the Los Angeles Times with the idea of connecting journalists and educators to teach middle school and high school students how to know what to believe in the digital age. Little did I know that I would become recognized as a founder of the field of news literacy — long before the advent of concerns about “fake news,” “alternative facts” and Russian disinformation.

I devoted considerable energy in those early years to explaining to anyone who would listen what news literacy was, to selling funders of journalism and education programs on why news literacy mattered, and to convincing often-stretched teachers that news literacy deserved a coveted place in their classrooms.

The landscape changed dramatically during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, when it became evident that pervasive misinformation — combined with the growing challenge of sorting fact from fiction — ­was a threat to the health of our nation’s democracy and to the safety of its citizens.

As one NLP board member asked me around that time: “So, how does it feel to be an overnight sensation after nine years of hard work?”

Clearly, the newfound limelight is helpful to our mission — but we have no time to bask in it. Given the formidable task at hand, we at NLP strongly feel “the fierce urgency of now.”

Fortunately, our early progress positioned us well to respond to the suddenly heightened demand for our services.

We used our in-person classroom and after-school programs as a sturdy foundation upon which to build our innovative Checkology® virtual classroom. Since the platform’s launch in May 2016, more than 11,000 educators in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories and 83 other countries have registered to use it — making NLP the leading provider of news literacy education in the United States.

We’re now enlisting marketing partners to help us greatly extend its reach. We’re working on Checkology® 2.0, an expanded and even more engaging version of the platform that will include an international press freedoms lesson and our first Spanish-language lesson. We also have plans for a mobile app — a creative game that complements the virtual classroom.

We’re making an impact on other fronts as well. Our weekly newsletter, The Sift, turns the latest viral rumors, hoaxes, conspiracy theories and ethical issues into teachable moments for nearly 9,000 educators. Our NewsLitCamps bring scores of teachers into a newsroom for a day of stimulating professional development with our staff and the news organization’s journalists. Our new website, coming this spring, will offer tools and resources for the general public as well as for educators.

This progress has been made possible by our many partners: dynamic teachers and school administrators nationwide; 33 participating news organizations and more than 400 volunteer journalist fellows who have delivered more than 750 lessons in person and virtually; our distinguished and devoted board and advisory committees; and, of course, the foundation, corporate and individual donors who have supported us so generously.

As we embark on our second decade, we have much work to do. With more than 26 million students in U.S. middle schools and high schools, we have a long way to go to achieve our aspiration of seeing news literacy embedded in the American educational experience.

We’re extremely grateful to everyone who has already joined us on this journey, and we offer a heartfelt welcome to future participants, partners and patrons. Our cause is worthy and our challenge great. Together, we look forward to the road ahead.

We are thrilled to announce that Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, has donated $250,000 to the News Literacy Project.

As news literacy has gained such an important seat at the table of civic discourse, we at NLP have seen a massive amount of new interest in our programs. Jeff’s generous gift underscores this in a major way and will help us expand the fight for facts.

His support comes at a moment of enormous need for our programs, and it gives us a great opportunity to reach far more teachers and students with our Checkology® virtual classroom, which provides students the tools to become news-literate.

As a former reporter, I’ve greatly admired Jeff’s commitment to journalism and his stewardship of the Post. All of this makes his backing particularly meaningful. We welcome Jeff to our family of supporters with great gratitude.

People who are knowledgeable about the news media are less likely to believe conspiracy theories.

That’s even when those theories appear to confirm an individual’s political belief, a new study shows.

“The greater one’s knowledge about the news media — from the kinds of news covered, to the commercial context in which news is produced, to the effects on public opinion news can have — the less likely one will fall prey to conspiracy theories,” the authors, all professors of journalism or communication at U.S. universities, write in the December 2017 issue of the academic journal Communication and the Public.

The findings are important because they indicate that action can be taken to prevent the spread of conspiracy theories. News literacy, for example, can be taught in schools.

But, then, we’ve known for several years that effective news literacy lessons can make a difference.

One way is our Checkology® virtual classroom.

In this video, three students — Conor McCormick, Uriel Reyes Morales and Sihin Yibrah — tell Pierre Thomas of ABC News how our lessons opened their eyes to the world of false news and misinformation online. The students — all seniors at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia — spoke candidly about their news and information habits during a News Literacy Project reception in Washington in October.

Yibrah relied on retweets and shares from her friends to let her know about the news — but she didn’t dig any deeper. Reyes simply believed much of what he saw on his phone, and might check with friends only if something looked dodgy. McCormick was more cynical: “I wouldn’t really believe much of anything I saw,” he said.

After they had completed the lessons in the Checkology® virtual classroom, though, their attitudes changed.

Yibrah, for example, described her current news habits, which include CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post. And if she sees a questionable post on her social media feeds, she added, “I am quick to fact-check it.”

Of the many ideas that have gone viral on social media, Giving Tuesday is a standout as a positive force for good.

 In the six years since New York City’s 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation joined forces with a vision of a day focused on charitable contributions and social awareness, Giving Tuesday has enabled individuals to demonstrate their commitment — through donations of money and time — to nonprofits that provide solutions to our collective societal challenges.

On this day, people are taking a break from internet shopping and surfing to join a worldwide philanthropic movement — one that supports organizations and causes that reflect their values and address their concerns.

Thanks to our supporters, we at the News Literacy Project are able to help students in middle school and high school use the power of social media to positive ends by providing them with tools, tips and resources to separate fact from falsehoods in everything they read, watch and hear. Through our innovative Checkology® virtual classroom, available anywhere there is an internet connection, they learn to apply the standards of quality journalism to discern credible, verifiable information from rumors, spin, propaganda and outrightlies.

Our goal is to provide students (and, increasingly, adults) with the skills to be smart, active consumers of news and information today and empowered, engaged participants in our nation’s civic life in the future.

While teens may be technologically savvy, many lack the critical-thinking skills needed to navigate today’s challenging information and news ecosystem. The potential for misinformation has never been greater, and the concept of news literacy is not widely taught in the nation’s classrooms.

More than 9,500 educators in every state in the U.S. and in 77 other counties have registered to use the virtual classroom since its launch in May 2016. We’re a lean organization, and our resources have been primarily directed to program development, so much of our success to date has come from our programs going viral.

And it’s worked! Teachers and students praise the Checkology® platform for its innovation, engagement and results. Students have told us repeatedly how it has changed the way they think about what they read and share on social media — and how it has increased their interest in local, national and world news.

You can help us as we race to meet the demand and continue to develop new material and programs. Take a moment on this day, Giving Tuesday, and join our effort by making a tax-deductible contribution to the News Literacy Project. Post and share your support and affirm your values as we work together to give facts a fighting chance.

A graduate of Colorado College with a degree in Russian and Eurasian studies, Maze spent several years working in Eastern Europe.

She served as an English teacher and as a research assistant at the Center for Applied NonViolent Actions & Strategies in Belgrade, Serbia, and as a project assistant for Sarajevo Open Centre in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Maze also was a deputy editor for Balkanist Magazine and has IT help desk experience.

She speaks Spanish, Russian and Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian.

In March, we pledged that we would be involved in nationwide efforts that tackle the urgent need of news literacy education.

Today, that time has come.

We’re proud to announce that we will be working with NewsCo/Lab, an initiative launched yesterday by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University (ASU). This collaborative lab is aimed at helping the public find new ways of understanding and engaging with news and information.

“News Co/Lab promises to play a key role as both a clearinghouse for effective news literacy programs and practices and an incubator for finding new ways to connect newsrooms with their communities in the fight against misinformation and the erosion of trust in journalism,” said Alan C. Miller, the founder and CEO of the News Literacy Project (NLP). “We look forward to contributing to this vital mission.”

News Co/Lab is funded by a $300,000 grant from the News Integrity Initiative, a global consortium of funders and journalism-related organizations, including NLP. The idea was developed by the News Literacy Working Group, which convened in March. Miller was a member of that group.

In its first project, NewsCo/Lab will work with McClatchy, which owns 30 daily newspapers in 14 states, to help several of its newsrooms aid their communities in developing “innovations that increase transparency, engagement, mutual understanding and respect.” It will begin with the Kansas City (Missouri) Star and expand to two other McClatchy newsrooms.

News Co/Lab will also work with educators, librarians, newsrooms and community groups and other newsrooms across the country — and that’s where we come in.

To start, we will be sharing our best practices and resources, including the checkology® virtual classroom, with the three McClatchy newsrooms and the communities they serve. More than 8,500 educators in all 50 states and 66 other countries have signed up to use the virtual classroom, and they have the potential to reach more than 1.2 million students around the globe.

“We need to promote the News Literacy Project and other excellent programs — and we need to keep experimenting with new ideas,” said Eric Newton, NewsCo/Lab’s co-founder and the Cronkite School’s innovation chief. “The lab hopes to do both.”

We welcome this opportunity.

Imagine a space where educators, journalists and news literacy experts can work together to find the most effective ways to teach students how to know what to believe.

Welcome to NLP’s NewsLitCamp, where educators from some of the country’s biggest school districts, including Chicago, New York City and Miami, are getting a first-hand introduction to news literacy, along with tools they can use their classrooms.

In these day-long professional development sessions, teachers and librarians at middle schools and high schools visit a news outlet in their city for training with journalists from that newsroom and our staff.

The workshops combine elements from traditional professional development programming with the more flexible, teacher-directed “edcamp” model. Educators tell us what topics they’re interested in and what they would like to take back to their schools from the training. We then work with journalists from the host news organization to create workshops that fit their requests.

“I now have a much better and concrete understanding of how to help students use their critical-thinking skills to get through our digital world,” said Danielle Lewis, a middle school librarian at the United Nations International School in New York City, who attended our NewsLitCamp at Time Inc. headquarters in August.

We start the day with an explanation of the importance of news literacy for students — an opportunity for participants to learn the core skills and concepts of news literacy education. They then attend specialized breakout sessions designed to demystify the news-gathering process and explain the standards of quality journalism. They might examine specific coverage areas, such as education or crime, or more general topics, such as the role of social media in disseminating news. Our goal for each NewsLitCamp is to develop teachers’ and librarians’ news literacy education skills and introduce them to specialized resources for teaching news literacy.

Feedback on these sessions has been overwhelmingly positive. “Best PD ever” was one teacher’s tweet about our first event, which included more than 90 teachers and school librarians at the Chicago Sun-Times in April. In New York City, 89 percent of survey respondents reported a high level of satisfaction with the training and said that what they had learned would be helpful in their teaching.

Heather Van Benthuysen, Chicago Public Schools’ manager of civic education, helped to organize the day at the Sun-Times.

“This was truly a unique experience … that has left a lasting impact,” she wrote us. “Feedback from teachers was overwhelmingly positive, and left them realizing the importance of news literacy instruction, and gave them some tools to implement.”

More than 80 teachers from the Miami-Dade County Public Schools participated in the third NewsLitCamp at the Miami Herald on Oct. 2.

NLP’s Peter Adams “was an incredible bastion of knowledge and had a teacher-like sensibility for the delivery of his content,” said Laura Ortega, one of the teachers who attended the Miami session.

NewsLitCamps are part of our expanded suite of professional development sessions, which include the three-part Teaching News Literacy series. For information about scheduling a NewsLitCamp in your area, contact Damaso Reyes, director of community partnerships and engagement, at [email protected].

Teachers: You asked, and we answered! Teaching News Literacy is an affordable professional development series of three online workshops that will help you become news literacy leaders in the classroom.

The hour-long sessions cover the basics of news literacy and delve into more complex topics, such as the connection between news literacy and civic involvement.

You will come away with fresh ideas, new tools and top-of-the-line resources that will help you integrate news literacy into your lessons and empower your students to become active and engaged participants in civic life.

The registration fee is $10 for a single session or $25 for all three.

Learn more and sign up today!

When police in Washington, D.C., started using social media last March to post notices about missing children, 17-year-old Jenari Mitchell said she and her friends were gripped with fear that there was a sudden epidemic of teens who had disappeared. Viral posts claiming that young women were being abducted and sold by sex traffickers enflamed their concerns.

Mitchell (right) was presented with her award by Tracie Potts of NBC News Channel at an NLP staff and board dinner in June. Potts also was presented with an award as the co-winner of the John S. Carroll Journalist Fellow of the Year prize.

Then, Mitchell recalled some lessons she had learned from the News Literacy Project in her U.S. government class at KIPP DC College Preparatory, and she decided to check the rumors out.

What she discovered brought relief to her and her friends: The number of missing youths had actually declined, and most of the young women who had been reported as missing during that period were runaways.

Mitchell’s brave dose of skepticism and her ability to quickly apply news literacy lessons to the world around her led NLP to present her with its first Gwen Ifill Student of the Year Award. It honors the venerated broadcast journalist (and longtime NLP board member) who died last year.

On June 21, at NLP’s annual dinner for staff and board members, Mitchell received an engraved glass plaque with an etched photo of Ifill, the former moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and co-managing editor and co-anchor of PBS NewsHour. She also received a $250 gift card.

The sixth of eight children, Mitchell will begin classes in August at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where she plans to study computer science and software development. Scholarships and grants will cover most of her education costs.

Her government teacher at KIPP, Colleen Murphy, expressed confidence that Mitchell will take her news literacy lessons with her.

“Jenari is already using what she learned,” Murphy said. “She questions the authenticity of sources of information, she expects the media to uncover the truth, she speaks up for her rights. I think the exposure of the NLP came at a time when Jenari was receptive to its message and mission.”

In addition to applying her news literacy lessons by tracking down the viral rumors about missing teens, Mitchell also used them to develop an app with a friend. Called “Focus Token,” the app is designed to be a motivational and organizational tool for students. It includes a schedule, a goal tracker and resources for college, careers and support groups. “I made sure the resources were credible,” she said.

Tracie Potts, a Washington correspondent with NBC News Channel, is one of two recipients of this year’s John S. Carroll Journalist Fellow Award.

“I am so honored,” she said after being presented with the award at an NLP dinner in June. “To be selected from among well-deserving colleagues by a respected group of journalists and journalism educators makes this beautiful plaque quite valuable to me.”

Named for one of the most revered newspaper editors of his generation, the award is given annually to volunteer journalists who contribute significantly to NLP and its mission. The honorees are selected by a committee of NLP board members and staff.

Paul Saltzman, the Sunday and investigations editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, was presented with his award at an NLP event in Chicago in May.

During her eight years as an NLP journalist fellow, Potts has delivered more than a dozen classroom lessons in schools in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. She also is the host of “Know Your Zone: Sorting Information,” the first lesson in NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom.

In addition, she was featured in a Washington Post report about NLP, was pictured on the cover of NLP’s brochure and has assisted staff members at conferences.

NLP’s president and CEO, Alan C. Miller, described her as a “willing, enthusiastic and gracious stalwart” for news literacy.

Kyle Morean, who used NLP’s curriculum in his media literacy classes at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter School in Washington, said that whenever Potts was the speaker, he knew his class would run long because the students were “eager to keep asking her questions.”

Potts, said Morean, was “an outstanding guest and engaging presenter.”

Recipients of the award receive $500 and an engraved glass plaque with an etched photo of Carroll, who was the editor of the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader, The Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. He also was one of NLP’s earliest supporters, served for four years as board chair and was a board member at the time of his death in 2015.

Paul Saltzman, an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, has won the News Literacy Project’s 2017 John S. Carroll Journalist Fellow Award.

“Paul has been one of NLP’s most engaged and effective journalist fellows since he first volunteered in 2011,” said NLP President Alan C. Miller. “His remarkable dedication to our mission has earned him our heartfelt appreciation and this well-deserved recognition.”

The award — named after the revered editor of three U.S. newspapers and the former chairman of NLP’s board — is given annually to volunteer journalists who contribute significantly to NLP and its mission. The honorees are selected by a committee of NLP board members and staff.

Saltzman is the Sun-Times’ Sunday editor and investigations editor for projects. Reports he has edited have won the Pulitzer Prize, the George Polk Award, the National Headliner Award for investigative reporting, the Society of Professional Journalists’ national Sigma Delta Chi Award for breaking news coverage and the National Association of Black Journalists’ Salute to Excellence Award.

He has been one of NLP’s most engaged journalist fellows, actively recruiting colleagues and organizing orientations, online conversations with students, field trips and other events. He has visited at least six classrooms across Chicago, has worked with two different student groups in local libraries as part of the News Know-how program, and has met with students during their field trips to the Sun-Times newsroom.

“When I first started working with the News Literacy Project, we were happy to be able to reach a couple dozen more kids,” Saltzman said. “Now, my paper has just hosted 100 teachers and librarians who’ll carry the message back to schools across Chicago.

“And the online lessons that I and others have done are seen around the world — even in Macedonia, storied birthplace of so much fake news. But what I thought at the beginning is still what I think: How could anyone not want to do this?”

Saltzman has played an important role in NLP’s e-learning efforts: He was featured in several early video and digital lessons, leads one — “What Is News?” — in NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom and helped to create a graphic organizer featuring seven key questions, dubbed “The Saltzman Seven.”

“He is remarkably dedicated to NLP’s mission,” said Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president for educational programs, who lives in Chicago and has worked closely with Saltzman. “In fact, he has yet to say no to any request an NLP staffer has ever made of him — no matter how substantial.”

Saltzman is one of two NLP journalist fellows to be honored with the Carroll Award this year. He received the prize — $500 and a glass plaque with an etched photo of Carroll — at a private dinner in Chicago in May. The second recipient will be announced in June.

“I’m proud to be a part of the News Literacy Project, hoping to do much more and very appreciative of this honor,” Saltzman said.

Carroll, the second person to join NLP’s board, died on June 14, 2015. He also served four years as board chairman and remained on the board until his death. He was the editor of the 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 served on the Pulitzer Prize board from 1994 to 2003 and was its chairman in 2002.

“My generation — whatever we see on social media, we believe,” Daniella Alexander, a high school senior, told a group of News Literacy Project supporters and friends at a VIP breakfast Wednesday with Chuck Todd of NBC News.

Daniella Alexander, a senior at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, addresses guests at the VIP breakfast.

And because of NLP’s latest resource, the Checkology® virtual classroom, Alexander now looks at what she reads a lot more skeptically.

She acknowledged that she hadn’t really cared about the news before she participated in the virtual classroom as part of her government class at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But now, she said, she is “able to stop and say, ‘Hmm. This is not reliable! This source isn’t credible!”

“I’ve developed a newfound appreciation for journalism and how it works,” she said. The platform “taught me to have both sides of the story, whether or not I like them or not.”

“It’s definitely necessary for my generation, especially, and for the generation after me,” she added. It “gave me skills that I will need and that I can pass on to people and tell them, ‘Checkology® is so accessible, it’s so easy … you can learn so much from it.’”

In short, Alexander said, “Checkology® is super-vital and super-important.”

Patricia Hunt, Alexander’s teacher, also praised the platform, telling the group at the breakfast that her students “now have the language, have the tools, to look at pieces objectively. They can be skeptical consumers of news.”

Hunt’s use of the Checkology® platform was featured in December in a report on NPR’s All Things Considered about “the classroom where fake news fails” and again in February in a piece on the evening news on WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate for the Washington area. In addition, she was quoted in an article last month on CNN’s website that described the virtual classroom as one of the “new weapons” in the war on fake news.

Mike Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University’s Vancouver campus, has written a blog post in which he takes issue with what he understands to be the focus and methods of news literacy as a field.

“How ‘News Literacy’ Gets Web Misinformation Wrong” was published last month on Caulfield’s own website and earlier this month on Medium and Observer.com. In it, Caulfield specifically cites our Checkology® virtual classroom, a web-based e-learning platform for educators and students in middle school and high school.

We thank Caulfield for his interest in our work and for advancing the discussion on the literacies that contemporary students need to learn to become critical thinkers. For him, it’s web literacy; for us, it’s news literacy. In many ways, we agree with Caulfield’s ideas; in others, we take a narrower view. In this case, we believe his critique of our work offers an opportunity to demonstrate how we define and teach news literacy.

The News Literacy Project was founded in 2008 with this guiding principle: to teach students to sort fact from fiction in the digital age. Our lessons have been successfully implemented in middle schools, high schools, libraries and after-school programs, starting with our first pilots in the spring of 2009. They’ve also been embraced by educators: As many as 5,600 teachers serving more than 850,000 students throughout the United States and in 50 other countries have registered to use the Checkology® virtual classroom since it was released last May.

In his piece, Caulfield tries to address what he considers weaknesses in the Checkology® platform. However, the resource that he references throughout his piece is not the virtual classroom, and it is not part of the Checkology® lessons. It is a one-page set of guidelines, “Ten Questions for Fake News Detection,” that we created last year in the middle of the rising public awareness about so-called fake news.

This graphic organizer is intended to help students detect a very specific type of misinformation by walking them through a series of questions that raise red flags about the authenticity of a piece of ostensible news. Like many of the student resources we publish, these questions were created to help students understand the significance of specific details in a piece of information, with the expectation that they will begin to use them instinctively when they come across news and other types of information.

Caulfield’s critique takes this list of questions out of context in an attempt to show how it falls short as a practical, effective process for evaluating the general credibility of all types of information. To try to prove how this process fails in practice, he also picks up passages (including student quotes) from a news report about students who have used the Checkology® virtual classroom.

Some Clarifications

Had Caulfield called us to verify what he was writing about — a key point in both web and news literacies — we would have been able to clarify a few things.

First, the “Ten Questions” worksheet is not the Checkology® virtual classroom. Second, it was never intended to be used as a full process for evaluating the credibility of all types of information. Finally, we would have pointed out that pulling quotes from an unrelated report is unfair, even if the students quoted were making statements about the same guidelines Caulfield is attacking. We could have provided examples of how teachers and students are finding the virtual classroom extremely valuable.

Caulfield runs his own media literacy initiative, a wiki-based fact-checking website aimed at secondary and post-secondary students. We applaud his efforts to create a hub for what he calls “web literacy,” because the goals and methods of web literacy are largely identical to those of news literacy. We agree, for example, that students need to experience news and media and web and information literacy in the context in which they experience information and that this instruction needs to result in a functional, practical difference in the way they consume and create information.

We too believe that students need a community of practice where they can exercise these skills. We applaud Caulfield’s dedication to creating a community in which students from schools across the country can either write up entries on specific claims or edit and question existing claims by others. We also believe that students need to be taught news/media/web/information literacies in the language of the web. They need to learn to look for sources that are linked and notice when they’re not; to follow a series of links “upstream” to the original claim and then assess that original claim; and to follow links and search results to other pieces of information about the same topic.

We at the News Literacy Project are proud of the work that we are doing to create a news-literate next generation. We intend to continue to improve on these efforts and welcome constructive criticism from Caulfield and others to help us do so. We hope that those who join us in this vital mission will hold themselves to the same standards we ask our students to apply to the news and information that they consume and create.

Our all-new #SeeAlltheAngles campaign features print and digital ads, a new landing page, a Headline Maker app, a downloadable keyboard and printable posters.

Can you read the headline on the right?

No? Good. That’s what we’re hoping. We’d like you to pause for a moment to think — and then dig a little deeper to decipher the meaning of what you’re seeing, just as you should do when determining whether the news you’re reading is real or fake.

That’s the purpose of our new ad campaign, developed as part of a pro bono partnership with J. Walter Thompson New York.

The #SeeAlltheAngles campaign features print and digital ads, a new landing page, a Headline Maker app, a downloadable keyboard and printable posters.

It is based on a sideways-facing font that JWT developed just for us — one that puts a literal spin on the alphabet and turns each letter so just its edge is visible. The font encourages readers to think beyond their first impression — and, by extension, reminds them not to take what they see at face value. It will be used in “headlines” in the advertising copy.

These ads are being placed with major news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and AOL. All media space has been donated by Kargo, a mobile advertising agency, and partners of JWT.

To access the tools and to learn more about the font, visit the #SeeAlltheAngles page. We encourage you to use the Headline Maker app (available for iOS and Android) and the keyboard to create your own headlines and send them as text messages. Download the posters and hang them anywhere that could benefit from a news literacy message — classrooms, libraries, after-school programs, even your kids’ rooms. And please share your photos, graphics and text messages with us by emailing them to [email protected].

One last thing: That headline on the right?

“Question everything.”

We hope you do.

The change to its news feed that Facebook is announcing today offers a first line of defense against the spread of false stories, online hoaxes and conspiracy theories.

This is, no doubt, welcome news to fighters against fake news. It certainly is to us, and we’re excited to be part of this global effort.

Starting today, people in 14 countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan) will see an “educational tool” at the top of their news feed for a few days. This tool goes to Facebook’s Help Center, where users will discover tips on preventing the spread of false information — language Facebook developed with First Draft, another news literacy organization.

It will also highlight work by other experts in the field — including the News Literacy Project.

Readers who would like to dig deeper into the issues will be directed to our site, where they’ll get our take on discerning fact from fiction and identifying what can be trusted, shared and acted on (and what shouldn’t be).

This new effort is part of Facebook’s comprehensive strategy to tackle the pernicious issue of fake news, and it complements the collaborations we’ve already established with the world’s largest social media company.

In January, Facebook announced the Facebook Journalism Project, an initiative that will provide Facebook’s worldwide audience with tools and training that promote accurate journalism and news literacy. NLP is one of the initial partners in the program, and the only one focused solely on news literacy.

Earlier this week, NLP’s president and CEO, Alan C. Miller, and Facebook’s head of news partnerships, Campbell Brown, participated in the announcement of the News Integrity Initiative — a program, based at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism, that brings together a global consortium of 19 academic institutions, nonprofits and individuals to collaborate on efforts that advance the cause of news literacy and improve trust in journalism. Facebook is one of the nine initial funders. Again, NLP is one of the initial partners — and, again, we’re the only one focused solely on news literacy.

And finally, as part of the Facebook Journalism Project, we’re in the final stages of working with Facebook on an ambitious public service advertising campaign that will be released on the platform later this spring.

We’re proud to be working with Facebook on all of these fronts — and we couldn’t be more excited to join Facebook, and others, in taking on the challenge to combat misinformation, spin, propaganda, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, outright falsehoods and fake news.

Today marks a milestone for the News Literacy Project. We’ve been offered an exciting opportunity to amplify and expand our work to give facts a fighting chance.

We’re honored to be a founding participant in the News Integrity Initiative, a global consortium “focused on helping people make informed judgments about the news they read and share online.”

Based at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York, the Initiative is launching with $14 million in funding from tech industry leaders, academic institutions, nonprofits and other organizations. It will support applied research and projects and convene meetings with industry experts to advance news literacy, to increase trust in journalism around the world and to enhance the public conversation.

I will be part of today’s announcement, which will be broadcast at 4 p.m. ET via Facebook Live on the CUNY Journalism School’s Facebook page. NLP is one of 19 initial participants in the News Integrity Initiative — and is the only one focused primarily on news literacy.

NLP has been a national pioneer in the field of news literacy for nine years, providing innovative lessons and resources that give middle school and high school students the tools to know what to believe in today’s challenging information landscape.

In the aftermath of the bitterly divisive 2016 presidential campaign, which featured daily assaults on truth and partisan attacks on the news media, the world learned hard lessons about the prevalence and power of online hoaxes and conspiracy theories.

For us, the need to extend news literacy to the general population suddenly took on far greater urgency, since the bedrock of a healthy democracy is an informed and engaged electorate. Our ultimate goal is to strengthen the grass roots of our country’s democracy by giving people of all ages, and not just teenagers, the ability to know what news and information to trust, share and act on.

Even as our scope expands, we remain committed to continuing to serve our core community with our Checkology® virtual classroom, which is rapidly growing nationally and worldwide.

We are already working with Facebook on an ambitious public service advertising campaign that will be released on the platform this spring. At this crucial moment for the U.S. and the world, we’re excited by the prospect of being part of this broad and impressive coalition to improve news literacy on a global scale.

Students who complete the News Literacy Project’s core unit report significant changes in the ways they think about, share and respond to news and information they read or watch online, new survey data indicate.

More than 80 percent of the students who responded to the survey said that the unit:

• Improved the way they gathered, used and produced credible information.
• Improved their ability to distinguish quality journalism from other types of news and information.
• Increased their ability to use news to become knowledgeable about their communities, the nation and the world.
• Learned how to exercise civility, respect and care in online communities.

“The News Literacy Project is transforming student consciousness from being insular and impressionable to worldly and critical,” said Jeff Zimmerman, technology director at Our Lady of Tepeyac High School in Chicago.

“My students have a new understanding of the ways that powerful individuals and groups seek control over information to shape public response to important issues. I believe they will carry that insight with them into college and beyond, contributing to a generation of independent thinkers.”

The results come from NLP’s 2015-16 national assessment survey. 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.

The surveys have consistently showed significant changes in students’ knowledge, attitudes and behavior since NLP began administering them in 2009.

“It is difficult to overstate the importance of meaningful formal assessments of student learning,” said Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president for educational programs. “It’s not only vital for our teacher partners, but it helps us evaluate and improve our instructional design and resource development. It’s an irreplaceable part of our ongoing mission to provide educators with materials that help them engage and activate students as news literacy learners and citizens.”

In the most recent survey, students also reported that NLP lessons made them more likely to post a comment on a blog (40 percent), ask a news organization to correct a factual error (41 percent) and vote in a local, state or national election when they are old enough to do so (62 percent).

“The News Literacy Project has skillfully taken on the urgent mission of showing young people how to bring critical judgment to their news consumption,” said Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, one of NLP’s 33 partner news organizations.

“It’s surpassingly important work — absolutely critical to democracy and civil society.”

When NLP rolled out its dynamic Checkology® virtual classroom last May, our goal was to be in all 50 states with 100,000 registered students by the end of 2017.

We’re just three months into 2017, and we have already enrolled 6,200 educators who teach 775,000 students in urban, suburban and rural areas throughout the United States and in at least 46 countries around the globe, from China to Turkey to South Africa to Brazil to Australia.

Interest surged following the presidential election and the disclosure of the prevalence and power of online rumors, hoaxes and conspiracy theories (“fake news”), accompanied by a growing national debate about the nature and value of real news. Amid increased awareness of the challenge that students face in determining what information to trust, educators have embraced the opportunity to teach core news literacy skills and concepts — including how to detect bias, how to dissect viral rumors and how to use the standards of quality journalism to find credible information.

As teachers bring news literacy to their classrooms, students are recognizing their own need to be news-literate.

“Now we need it even more,” said Catherine Dievendorf, a senior at Alta Loma High School in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. “Consuming news and media blindly destroys our understanding and awareness of bias and deceit that could permeate our news.”

The virtual classroom includes 12 core lessons and supplemental tools that teach news literacy skills and encourages students to apply what they are learning to the news and information they encounter every day. By doing so, they develop the critical-thinking skills that are essential for informed and engaged citizens in a democracy.

The Basic version of the platform provides a single login for teachers and permits them to deliver the lessons in a one-to-many format (on an LCD projector, for example). The Premium version provides subscribers with individual student logins to unlock the full virtual classroom experience, including one-to-one delivery, self-pacing, remediation, individual assessments, points, badges and student discussion.

We’ve received feedback from teachers right from the start, and the spring pilot of the Premium version, which will extend through June, incorporates many of the changes they requested. These include making it more efficient for teachers to offer online feedback to students and giving them more options for student remediation, for blending whole class and individual instruction and for sharing announcements and notifications. We’re also updating examples of information in some lessons and improving key aspects of students’ experience.

Educators: Sign up here to participate in the spring pilot, then share this link with your fellow teachers in middle schools and high schools, librarians, and leaders of after-school programs.

John Silva, who has used the News Literacy Project’s curriculum as a history teacher in Chicago, will now be aiding other educators as NLP’s Checkology™ virtual classroom coordinator.

The new position is the result of the explosion of interest in the virtual classroom, which was introduced in May 2016. In its first 10 months, 4,500 educators who teach 550,000 students throughout the United States and in at least 38 other countries have registered to use the platform.

“As a teacher, I saw firsthand the impact News Literacy Project had on my students and their ability to evaluate and think critically about news and online media,” Silva said. “I became an advocate for NLP among my colleagues and have used NLP curriculum for several years. I am very excited to join the NLP team and bring that curriculum to classrooms throughout the country through the Checkology™ platform.”

He comes to NLP with 13 years of experience as a history teacher with Chicago Public Schools, including seven years at Lindblom Math & Science Academy, one of CPS’s top selective enrollment schools. He began working with NLP at Lindblom, where he implemented the curriculum in his 8th-grade and 11th-grade history classes.

A U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Silva spent several years in corporate telecommunications positions before deciding to become a teacher. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in the teaching of history and has a master’s degree in education, with a concentration in educational technologies, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He became a National Board Certified Teacher in 2012.

News literacy’s moment has arrived.

Those of us who have focused for years on the challenges to consumers created by digital media are no longer a voice in the wilderness. Recent events (especially the furor over the primacy and definition of “fake news”) have thrust our mission into the middle of myriad conversations — and have established news literacy education as an urgent national need.

Our work at the News Literacy Project (NLP) offers evidence of this growing demand: In just 10 months, 4,500 educators who teach 550,000 students in every state in the U.S. (and at least 38 other countries) have registered to use NLP’s Checkology™ virtual classroom. Dozens are signing up daily.

It’s a start, but there’s much more to be done. Recognizing both the need and the opportunity, Facebook is convening a News Literacy Working Group this weekend — an initial step to help news literacy practitioners equip a far wider audience with the tools to know what to trust in the digital age.

We’re proud to be joining more than 50 educators, nonprofit leaders, journalists, funders and representatives of social media companies who will be gathering this weekend at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism to review their experiences in the field, identify research opportunities and assess projects for funding. I am hopeful that this will be the first of a series of meaningful events for this group.

This meeting is part of the broader Facebook Journalism Project — an initiative by the world’s largest social media company to combat misinformation by working with news organizations, educators and independent fact-checkers and making improvements to its platform.

As part of this initiative, we at NLP are collaborating with Facebook to produce an eight-week public service advertising campaign this spring to help stem the spread of viral rumors, hoaxes, conspiracy theories and other types of misinformation and to help give real news a fighting chance.

We’re well aware that in today’s information ecosystem, the readers, viewers and listeners are in charge. They decide what news to receive and when, where and how to access it. Moreover, they comment on it, they share it and they actively post on social media. We believe that we can help them determine the credibility of what they’re reading, watching and hearing — meaning that they will be less prone to being deceived and to deceiving others.

We also believe that only a concerted national education effort can give the public the ability to be informed, responsible and empowered consumers, creators and sharers of news and information. We are ready to take on this challenge. Nothing less than the health of the nation’s democracy is at stake.

When Dee Burek started teaching debate at Stone Bridge Middle School in Allentown, New Jersey, six years ago, she soon noticed a trend: Her students’ arguments were riddled with inaccuracies.

For his report on NPR, journalist Cory Turner (left) records student interaction with Wakefield High teacher Patricia Hunt as she leads a lesson from the Checkology™ virtual classroom.

No matter how many times she urged them to check their sources, the students would say, “But it’s on the internet,” “There is no author” or “It looks like a real source.”

Pushing them to delve deeper proved challenging until Burek discovered the News Literacy Project’s Checkology™ virtual classroom while researching curriculum for an upcoming journalism elective. She started piloting it with her eighth-grade journalism students in the fall — a time rife with real-world teachable moments that blended perfectly with the platform’s content.

“Just as I was teaching about citizen watchdogs, a package arrived in the mailbox of a New York Times reporter with some pages of Donald Trump’s tax return,” she said. “Then as I taught the lesson on bias, BuzzFeed released a dossier on Donald Trump. The kids were so excited to talk about it the next day and start trying to get to the truth.”

Burek was so impressed with the platform that she took one of her students to a school board meeting to advocate for its use in classrooms throughout the district.

“The Checkology™ virtual classroom has empowered my students,” she said. “Their critical-thinking skills have improved. They will leave my class with knowledge that is desperately needed to survive in today’s world.”

As news literacy is increasingly being recognized as an essential skill, teachers nationwide are finding the platform to be a seamless way to incorporate it into their existing curricula.

“The students and I are loving [the] Checkology™ [platform]!” said Patricia Hunt, a government teacher at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., whose participation in the fall pilot was featured in reports on NPR and on WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate for Washington, D.C. “It has fit beautifully with our examination of the political process and focus on core democratic values. The students continually make connections to the material and learning, especially in light of the coverage and impact of fake news.”

Across the country, Liz Ramos, who teaches AP government and world history at Alta Loma High School in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., said the platform has helped give her students “the tools to evaluate credible takes on a story, examine and understand the various purposes of news and media, and to be aware of bias and deceit by providing a framework to question the news and social media postings and be critical thinkers for reference in life moving forward.”

The idea for the News Literacy Project came to me in 2006, when I spoke to my daughter’s sixth-grade classmates about what I did as a journalist and why it mattered.

I left her middle school that day thinking that if a lot of journalists brought their expertise and experience to bear in this way, it could have a significant impact on education and on the future of journalism.

Two years later, after 21 years as a reporter, I left the Los Angeles Times and started NLP. At the time, I thought of it as moving from the supply side of journalism to the demand side.

But as we began to work in secondary schools with our classroom, after-school and e-learning programs, my perspective broadened. Increasingly, I saw our greatest benefit as strengthening the grass roots of the country’s democracy by giving the next generation the tools to know what news and information to trust, share and act on, both as students and as future voters. After all, the bedrock of a healthy democracy is an informed and engaged electorate.

From the beginning, people told me that this was a great idea — and that adults needed these skills, too. Or at least some adults: My mother-in-law, who sends me all kinds of cockamamie things she finds online, needs this. My uncle, who believes everything he hears on the radio, needs this. Or even: I need this!

But we had already undertaken an enormous mission: educating teenagers that all information isn’t created equal. We found that impressionable younger students often believed that if someone put something on the internet, it must be true. Some high school students, on the other hand, were already cynical enough to believe that all news or information is equally driven by an agenda — and, in the case of news, by personal, political and commercial bias. Some even viewed raw information — for instance, random musings in a blog post or a cellphone video uploaded to YouTube — as more reliable than a news report published or broadcast by mainstream media.

Moreover, our goal was ambitious, too: to embed news literacy in the American educational experience. In May 2016, building on all of our work since 2008, we launched our Checkology™ virtual classroom as our path to exponential growth nationwide. We were heartened to see the platform quickly gain traction in every state in the country.

Then, following a bitterly divisive 2016 presidential campaign that featured daily assaults on truth and partisan attacks on the news media, we learned about the prevalence and power of online hoaxes and conspiracy theories. The need to extend news literacy to the general population suddenly took on far greater urgency.

So NLP has embraced the opportunity to develop, with Facebook’s support, a public service ad campaign for the world’s most popular social media platform. Not only is this consistent with our mission, but it will enable us to create creative and compelling messages that take advantage of Facebook’s exceptional targeting capabilities to promote news literacy among a massive new audience of engaged adults, as well as young people.

This campaign will raise awareness of the importance of being a skeptical and responsible consumer of news and information. It will help give millions of Facebook users the ability to discern credible information from raw information, propaganda and misinformation. And it will elevate the field of news literacy and reinforce NLP’s leadership role.

We may even reach some of my daughter’s sixth-grade classmates. They’re now young adults and no doubt are getting much of their news and information from Facebook. It would be a fitting way to reconnect.

Facebook is supporting a public service advertising (PSA) campaign by the News Literacy Project (NLP) that will provide Facebook users with the tools to become informed consumers of news and information and to know which sources to trust, the company announced today.

“As Facebook seeks to support journalism, we will also be working on new ways to help give people information so they can make smart choices about the news they read — and have meaningful conversations about what they care about,” Fidji Simo, Facebook’s director of product, wrote in a blog post.

This effort is part of the Facebook Journalism Project, a broad initiative “designed to support quality journalism and news literacy” through partnerships with news outlets and nonprofit organizations. NLP is the only news literacy organization invited to participate.

The PSA campaign — which will include videos and other multimedia elements familiar to Facebook users — will raise awareness of the importance of being a skeptical and responsible consumer of news and information and will elevate the profile of the field of news literacy and of NLP and its programs. It will enable NLP, which to date has worked exclusively with students in middle school and high school, to extend its reach to the general public on a mass scale. Facebook has more than 1.8 billion active users worldwide.

NLP will use Facebook’s targeting capabilities to reach a wide range of users. This will allow NLP to build on the initial success of its classroom, after-school and e-learning programs, including its cutting-edge Checkology™ virtual classroom, an online platform that helps students discern fact from fiction through a range of exercises and video lessons led by prominent journalists and other experts.

“NLP welcomes the opportunity to work with Facebook to bring news literacy lessons and skills to an enormous and engaged audience,” said NLP President Alan C. Miller. “We look forward to providing Facebook users with the tools to recognize what information to trust and share and how to spot stories and posts based on false information, viral rumors and conspiracy theories.”

NLP will work with Facebook’s creative advertising team to develop the PSAs, which will appear exclusively on the social media platform during an eight-week period this spring. Facebook has retained Scot Safon, the former chief marketing officer at CNN Worldwide, to collaborate on these messages with NLP, which will have final editorial control over the content.

NLP teaches that all information is not created equal and uses the aspirational standards of quality journalism to determine what should be trusted, shared and acted on. It also fosters an understanding of the importance of the First Amendment and a free press in a democracy. NLP’s primary mission is to provide programs and resources that teach secondary school students how to differentiate credible information from raw information, misinformation and propaganda in the digital age.

In Facebook’s blog post, Simo said that the company “will work with third-party organizations on how to better understand and to promote news literacy both on and off our platform to help people in our community have the information they need to make decisions about which sources to trust. We will help organizations already doing important work in this area, such as the News Literacy Project, and bring a consortium of experts together to help decide on what new research to conduct and projects to fund.”

In addition to making a financial donation to support NLP, Facebook is providing engineering assistance from its partnership team to help NLP determine how to develop an app that will effectively support its educational work, which will remain independent of Facebook.

Facebook also said that it will expand training for journalists and will partner with news organizations to develop new storytelling formats, support local news and find ways to encourage its users to subscribe to news outlets.

The Facebook Journalism Project is the company’s second major step to address hoaxes and fake news since coming under criticism for the use of its platform as a means of spreading factually inaccurate and outright false stories during the presidential election. The company announced last month that it was making it easier for users to report suspicious posts and reducing the financial incentives for those who create hoaxes. It also launched a program in collaboration with the Poynter Institute to give independent fact-checking organizations the ability to flag suspect Facebook posts.

The News Literacy Project, a national education nonprofit, was founded in 2008 by Miller, who won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2003 as an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times. NLP has delivered innovative classroom, after-school and digital programs to diverse and dynamic schools in New York City, Chicago, Houston and the Washington, D.C., area since 2009.

In May, it launched the Checkology™ virtual classroom, which is the culmination of all its work to date and its primary path to national scale. This e-learning platform, available anywhere there is an internet connection, provides students with engaging, real-world lessons that foster critical thinking skills. Leading 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 throughout the core lessons.

More than 2,000 educators who teach more than 220,000 students in all 50 states and the District of Columbia have registered to use the platform.

Steve Schmidt, who held top positions in two Republican presidential campaigns and serves as a political analyst on MSNBC, has joined the News Literacy Project’s board.

“Steve brings distinctive experience and expertise to the NLP board,” board chairman Greg McCaffery said. “His impressive skills as a public affairs and political strategist will serve us well as we seek to create the next generation of informed and engaged citizens.”

Schmidt is vice chairman for public affairs at Edelman, the world’s largest public relations agency. Topics on which he has provided counsel include telecommunications, technology, financial services, energy, health care, entertainment and gaming.

He was a top strategist on President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and served in the Bush administration as a deputy assistant to the president and counselor to the vice president. He also played a leading role in the Supreme Court confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, directing strategic communications for the Roberts nomination and heading the nomination team for Alito.

In 2006, Schmidt left the White House to run the successful re-election campaign of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2007, he served as a senior adviser to Arizona Sen. John McCain’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination; once McCain secured the nomination in 2008, Schmidt ran the day-to-day operations for his presidential campaign.

Schmidt is the fourth highly accomplished individual to join NLP’s board in the last year. The others are David M. Marchick, managing partner at The Carlyle Group; Karen Wickre, a digital media pioneer who held senior communications positions at Twitter and Google for nearly 15 years; and Eva Haller, a respected nonprofit leader and philanthropist. Board members serve renewable three-year terms.

Veteran journalist Leslie Hoffecker is joining the News Literacy Project as its senior editor.

Hoffecker, a former editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times, Congressional Quarterly and Bloomberg, had served as NLP’s pro bono editor and Keeper of Standards since the project’s founding in February 2008. She will be the first employee to serve in the newly created staff position.

“Leslie has been an invaluable asset to NLP from Day One,” said NLP President Alan C. Miller, who worked with Hoffecker at the Los Angeles Times. “Her impressive skills as a writer and editor combined with her extensive knowledge of NLP make her a great addition at a time when we plan to dramatically raise our national profile.”

A graduate of Vassar College, Hoffecker began her journalism career as Philadelphia magazine’s copy editor — a position she obtained after noticing an unusual number of errors in an issue and writing to the editor to point them out. Her tenure at the Inquirer included a Pulitzer Prize for Local General or Spot News Reporting (as a member of the reporting and editing team that covered the Three Mile Island nuclear accident) and internal citations from the paper for her work on two other Pulitzer winners.

“I’m excited to be joining NLP full-time,” she said. “The recent furor over ‘fake news’ has only emphasized how important it is to make sure that students are taught how to know what to believe and how to share it responsibly.”

She also spent several years in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a stringer for The Associated Press and the editor of a joint program of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Saudi Ministry of Health that trained Arab physicians in disease control and surveillance. In addition, she worked for two years for a boutique public relations firm in Alexandria, Va., where she edited materials as varied as annual reports and communications strategies for U.S. government agencies and social media posts for nonprofits.

Hoffecker, Miller said, “will give NLP the capacity to create and share more content on social media and elsewhere to help meet the growing demand for news literacy education.”

As we reflect on 2016, we look back at some of our social media posts that you liked most.

We’re sharing your top five favorites for one more read:

1. Our guide to spotting fake news
2. Facebook taking steps to combat misinformation
3. Our new Checkology™ virtual classroom
4. “In Jest”
5. Biggest publishers of hoaxes and fake news

A survey released by the Pew Research Center today shows that fabricated news stories are causing members of the public to be confused about basic facts.

About two in three U.S. adults say that fake news has caused “a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current events,” while roughly another quarter say it causes them “some” confusion.

Despite this confusion, 84 percent of those surveyed reported that they felt a degree of confidence in their ability to spot fake news when they saw it.

“What’s encouraging about these findings is the fact that so many Americans are aware that fake news is a serious problem,” said Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president for educational programs.

“But given what we also know about the power of fake news, it seems clear that this is something people need to continue to pay close attention to, no matter how confident they might be in their ability to catch it.”

We have been working to address misinformation — including viral rumors, hoaxes, propaganda and other forms of fake information — in classrooms for years. Our Checkology™ virtual classroom offers lessons to help students think critically about what they’re reading online, including a unit on “immunizing” themselves from viral rumors. It provides a “Check Tool” to help students develop news-literate habits of mind.

We are also tackling the problem of fake news head on. We have created a tip sheet for students called “Ten Questions for Fake News Detection,” and we’re working on a guide for the general public. “Fake News: A Guide — Tools, Tips and Resources to Combat Misinformation Online” will be available to the public in coming days.

We recognize that many outlets, too, are working to fix the problem. Facebook’s announcement today of plans to work with fact-checking groups to tackle fake news is a step in the right direction.

But we firmly believe that news literacy education is the best long-term solution to the problem.

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president for education programs, led a workshop on how educators can use authentic examples of viral rumors to drive civic learning and engagement.

The session couldn’t have come at a better time. With little regulation or controls, social media platforms occupy a greater and greater space in the public attention zone. And after a divisive presidential campaign where rumors, innuendoes and outright lies often competed for air time with conventional political rhetoric, educators are grappling with ways to address the spread of fake news and looking to engage their students’ critical thinking.

“Disinformation is getting better and sneakier,” Adams said during the session. “The good news is that the tools to check it out are getting better and more plentiful.”

Adams then joined Washington Post reporter Krissah Thompson and Steven Becton of Facing History and Ourselves for a panel discussion about the critical role of credible information in a robust democracy, through the lens of the news and information that appeared following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Adams talked about confirmation bias, in which people interpret or recall information in a way that confirms pre-existing beliefs and ideas.

“Our feelings congeal almost immediately,” Adams said when describing a phenomenon that is also known sometimes as confirmatory bias or myside bias. “Then our rational mind sets about justifying why we have the feelings we have.”

NLP partnered with Facing History to develop “Facing Ferguson: News Literacy in a Digital Age,” an educational resource examining the information aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown and the protests that followed, which became a flashpoint for discussion about race, policing and justice.

Adams and Becton also led a session introducing and exploring the resource.

Teachers who stopped by NLP’s booth at the conference on Friday had the chance to meet three of the NLP journalist fellows featured in the Checkology™ virtual classroom. James Grimaldi of The Wall Street Journal, who appears in a lesson on the watchdog role of journalists in American democracy, Tracie Potts of NBC News Channel, who guides students through a lesson on filtering information according to its primary purpose, and Matea Gold of the Washington Post, who hosts a lesson on viral content, were all on hand to meet teachers.

The conference closed with a keynote panel, “Demasclerosis: The Challenge of Moving America Forward in a Hyper-Partisan Age,” produced by NLP and moderated by longtime broadcast journalist and NLP journalist fellow Ray Suarez, and featuring two of the nation’s leading columnists and commentators, Ruth Marcus and Michael Gerson, both of The Washington Post.

“You need citizens who show civility, empathy and discernment about the truth,” Gerson said. He encouraged the hundreds of educators in the room to teach citizenship because, more than ever, they are “on the front lines of defending the American ideal.”

The audience of hundreds of social studies teachers from around the country responded with a standing ovation.