NLP News

In recognition of their outstanding achievements in supporting news literacy during an unprecedented and challenging school year, NLP has named the recipients of its 2021 educator, journalist and student of the year awards.

It didn’t take the tumultuous events of 2020 and the accompanying flood of misinformation to convince educator Kelly Vikstrom-Hoyt that news literacy should be part of every school’s curriculum.

Alisyn Camerota has provided unflinching coverage, essential context and vital and verified information on major news stories to millions of people during her career as a leading broadcast journalist.

Like many teens, Ana Rodriguez, 15, turns to social media to find out what is going on in the world. But she is well aware that sorting fact from fiction in her newsfeed can be difficult.

Mirudulaa Suginathan Yamini, 13, always had assumed that misinformation did not affect her. Then last year, when she was in seventh grade, she learned firsthand how it could fool her and just how fast and how far it can spread.

This year we had an abundance of strong submissions from so many amazing students that it was difficult to choose just one winner in each of the categories — high school and middle school.

John Carroll was the kind of editor who made you proud to be a journalist. He inspired those who worked for him. In my case, I felt honored to call him my editor, my chairman, my friend.

Today, the News Literacy Project (NLP) joined more than 3,000 diverse, locally-owned, nonprofit and community-based newsrooms calling on Congressional leaders to provide support for America’s community newsrooms in the infrastructure bill.

This is the first in an occasional series that introduces you to the people of NLP.John Silva, Chicago 1. Can you tell us about your background and what brought you to NLP? Prior to joining NLP four years ago, I was a classroom teacher for 13 years. I taught middle and high school social studies…

The 2020-21 school year has been anything but routine for teachers and students all over the world. Unpredictability led to a mixture of remote, hybrid and in-person learning environments — with some classrooms experiencing all three. At the same time, demand grew for resources to teach students how to separate fact from fiction and identify…

Communities of color have historically been underserved by the news business, and the loss of journalism jobs and outlets nationwide has exacerbated this neglect. Then came the pandemic, with its disproportionate impact on Black and brown people throughout the United States, and the accompanying “infodemic” of misinformation.

If there’s one thing people want to know most about a vaccine, it’s this: Does it work? So naturally, as COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials were being completed and vaccines were being considered for emergency use authorization, the numbers that featured most heavily in the news were efficacy rates.