24 journalists join the News Literacy Project

Among the new fellows are Mark Halperin, Time Magazine’s political reporter and blogger; Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times; Steve Inskeep, co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition; and Pierre Thomas, ABC News’ award-winning Justice Department reporter.

These journalists will join NLP’s initial group of 31 prominent reporters, editors and correspondents. Most are based in New York City or the Washington, D.C., area — the two locations where NLP is launching pilots in February.  Many of the journalists will go into middle school and high school classrooms to discuss how they do their work and to explain the standards and values of quality journalism. Others will engage in hands-on activities with students, focusing on discerning verified information from raw information, opinion and propaganda. Some, like Bronner, will engage with students through videoconferences. Several will participate in an after-school apprenticeship program with the project’s partner, Citizen Schools.

Seven of the new fellows work for The New York Times, NLP’s first participating news organization. They include Jacques Steinberg, who covers the media; David K. Kirkpatrick, a correspondent in the Washington bureau; Fernanda Santos, a City Hall reporter; Sarah H. Smith, managing editor of the Sunday magazine; Jim Schachter, editor of Digital Initiatives, and Margot Williams, database research editor for computer-assisted reporting.

The new participants also include a contingent from the Los Angeles Times: Don Bartletti, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer; Matea Gold, who is based in New York and covers the media; Thomas Curwen, an editor and writer in Los Angeles; Bobbi Olson, a copy desk supervisor, and Jamie Gold, the readers’ representative. Howard Rosenberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former television critic for the Los Angeles Times and the co-author of the recent book No Time to Think: The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle, has also joined NLP, as has his co-author, Charles S. Feldman, a CBS radio freelancer and former on-air investigative correspondent at CNN.

Another new fellow is Roy J. Harris Jr., senior editor of the Economist Group’s CFO Magazine and website.  “The News Literacy Project looks terrific to me,” wrote Harris, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and editor and author of Pulitzer’s Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism. “I’d love to be involved.”

To learn more about the News Literacy Project or to participate in the project as a journalist, please send an e-mail to [email protected].