NLP partners with Arizona State University on news literacy education

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.