NLP News

Detailed reports compiled by Anita Baker, the project’s evaluation consultant, reflect the impact of NLP’s classroom, after-school and digital programs in middle schools and high schools in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland. This was the most finely tuned set of surveys that NLP has used. “The results…

NLP is pleased to announce the hiring of Tamara Johnson as the project’s new full-time program coordinator in New York, NLP’s third hire since the spring. Tamara started on Aug. 25, just ahead of the new school year, which officially kicks off on Sept. 4. She will work with Darragh Worland, New York program manager,…

Alan C. Miller, NLP’s president and founder, discussed NLP and news literacy on The Diane Rehm Show on public radio this morning. You can catch the podcast here. The focus of the show was: “News Literacy in the Digital Age: Americans have access to more news than ever before. But polls suggest trust in our sources of…

Elizabeth Marino, an experienced classroom teacher, has joined the News Literacy Project as program coordinator in Chicago. She will oversee expansion of NLP’s digital unit and work with other youth media programs throughout the city. “The addition of Elizabeth to our team is particularly exciting given the crossroads NLP is at as an organization,” said…

The Asian American Journalists Association is looking for 42 high school students for its 2014 journalism workshop at Emerson College in Boston this summer. The JCamp program will run from July 29 to Aug. 3 and is open to teenagers with an interest in broadcasting, newspapers, magazines, photojournalism or online media. Freshmen, sophomores, and juniors…

The panel featured Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist at The New York Times, and Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent at NBC News and host of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports. It was moderated by Gwen Ifill, co-anchor of PBS NewsHour and moderator of Washington Week. The event was produced by the News Literacy Project in…

David Gonzalez, a co-editor of Lens, the visual journalism blog of The New York Times, visited an 8th-grade American studies class at De La Salle Academy on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on May 15 to offer the students guidance and feedback on their photojournalism projects. For their final project in the NLP unit,…

Veronica Conforme, a vice president at the College Board and the former chief operating officer of the New York City Department of Education, has joined the News Literacy Project’s board. “The board is fortunate to be gaining an educator with Veronica Conforme’s insight, experience and reputation,” said NLP board chairman John Carroll. “Our success depends…

The Sun-Times Foundation in Chicago has awarded the News Literacy Project a $25,000 matching grant to encourage additional individual, corporate and foundation contributions to NLP. The initial $1,000 of the donation counts toward the match, which runs through Dec. 5. Jim Kirk, the publisher and editor in chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, announced the grant…

NLP’s major fall event in Washington will be a panel discussion on “America’s Changing Role in the World and How the Press Covers It” on Wednesday, Nov. 13, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, 730 21st St. NW. Gwen Ifill of PBS is the moderator; the panelists are Thomas L.…

The News Literacy Project and The Washington Post’s Young Journalists Development Program are presenting a series of innovative workshops for high school students this summer. Students will learn critical-thinking skills necessary to sort fact from fiction as consumers and creators of news and information in the digital age. Participants will engage with leading journalists from…

The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU, a public radio station in Washington, D.C., devoted an hour Monday afternoon to a segment on the News Literacy Project and news literacy. Alan C. Miller, NLP’s president and founder, was joined on the show by Matea Gold, a Los Angeles Times reporter and one of NLP’s most active journalist fellows, and…

Eric Nadelstern, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a former deputy chancellor of the New York City schools, has joined the News Literacy Project’s education advisory committee. Nadelstern has been familiar with NLP since its early stages in New York City schools. Now in its fifth year, NLP is working with 11 schools…

NLP staffers are prominently featured in two journalism publications this month. The cover story in the May/June issue of the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) quotes Alan C. Miller, NLP’s president, and the spring issue of Inside Story, the magazine of the City University of New York’s graduate school of journalism, includes a feature about Elis…

The News Literacy Project is featured in an article in today’s editions of The Washington Post, “Schools demanding news literacy lessons to teach students how to find fact amid fiction.” The Post reports that “news literacy programs are expanding in classrooms across the country, with a growing nonprofit sector dedicated to the cause and new education…

The News Literacy Project is one five nonprofits nationally featured in a Chronicle of Philanthropy report that spotlights organizations that have thrived despite launching amid the deep recession that began in 2008. The report, titled “Charities Started During the Recession Find Success Despite the Odds,” is featured in the April 11 edition. NLP is singled out for…

The News Literacy Project is now offering its first all-digital unit in Chicago schools and launched its first pilot of the unit in New York this week. It plans to offer a version of the unit in Washington, D.C., in the next school year. The initial response to the unit among Chicago teachers and students…

Michael Gerson, an opinion writer whose nationally syndicated column appears twice weekly in The Washington Post, has joined the News Literacy Project’s board. A columnist at the Post since 2007, Gerson was a senior editor, covering politics, at U.S. News & World Report before joining George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1999 as chief speechwriter…

Bloomberg LP is partnering with the News Literacy Project on two innovative after-school programs with highly regarded middle schools in New York City and Washington this semester. In both programs, Bloomberg journalists will go into classrooms for presentations that teach students the principles of news literacy and will assist them with multimedia topics on issues…

The paper is the 23rd news organization to join NLP since 2009. “The News Literacy Project fosters precisely the kind of careful analysis of the news that students of all ages need to practice in an era when the avalanche of information available about public affairs threaten to bury the citizenry,” said Bill Marimow, the…

The News Literacy Project is presenting a discussion of “Presidential Debates: Performance, Spin and the Press” at Georgetown University on Friday, Oct. 19 — three days after the second presidential debate and three days before the third and final one. Panelists are Kathleen Parker, a columnist at The Washington Post; Al Hunt, Bloomberg News’ Washington…

The News Literacy Project will present its third annual Fall Forum, “Decision 2012: The Savvy Consumer’s Guide to Campaign Coverage,” on Wednesday, Sept. 19, at 7:30 p.m. The event at Walt Whitman High School features Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus and CBS News national correspondent Chip Reid. Matea Gold, a Los Angeles Times Washington correspondent,…

In a widely syndicated column published today, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker calls the News Literacy Project a leader in the “growing news literacy movement aimed at teaching young people how to think critically and judge the quality of information.” Parker recently joined the NLP board. Her column underscores the critical need for the public…

A recent report in SchoolBook, an education blog from The New York Times and WNYC, shines a spotlight on NLP’s partnership with The Facing History High School, a public school in Manhattan where NLP has been bringing its news literacy curriculum to students in English and humanities classes the past four years. This year, NLP…

The News Literacy Project is partnering with The Washington Post’s Young Journalists Development Program to offer three free half-day workshops for high school students at the Post this summer. Each session is designed to equip students with essential critical-thinking skills needed to sort fact from fiction as both consumers and producers of news and information. …

Kathleen Parker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post, has joined the News Literacy Project’s board. Parker writes a twice-weekly column on politics and culture that is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group to more than 450 newspapers. The Post is one of 21 news organizations that participate in the News Literacy Project.…

Harlan Community Academy students visited the Chicago Defender newspaper on March 21 to learn about the 106-year-old publication’s important role in the Great Migration. The students were part of Harlan’s After School Matters journalism program, led by teacher Lauren Lykke. Student articles appear in the magazine Say What, a publication of Young Chicago Authors. The…

The News Literacy Project made dramatic progress in 2011 in its mission to create a new generation of smarter and more engaged consumers and creators of credible news and information. NLP is now working with 35 teachers in 21 middle schools and high schools in New York City, Chicago, Washington and Bethesda, Maryland, to reach…

Not only is the News Literacy Project bringing journalists to students in schools, it’s increasingly bringing students to the journalists in their newsrooms. Students participating in the project visited four newsrooms in New York and Chicago in the past two months, bringing the total number of such field trips in the two cities to 10…

Rashad Thomas-Bland, now in 7th grade at Reavis, was interviewed about his experience producing and narrating a broadcast report on the impact of video games on youth. The interview, along with an excerpt of the Reavis students’ report, can be found in the Student Voices section of the NewsHour Extra site at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/speakout/arts/july-dec11/nlp_11-14.html. Thomas-Bland and seven…

In “Bring Back Bogart,” published in the Nov. 7, 2011, issue, Ray Schroth, S.J., an associate editor of the weekly, cleverly ties the 1952 film Deadline – U.S.A. to the News Literacy Project’s mission. One of NLP’s partner schools is the Jesuit-founded Cristo Rey New York High School in East Harlem. In the film, an immigrant woman brings…

Columnists David Brooks of The New York Times and E.J. Dionne Jr. of The Washington Post will be the featured speakers at the News Literacy Project’s second annual Fall Forum, a series focusing on politics, public policy and the press. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Oct. 14, 2011 Contact: Maureen Freeman [email protected] Josh Wozman, 202-530-4608 [email protected] Columnists David…

De La Salle Academy, New York City’s only private coeducational nonsectarian middle school for academically gifted students who are economically less advantaged, is joining the News Literacy Project for the 2011-12 school year. HBO is sponsoring the school’s participation, marking the first such corporate sponsorship of a school in New York. It will be NLP’s…

The News Literacy Project’s latest video, “How to Know What to Believe,” is now available on NLP’s YouTube and Vimeo channels. The video showcases the program’s impact in partner schools in the project’s three regions.  The video is narrated by ABC News anchor and correspondent Ron Claiborne, an active NLP journalist fellow. His portion of the…

The News Literacy Project (NLP) launched its expansion into Washington, D.C., schools on Tuesday with a kickoff event at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School featuring Gwen Ifill of PBS, who urged students to question the basis for believing what that they see, hear and read. “How do you know that?” she told the students to…

Qualcomm Inc., a San Diego-based world leader in 3G and next-generation mobile technologies, has become the lead sponsor of the News Literacy Project’s expansion into Washington, D.C. NLP will launch its partnership with E.L. Haynes Public Charter School with an event at the school on Sept. 6 featuring journalist Gwen Ifill, the moderator and managing…

Columnists David Brooks of The New York Times and E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post will discuss “Demosclerosis: The Challenge of Moving America Forward in a Hyper-Partisan Age” at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 19, at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. Jessica Yellin, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, will be the moderator of…

For the 2011-12 school year, NLP is adding four high schools to its program: Bronx Academy of Letters and The Cinema School, both in the Bronx; Cristo Rey New York High School in East Harlem, and KIPP NYC College Prep in West Harlem. NLP will also continue its partnership with the Facing History School and…

The News Literacy Project’s growing program to give students the tools to know what to believe in a digital age was the subject of a seven-minute report on PBS NewsHour on Dec. 13. The report, “News Literacy Project Trains Young People to be Skeptical Media Consumers,” featured NLP’s work with 8th-grade students at E.L. Haynes Public Charter…

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps told leaders of community newspapers on July 21 that Americans need to become “a news-literate people” and praised the News Literacy Project for its efforts toward achieving that objective. “Our goal should be that every American possesses the skills to discern news from infotainment, fact from opinion, and trustworthy information…