NLP News

Kiwanis is holding its 100th Annual Capital District Convention on Aug. 17, 18 and 19 at the Hyatt Regency Reston in Reston, Virginia, and NLP will be there. Damaso Reyes, NLP’s director of partnerships, will deliver the keynote address during the Fellowship Luncheon on Saturday, Aug. 18. His topic: “Fighting Fake News: How we can educate…

In its story headlined “How Your Brain Tricks You Into Believing Fake News,” Time magazine asks, “Why are even the smartest among us so bad at making judgments about what to trust on the web? And how can we get better?” It also quotes our founder and CEO: “It’s the equivalent of a public-health crisis.” The…

The 2018 midterm elections are only three months away — and as political candidates ask people for their support, they will often feature the endorsements they receive from editorial boards, political organizations, unions and even celebrities. These endorsements can be a useful resource as voters decide how to cast their ballots, and they are often…

For his contributions to journalism in the public interest and to news literacy, Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post has earned the News Literacy Project’s John S. Carroll Journalist Fellow Award for 2018. A national correspondent covering law enforcement and justice, Lowery led the Post’s “Fatal Force” project, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for…

An essential part of civic education is teaching students to be informed about — and to discuss — current events. It’s not enough for them to simply recite what’s happening; they need to be able to have a respectful, meaningful conversation with someone who may not share the same point of view. This concept is…

“Checkology® taught me to seek news rather than receiving it, so I went out and investigated it myself,” Sophia Fiallo told a July 12 awards ceremony at which she and Paige Rodriguez, classmates at The Young Women Leadership School of Astoria, were presented with the News Literacy Project’s Gwen Ifill Student Journalist of the Year…

More than 70 educators from Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools kicked off their summer with an NLP NewsLitCamp® at National Public Radio’s Washington, D.C. headquarters. A signature NLP professional development program, NewsLitCamps are held in conjunction with a news organization. With guidance from NLP staff, educators and journalists come together to examine the importance of…

The Rotarian — the official magazine of Rotary International, with a circulation of more than 400,000 — interviews a sixth-grade teacher in Chicago who discovered our Checkology virtual classroom last year. The article shows exactly how she uses the platform to teach news literacy skills. It also quotes Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of…

Knowing whom or what you’re voting for (or against) is a lot more complicated than young people realize. On the surface, voting is a remarkably simple act: Go to your polling place, get a ballot, put a mark by the name of the candidate of your choice and place the ballot in a box or…

When you watch news programs on CNN, Fox News or MSNBC, do you notice how often they switch between straight news reporting and commentary? Can you tell which person on screen is a journalist and which is a pundit? The ability to distinguish news from opinion is a foundational news literacy skill, and it’s an…

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, was one of two experts interviewed by Courthouse News Service in its story about a recent Pew Research Center study. The study examined the difficulty people have in distinguishing between factual and opinion statements in the news.* One reason, said Adams: “Confirmation bias is front and center…

Tucker Eskew, a strategy and marketing executive, has joined the board of the News Literacy Project. “If we’re to have a healthy democracy, our society needs to build platforms for truth and context in a sea of information and misinformation,” he said. “I’m proud to join the News Literacy Project as you build those supports…

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.

The president and CEO of the PR agency CooperKatz writes that public relations professionals should help fight the threat to our access to accurate news. She credits our CEO, Alan Miller, and NLP with treating the situation as a public health crisis.

The vice president of CooperKatz lists reasons she’s passionate about news literacy and why she’s proud that the PR Council is partnering with NLP. (Her links give you the chance to practice news literacy.)  

We all have a responsibility to be better news consumers, writes former journalist Ron Sachs, whose communications firm is now part of the PR Council. That’s why the PR Council’s support for the News Literacy Project is so important.

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…

Late last month, our director of partnerships, Damaso Reyes, took the NLP message to three cities in the United Kingdom, where he addressed more than 300 students in hands-on lessons that left the teens “enthused and inspired.” The stops in Newcastle, Birmingham and Belfast were sponsored by the U.S. Embassy and Shout Out UK, an…

“Misinformation and disinformation are the equivalent of a public health threat” and news literacy is a “survival skill,” says NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller in an After the Fact podcast. Listen to the Pew Charitable Trusts interview.

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…

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 News Literacy Project and the PR Council have announced a new partnership. NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller told The Holmes Report, an industry newsletter, that NLP will train public relations agency staff how to spot “disruptive information” so they can in turn teach those lessons to their fellow PR professionals. The PR…

The Voice of America visits a high school in Virginia where students are being pushed to think critically about what they watch, read and hear. The social studies teacher is using NLP’s Checkology® platform to teach them to ask smart questions. Her goal, she says in a video and the news report, is that “the…

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…

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…

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…

“Organizations for $400, Alex!” This popular TV program featured NLP on April 5. (Please phrase your response in the form of a question!) We’re happy to note that contestant Jack Dickey — a staff writer with Sports Illustrated — answered this Jeopardy! clue correctly.     NLP on Jeopardy! from The News Literacy Project on…

Erika Beras of public radio’s Marketplace looked at the changing social media landscape and heard from NLP’s Alan C. Miller about what teens need to know.

Tom Martin, the host of Eastern Standard on WEKU, an NPR affiliate near Lexington, Kentucky, spent an hour talking with NLP’s Alan C. Miller and others about news literacy in the digital age. Miller offered guidance on discerning fact from fiction and called news literacy “a matter of personal responsibility. … People need to say…

Why news literacy? One reason, says NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller, is “the need to restore a fact-based middle ground to the national conversation.” He talks with Valerie Strauss, author of The Washington Post’s education blog, Answer Sheet, about NLP’s first 10 years and its growth as educators search for resources “to teach…

The upside to the rise of the phrase “fake news” and what it stands for is the broader recognition of the threat — and greater demand for media and news literacy lessons in schools, according to panelists at a recent Education Writers Association seminar. “There is a cure — or perhaps better put, there’s a…

“The Internet — fueled by social media — has deeply divided us,” writes NLP journalist fellow Alicia Shepard in a USA Today opinion piece. Shepard, who helped to produce PEN America’s recent study of “fraudulent news and the fight for truth,” offers long-term solutions, including the perspective of Alan C. Miller, NLP’s founder and CEO.

Last week, New York’s education policymakers heard about the urgent need for news literacy in schools, and what is at stake in its absence, reports Newsday in a story that referred to the News Literacy Project and its reach into schools. The piece, which features the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University’s School…

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.…

NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller discussed news literacy with a class at Hanover (New Hampshire) High School on Feb. 5, and reporter Tom Blinkhorn of the Valley News was there. Miller gave the class of 30 students examples of viral fake photos and said that he believes that “fake news” is an oxymoron.…

Reuters’ Pavritha George recently visited an Arlington, Virginia, high school where seniors are learning how to discern fact from fiction by using NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom. NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller was also interviewed for George’s report and explained why the need for news literacy is particularly important today. “This is an equivalent of…

Alisyn Camerota, a founding member of NLP’s national advisory council, wrote a column for CNN about her experience with NLP and the need for news literacy. “News literacy training can make a profound impact on the way students evaluate and absorb the news,” she wrote.

News Co/Lab, based at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, recently included the News Literacy Project’s Checkology® virtual classroom as one of its “best practices” for “building news savvy.” NLP is a partner of News Co/Lab. “Checkology is achieving results similar to the project’s highly effective classroom curriculum upon which…

CNN’s Brian Stelter gave a tip of the hat to NLP in his Reliable Sources newsletter in honor of the organization’s 10th anniversary. He also urged readers to check out NLP’s chorus of supporters by following the hashtag #10YearsofNLP on Twitter.

The New York Times challenged high school students to change their news diets — and write about it. Almost all of the winning essays, along with the winning video, were from students in schools that use NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom. This contest, which attracted 358 entries, required students to record, over one or two days,…