NLP News

Larry Magid’s March 13 Mercury News column, “Magid: Tools to help identify real vs. false online information,” includes information about Checkology and quotes from an interview with Alan C. Miller, NLP’s founder and CEO.  

This event has been postponed indefinitely due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Please check back later for information on a new date. Join the News Literacy Project, WXYZ-TV Channel 7, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit Public Schools Community District for a highly engaging, educator-centered NewsLitCamp featuring breakout sessions with local journalists. Registration details coming soon! NewsLitCamp is…

HundrED, a global education nonprofit, included NLP’s Checkology virtual classroom and NewsLitCamp as innovative resources in the March 12 article, “Proactive Measures In Education During The Coronavirus Pandemic.”    

A March 11 article in The New York Times Learning Network section, “Coronavirus Resources: Teaching, Learning and Thinking Critically,” listed NLP as a resource “for staying on top of what’s true and what’s not — and for learning key news literacy skills useful not just in this context, but for thinking critically about any information…

Suzannah Gonzales and John Silva discussed their work on behalf of NLP to empower educators to teach students the news literacy skills they need to become smart, active consumers of news and other information and engaged, informed participants in civic life on the TeachThought Podcast.  They were interviewed for the March 7 episode of the…

The politics, business and policy website Politico ran a Q and A with NLP founder and CEO on his birthday, March 5, 2020.  In the “BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Alan Miller, CEO and founder of the News Literacy Project” piece, Miller talks about how he got started in journalism and shares a personal anecdote.

A new study (PDF) shows that YouTube’s efforts to limit the reach of harmful conspiracy theory videos via its algorithmic recommendations have produced positive, but inconsistent, results. From October 2018 to February 2020, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley recorded more than 8 million “Up next” video recommendations made by the YouTube algorithm in…

The innovative and aggressive social media strategy of Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign is testing the limits of newly established political advertising policies at social media companies. Earlier this month, the campaign paid people behind highly influential accounts on Instagram to post humorous memes supporting Bloomberg’s candidacy. In response, Facebook — which owns Instagram — said…

Are you an educator who has used the Checkology® virtual classroom this school year and have an outstanding young woman of color in your class who has particularly benefited from the platform? If so, we hope you will nominate her to be considered for a special award from the News Literacy Project: the Gwen Ifill…

Alan C. Miller, founder and CEO of NLP, is quoted in a feature article in a Feb. 20 New York Times Learning section about news literacy trends. “Increasingly, students are arriving at college with bad digital citizenship habits. They are outsourcing their judgment to their peers and to technology,” Miller says. The piece, “These Students…

Misinformation comes at us every day, across a plethora of platforms and through myriad methods. It’s all part of an increasingly complex and fraught information landscape. But what exactly do we mean when we say misinformation? We define it as information that is misleading, erroneous or false. While misinformation is sometimes created and shared intentionally,…

The Hill, a Washington, D.C., -based news website that focuses heavily on politics, policy and business, published a commentary by Alan C. Miller, founder and CEO of the News Literacy Project, discussing the history of U.S. presidents’ views regarding a free press. The article, which ran on Presidents Day, looks at this history in light…

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, is featured in a video segment on the news website Newsy discussing misinformation circulating around the coronavirus outbreak. Adams explains how rumors that invoke fear, such as ones involving public health, can be strong drivers of misinformation.    

A BuzzFeed News investigation last week exposed a large network of  bogus local and financial news websites — replete with recycled press releases and plagiarized news stories — designed to make money in a number of ways. Matt McGorty*, who has experience in the financial information industry, established some of the sites as far back as…

NLP partnered with The E.W. Scripps Company on the first National News Literacy Week (Jan. 27-31). The initiative brought awareness to the need for news literacy education and provided students, educators and the public with tools, tips and resources for becoming news-literate. The week also generated robust news media coverage for NLP, Scripps and news…

Apple Insider and Tech Crunch were among the technology news sites reporting that a section of the Apple News app devoted to coverage of the 2020 elections now features a news literacy guide created by NLP. Axios also referenced the guide in its Feb. 7 newsletter.  In its own announcement, Apple said the guide —…

As rapidly as the coronavirus has spread in recent weeks, viral misinformation about the disease has far outpaced it, reaching millions of people on every continent in far less time. Dozens of photos and videos — of masked medical personnel; of people collapsing, being loaded into ambulances, lying in the street, and waiting in quarantine…

With our partner, The E.W. Scripps Company, we at the News Literacy Project are grateful to all of the educators, students, journalists and members of the public who joined us for National News Literacy Week. We had terrific participation on social media and through Scripps’ local TV stations across the country, and high visibility thanks…

Gwen Ifill, who was one of most respected journalists of her generation and a longtime friend and supporter of the News Literacy Project, is being honored today by the U.S. Postal Service with a Forever stamp. “Gwen Ifill was an extraordinary journalist and colleague, a relentless champion of news literacy and a treasured friend,” said…

A resource from NLP’s Checkology virtual classroom, 20 Questions to Help Students Think Critically About News, was published Jan. 26 on the website TeachThought, which is dedicated to innovation in K-12 education.  

NLP founder and CEO, Alan Miller, was Brian Stelter’s guest on the Jan. 24 segment of his Reliable Sources podcast. In his Jan. 23 newsletter, Stelter, CNN’s chief media correspondent and host of the Sunday show Reliable Sources, described their conversation: “On this week’s Reliable Sources podcast, News Literacy Project founder and CEO Alan Miller previews…

The News Literacy Project (NLP) and The E.W. Scripps Company are joining forces for National News Literacy Week (Jan. 27-31) — an initiative that will raise awareness of news literacy as a fundamental life skill and highlight the vital role of a free press in a healthy democracy. This campaign will provide educators, students and…

Suzannah Gonzales, NLP’s associate director of education, was a guest on the Minnesota Public Radio program News With Kerri Miller on Jan. 22. She was joined by Barbara Fister, scholar-in-residence at the nonprofit research institute Project Information Literacy.  The segment, titled “How to educate young people about information, news literacy,” addressed  information challenges  and explored…

A flattering piece about Facebook posted by Teen Vogue was the source of much confusion last week. “How Facebook Is Helping Ensure the Integrity of the 2020 Election” appeared on Jan. 8 without any indication that it was a piece of sponsored content, paid for by the world’s largest social media company. Soon after it…

Coordinated efforts to disseminate propaganda online are supported by “a worldwide industry of PR and marketing firms ready to deploy fake accounts, false narratives, and pseudo news websites for the right price,” according to a Jan. 6 report by BuzzFeed News and The Reporter, an investigative news outlet in Taiwan. Such businesses — which in…

As part of its local news initiative, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation asked NLP’s founder and CEO, Alan C. Miller, to consider how news literacy correlates with improved trust and understanding between the public and local news outlets. He immediately saw the connection and shared his thoughts, which were posted Jan. 9…

NLP received a shout-out from the education news site Education Dive on Jan. 7. In “Report: Florida, Ohio called ‘advanced leaders’ in K-12 media literacy efforts,” reporter Linda Jacobson looked at a new report by Media Literacy Now, a national advocacy group, detailing the status of state laws and proposed legislation promoting media literacy education…

In his original column, Stephens lauded the intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews, citing a 2005 paper that was published in the Journal of Biosocial Science, which until 1969 was named The Eugenics Review. The article was co-authored by Henry Harpending, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled an “extremist” with a “white nationalist” ideology. On Dec.…

This event has been postponed indefinitely due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Please check back later for information on a new date. Join the News Literacy Project, Block Club Chicago, the Better Government Association, The Chicago Reporter,  ProPublica Illinois and Chicago Public Schools, for a highly engaging, teacher-centered NewsLitCamp featuring breakout sessions with local journalists. Register today…

Making New Year’s resolutions is easy; keeping them is not. This year, you can adopt a meaningful resolution that is easy to keep long after we ring in another new year. So join NLP in resolving to become more news-literate in 2020. Here’s how, in three simple steps. And Happy New Year!