The Philadelphia Inquirer is NLP’s latest participating news organization

The Philadelphia Inquirer has joined the News Literacy Project as a participating news organization — expanding the journalistic reach of the program that is helping students in middle schools and high schools learn how to separate fact from fiction in the digital age.

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 editor of the Inquirer.

“In teaching middle school and high school students how to search for truth in the digital age, NLP is performing a vital public service. Equally important, NLP’s work will inspire students to read and absorb information about our democracy and participate knowledgably in elections,” he said.

NLP is seeking to find partners and raise funds to expand the project to Philadelphia in 2013. It is currently operating in classrooms in New York City, Chicago, Washington and Bethesda, Maryland.

The Inquirer will give its journalists the opportunity to volunteer in the classroom and is helping to identify former employees who might be interested in doing so. More than 200 journalists are enrolled in NLP’s online directory; journalists have made more than 400 classroom presentations as part of the program since 2009.

The Inquirer joins (in order of participation) The New York Times, USA Today, ABC News, 60 Minutes, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR, The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, the Chicago Tribune, ProPublica, Slate, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Bloomberg, CBS News, Reuters, the Chicago Sun-Times, WTOP Radio, Univision, The Wall Street Journal and the Online News Association.