Newsliteracy-notes

News Literacy in the Digital Era

A new initiative by American's newspaper editors to understand and promote "news literacy" has kicked off with a seminar at The Poynter Institute attended (Aug. 11-12, 2008) by about 40 journalists, educators and students. The American Society of Newspaper Editors arranged the invitation-only seminar in conjunction with Poynter and with support from the Ford Foundation.

Key goals, according to Poynter co-convenor Kelly McBride:

• Become more articulate about news literacy as a topic
• Come up with a series of projects to implement at the local level

Opening Aug.11, Howard Schneider, dean of the Stony Brook University School of Journalism, is talking about his definition of news literacy and what he is doing at Stony Brook -- teaching 1,000 students this semester and committed to teaching 10,000 students in the next few years. His talk was similar to a talk he gave in Lowell, Mass. on June 28, 2008.

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VIEW AUDIO/VIDEO ABOUT STONY BROOK NEWS LITERACY PROGRAM

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Schneider says a Stony Brook goal is to become a national clearinghouse for information on news literacy. He says his passion for that goal began a few years ago when he taught a class in the ethics and values in American media. Students were very skeptical of media.

"When I was finished teaching that class, I was convinced that we would need to make a radical change in our plans for the journalism school." The second mission was: "To train the next generation of news consumers . . . and it was a mission that was as important if not more important than teaching the next generation of journalists."

"We began to pander," instead of realizing that we weren't at the heart. The NIE programs were the first thing that was cut. "Even the NIE programs, in retrospect, were really misguided." "We thought this was building another generation, it was all run by the circulation department, it was a marketing intiative. It was all to boosts sales .... we really didn't understand our audience, we didn't understand what was going on."

"News literacy is not about selling newspapers," says Schneider. But he says if we can create an audience that knows what news is about, it will help many things. "It is also not about technology."

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NEWS LITERACY CURRICULUM: OUTCOMES

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A working definition from Schneider: "News literacy is the ability to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports, whether they come via print, television or the internet."

"Media literacy" is a broader area, says Schneider. "It's the ability to access, analyze and evaluate media messages across an array of platforms . . . journalism is one tributary in media literacy. What we have done is taken that tributary and blow it out, to make it the center in everything we do." Why? asks Schneider. He answers: Because news is the greatest educational tool there is. The ability to assess news is a critical skill of citizenship. He says democracy can only flourish with an informed citizenry, and quality journalism can only be sustain by a public that recognizes it and is willing to support it.

Schneider says the news literacy course at Stony Brook tries to teach students that if they fail to interpret news stories correctly, it could have negative consequences on their lives. There is lots of confusion between news and opinion, he said.

Editors questioning Schneider David Scribman, editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, told a story of a reader who had called criticizing his paper's Mideast coverage as biased against Israel. He said he read the women their story, and read the identical story from the New York Times, from which the Post-Gazette had obtained the account. The woman said, "You lying." Schribman said: "Where do you live, I'm getting in the car and coming to your house." He drove to the woman's house, and showed her both papers and read the identical language in both articles. And she said: "I never read the story, my daughter told me about it." And she offered him pastry. "I can't get in my car every day," said Schribman. "We need a Chautauqua (Institution) on this."

"That's what we should have been doing for years," said Schneider. "That's what we have to sell to our audience, and we never quite did it."

Renee Hobbs, a media literacy scholar from Temple University, talked about distinctions between media and news literacy. Media literacy uses concepts of reading, writing, speaking and listening. It is two way -- writing as well as reading, such as writing a press release, or a letter to the editor -- "contributing to citizenship through active engagement." She asks if Schneider was focused in "news literacy" too much on passive consumption, rather than contributing to the culture and political process.

"We do have the students write a letter to the editor," says Schneider. They also write essays on some aspect of media and democracy or media literacy.

Jim McGonnell, a high-school journalism techer from Findley, Ohio, (jmcgonnell at findlaycityschools.org) said professional journalists in the classroom or at conferences often time focus too much on themselves, and not enough on the subject. As a result, two groups he's involved with are sometimes wary of asking journalists to speak. Those two groups are the Journalism Education Association, at Kansas State University, which assists advisors of high-school newspapers, (Linda Putney, director), and the National Scholastic Press Association, at the University of Minnesota (Logan Aimone, director).

Journalism Ed