Reboot-home
Abandoning the news
In spring 2005, the Carnegie Corporation of New York commissioned noted U.S. editor Merrill Brown to write a report, "Abandoning the News," which examined how the nation's news organizations, struggling with changing business models and demographics, were devoting fewer and fewer resources to newsrooms. But Brown also saw the problem as one of demand, not just supply, when he wrote:
- In short, the future of the U.S. news industry is seriously threatened by the seemingly irrevocable move by young people away from traditional sources of news.
Indeed, American teen-agers are abandoning traditional news products in large numbers, or simply failing to engage with the news as they mature. In homes and classrooms, students are failing to receive the information they need to make informed decisions as voters and citizens. Yet they are highly engaged with media in multiple forms.
Over the last three years, some foundations and institutions have recognizing the significance of these changes on participatory democracy. They have launched new research or curriculum initiatives aimed at assessing or improving the situation.
Rebooting the News: Setting an Agenda for American Civic Education
On Sept. Sept. 25-28, 2008, an journalists, researchers, educators, teachers, administrators and policy makers will convene in the cradle of American democracy -- Philadelphia for "Rebooting the News: Setting an Agenda for American Civic Education." Their goal:
- Share knowledge about independent projects and research
- Review competing solution paradigms
- Assess the role of news and news organizations in solutions
- Consider the value of new national policy strategies
"Rebooting the News: Setting an Agenda for American Civic Education," is a critical examination of the relationship among media, news and U.S. public education, the projects underway and a charting of the most promising directions.
Temple University's Media Education Laboratory will physically host this knowledge-sharing, review, assessment and solution planning in Center City facilities just blocks from Independence Hall. Over an afternoon, evening and two days, we'll use a combination of short presentations, round-table discussions and "open-space" breakout sessions organized by participants. We'll include lots of time for information networking and mini projects.
WHAT WE'LL CONSIDER
Some of the things we expect "Reboot the News" to consider:
- Assessing the value of student-created media
New media forms, such as YouTube, present significant evolving uncertainties about trust, sourcing and reliability which magnify the need to offer students skills to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce media. Ideas about adding new media to the classroom are widely available, but little research exists on how media are used, or about the pedagogical value of media works created by students with civic purpose.
- Testing without civic component -- undermining frameworks?
Many states have civics education requirements as part of the curriculum. They include valuable basic instruction on government such as the Constitution, the balance of powers, and how a bill becomes a law. Some state curriculum frameworks also encourage media-literacy education. However, is the growing reliance on "teach-to-the-test" -- where test questions don't cover civics or news literacy -- made such frameworks irrelevant?
- Using news as a frame for core curriculum -- does it work?
Often on an ad hoc basis, many of America's best teachers find ways to use current-event news materials in the classroom to illustrate curriculum points in history, social studies or literature. What work is underway to help them, and does this approach produce more engaged citizens?
- Using journalists to address two challenges?
With students engaged in online activities at unprecedented levels . . . their access to media is almost unlimited . . . they have moved from primarily web searching to media creation sites such as FaceBook, YouTube and MySpace. To engage students in understanding current events it must be on this broad media playing field. Few classroom teachers have both the journalism skills and the media tools to help students become engaged in creating their own media. Can journalists become allies with teachers in this effort? What will be the impact on the survival of the news business? A collaboration of teachers and journalists could change how our schools prepare teen-agers for media use in a civil society, and address two key challenges:
- How to elevate in the minds of school boards and state curriculum framers the importance of media-literacy education as a core element of preparing teenagers to be informed, engaged citizens.
- In an environment of little-or-no financial resources, how to offer teachers the tools and training they need to be able to work with new-technology media resources alongside increasingly media-savvy (but not necessary news-savvy) students.
