Newsliteracy-notes

News Literacy in the Digital Era

Opening this morning, Howard Schneider 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.

He talk 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."

Working definition: "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."