NewsTrust - News Literacy - Most Recent Stories

14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

churchandstate.org.uk - Feb. 09 (Opinion) -

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Journalism education cannot teach its way to the future

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Poynter Institute - By Howard Finberg - Jun. 16 (Opinion) - As we think about the changes whipping through the media industry, there is a nearby storm about to strike journalism education. The future of journalism education will be a very different and difficult future, a future that is full of innovation and creative disruption. And, I believe, we will see an evolution and uncoupling between the value of a journalism education and a journalism degree. When we think about the future, there’s not a single future. The future for a 20-year-old is clearly very different than the future of a 60-year-old. Each will bring a very different perspective. The future of journalism education is linked to the future of journalism itself. Each is caught within the other’s vortex, both spinning within today’s turmoil of change. The disruption in the economic models of news organizations, rippling out from the United States to Europe and elsewhere, is well documented.

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We need to reinvent the article

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

seanblanda.com - By Sean Blanda - May. 27 (Opinion) - This post is outdated. Not the content, necessarily, but the way you are consuming it. Much of the discussion about reinventing media/journalism happens in a frustratingly small spectrum while instead we ought to be reconsidering everything. No really, everything. Perhaps the biggest reason traditional content creators are being usurped by seemingly unrelated and non-journalistic web services is because the foundation of journalism is broken. In other words: we need to reinvent the article.

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How to Use the Internet Wisely, for Your Health and Your Country's

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Howard Rheingold - May. 13 (Opinion) - Use the following methods and tools to protect yourself from toxic bad info. Use them and then pass them along to others. Promote the notion that more info literacy is a practical answer to the growing info pollution. Be the change you want to see. Although the Web undermines authority (by enabling anybody to publish), authority is still useful as one clue to credibility in a detective hunt that accounts for many other clues. Claims to authority, however, need to be questioned. I might add credibility to my assessment if a source is a verified professor at a known institution of higher learning, an authentic MD or PhD, but I would not subtract it from people without credentials whose expertise seems authentic. If you are going to grant credibility to people whose expertise is based on being a professor of something, make sure that assertion is accurate. Don't stop at simply verifying that the claim to be a professor is valid if you are looking for scientific credibility. The next step is to use the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index that derives a score from the scholar's publications, citations by other scholars, grants, honors, and awards. If you want to get even more serious, download a free copy of Publish or Perish software, which analyzes scientific citations from Google Scholar according to multiple criteria. Or use the h-index to calculate how many times other scientists have cited a particular source. Again, don't trust just one source; triangulate.

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How the five web literacies are becoming essential survival skills

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Justin Ellis - May. 13 (News Report) - Howard Rheingold isn’t too concerned about whether Google is making us stupid or if Facebook is making us lonely. Those kind of criticisms, Rheingold says, miscalculate the ability humans have to change their behavior, particularly when it comes to how we use social media and the Internet more broadly. “If, like many others, you are concerned social media is making people and cultures shallow, I propose we teach more people how to swim and together explore the deeper end of the pool,” Rheingold said Thursday. Rheingold was visiting the MIT Media Lab to talk about his new book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, which examines how people can use the Internet not just to better themselves, but also society as a whole. Rheingold has a longer online history than most, going back to The WELL, one of the first online forums back in the 1980s. Ever since writing about that experience, Rheingold has developed a habit for dropping the kind of book that not just probes what it means to be online, but charts what that means for all of us.

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Google’s head of news: Newspapers are the new Yahoo

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 13 (News Report) - In an interview about the future of the media industry, Google's head of news products Richard Gingras said that newspapers are like old-fashioned internet portals such as AOL and Yahoo, and that unless they can adapt to the web instead of fighting it they are doomed.

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The Art of Getting Net Smart

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Shel Israel, Howard Rheingold - Apr. 29 (Opinion) - Howard Rheingold is a teacher, thinker, futurist and grower of the tallest sunflowers I have ever seen. He’s one the most profound thinkers of what happens online and how it changes the world. Just about every ten years, he checks in with a new book that seems to chart the course for the next decade or so. In 1993, he wrote The Virtual Community , which portended a world where people would share friendship and information with each other online, just as the first browser for the worldwide web was being popularized.

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The Tragedy of Mike Daisey's Lies About China

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Max Fisher - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - American consumers can't do much for Central Africa or Afghanistan, but they have real power to improve Chinese labor abuses. Will they be less inclined to believe the next person who tells them how?

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Howard Rheingold: Knowing How to Collaborate Is Essential

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PBS - By Roland Legrand - Mar. 17 (Interview) - I just read the Kindle edition of "Net Smart," written by writer and critic Howard Rheingold. The book provides a thoughtful analysis of some major theories and discourses about the "always on" era, while at the same time giving new insights and practical advice about the literacies we need to thrive in this environment. I've followed Rheingold's posts and videos for some time now, attended presentations, and participated in some of his courses. He's not only an expert in virtual communities (a term he coined himself) and social media, but also teaches digital journalism. I had the opportunity to interview him recently about the implications of his thinking on media, journalism and journalism education.

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Google's Social Move Attracts Critics - NYTimes.com

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Jan. 10 (News Report) - After Google announced that it was integrating material from Google+ into its search results, the Web shot back, attacking the company and accusing it of pushing aside competing social networks, including Twitter and Facebook.

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Ethan Zuckerman wants you to eat your (news) vegetables — or at least have better information

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Andrew Phelps - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - Zuckerman wants to create nutritional labels for news, showing how much marshmallow fluff you mix in with your meat and potatoes. But both the tech and politics of categorizing journalism have a long way to go.

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Best Media Watchdog Experiment: NewsTrust

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

City Paper - Sep. 21 (Editorial) - We got used to NewsTrust Baltimore’s e-mails very quickly. More than a thoughtful amalgam of Baltimore stories from around the web, the alerts came with an invitation to think about the stories in a critical way and comment via a strict form included on the site. Inveterate web commenters might at first be offended by this kind of formalism, but it worked: The idea of rating which news sources are “trustworthy” is, of course, not new. But in using this form to guide self-selected readers, NewsTrust helped its readers (and itself) understand something about the news ecosystem from the point of view of both newsmakers and consumers. NewsTrust, launched via a now-concluded six-month pilot program but with its site still active, was filled with thoughtful, constructive criticism of stories and articles both local and global, and was blessedly devoid of moronic flame wars. In this age of partisan rancor, that is no small thing.

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NewsTrust on Fact-Checking and the Wisdom of Crowds

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Walter Frick - Aug. 25 (Interview) - Truthsquad is a new pro-am fact-checking service we are developing with the Center for Public Integrity, to help journalists and citizens separate fact from fiction together. We are combining the best practices of crowdsourcing with the knowledge of a large nonprofit newsroom and the reach of major news partners. This unique approach empowers citizens to collaborate with journalists to investigate controversial statements from politicians and newsmakers. Participants are invited to post questionable claims online, research factual evidence supporting or opposing these claims, and verify their accuracy as a community, with professional oversight.

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Roger Ailes and the rise of Fox News

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Tim Dickinson - Aug. 11 (News Report) - Even Rupert Murdoch is afraid of Roger Ailes, the paranoid boss of Fox News. But 'the Chairman' is using his power to make Americans more rightwing, more ignorant and ever more terrified At the Fox News Chrismas party the year the network overtook arch-rival CNN in the cable ratings, tipsy employees were herded down to the basement of a midtown bar in New York. As they gathered around a television mounted high on the wall, an image flashed to life, glowing bright in the darkened tavern: the MSNBC logo. A chorus of boos erupted among the Fox faithful. The CNN logo followed, and the catcalls multiplied. Then a third slide appeared, with a telling twist. In place of the logo for Fox News was a beneficent visage: the face of the network's founder. The man known to his fiercest loyalists simply as "the Chairman" – Roger Ailes. "It was as though we were looking at Mao," recalls Charlie Reina, a former Fox News producer. The Foxistas went wild. They let the dogs out. Woof! Woof! Woof! Even those ...

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Aliteracy Anxiety

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Time Passing - By Lance Strate - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - Aliteracy may be the trend of the future. Reading limited to short bursts. Street signs. Restaurant menus. Headlines. Status updates and tweets. Short paragraphs online. And reading that is limited to the functional, reading for directions, for instructions, for getting tasks done. As opposed to reading for pleasure. And as opposed to reading as a cultural activity.

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The 'most consistently misinformed media viewers'

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - “In polls,” Stewart said, in a surprisingly angry tone, “who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox. Fox viewers. Consistently. Every poll.”

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The article as luxury or byproduct

Sun, 29 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Buzzmachine - By Jeff Jarvis - May. 29 (Opinion) - A few episodes in news make me think of the article not as the goal of journalism but as a value-added luxury or as a byproduct of the process. * See the amazing Brian Stelter covering the Joplin tornado and begging his desk at The Times to turn his tweets into a story because he had neither the connectivity nor the time to do it in the field and, besides, he was too busy doing something more precious: reporting. (It’s a great post, a look at a journalist remaking his craft. Highly recommended for journalists and journalism students particularly.) (And aren’t you proud of me for not drawing the obvious and embarrassing comparison to Times editor Bill Keller’s Luddite trolling about Twitter even as his man in Twitter, Stelter, proves what a valuable tool it is?)

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Why Every Student Should Learn Journalism Skills

Tue, 24 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PBS - By Tina Barseghian - May. 24 (Interview) - How do we make schools more relevant to students? Teach them the skills they need in the real world, with tools they use every day. That's exactly what Esther Wojcicki, a teacher of English and journalism at Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, Calif., is attempting to do with the recent launch of the website 21STcenturylit.

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Writing Teachers: Still Crazy After All These Years

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Minding the Campus - By Mary Grabar - Apr. 22 (Opinion) - After spending four depressing days this month at a meeting of 3,000 writing teachers in Atlanta, I can tell you that their parent group, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, is not really interested in teaching students to write and communicate clearly. The group’s agenda, clear to me after sampling as many of the meeting’s 500 panels as I could, is devoted to disparaging grammar, logic, reason, evidence and fairness as instruments of white oppression. They believe rules of grammar discriminate against “marginalized” groups and restrict self-expression.

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The Boston Marathon, the aborted landing and the lost journalists: #WPNewsquiz

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Katie Rogers - Apr. 22 (Entertainment) - Welcome to BlogPosts's weekly crazy social-news-quiz-on-Twitter-experiment.

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Measuring and increasing accuracy in journalism

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

jonathanstray.com - By Jonathan Stray - Apr. 21 (Opinion) - Professional journalism is supposed to be “factual,” “accurate,” or just plain true. Is it? Has news accuracy been getting better or worse in the last decade? How does it vary between news organizations, and how do other information sources rate? Is prof

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NewsTrust Baltimore takes a local approach to media literacy and showcasing new journalism

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Justin Ellis - Feb. 09 (News Analysis) - NewsTrust sees its mission as helping readers find “good journalism” by giving people the tools to separate good from bad. But when it comes to journalism, good and bad aren’t exactly universal truths anymore. Is a story good if it adheres to facts but lacks strong writing? Is a story bad if it’s on a blog, regardless of how it’s reported? And what if its told through an ideological or political lens different from your own? While NewsTrust has previously employed its tools for vetting journalism on a national level, their newest test, NewsTrust Baltimore, takes things to a smaller scale — namely one where readers’ connection to news is based on geography (will a new school be built? is the police department cutting staff? did the legislature cut taxes?) and necessity. That familiarity, with both the news and outlets reporting it, could make for a better experiment in media criticism as well as media literacy. Who better to judge the Baltimore Sun or WYPR than the people who live in the area?

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Nine days since Tucson

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

MSNBC - By Keith Olbermann - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the nine days since Tucson. That awful night, I said this: We need to put the guns down. Just as importantly we need to put the gun metaphors away and permanently. Left, right, middle — politicians and citizens — sane and insane. This age in which this country would accept "targeting" of political opponents and putting bullseyes over their faces, and of the dangerous blurring between political rallies and gun shows, ended.

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Distrust in U.S. Media Edges Up to Record High

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Gallup - By Lymari Morales - Sep. 29 (Poll) - For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.

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Print Culture 101: A Cheat Sheet and Syllabus

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By C.W. Anderson - Aug. 19 (Opinion) - When I said that I was busy putting a syllabus together for a course on "Print Culture" at CUNY's College of Staten Island this fall, Alexis Madrigal asked me if I'd be willing to share the syllabus development process with the larger online community. I was more than happy to oblige -- and also a little bit scared. It's one thing to put your course outline up at your own website which you're pretty sure no one will read it but your captive students; it's quite another to put yourself out there publicly when you're teaching a class for the first time. But I'm hoping that one of this things this post might do is to serve as a larger space for discussion and feedback about how, exactly, we should teach this history of print media in a digital age. I know there are experts out there -- and I'd love for them to weigh in. As Dan Gilmor wrote in another context, my audience knows more than I do. So help me out in the comments section.

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