From the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker:

“People of a certain age, who may also have read a book or two, are more likely to recognize the difference. But what about rising generations who have spent a frightening percentage of their lives consuming data in a random world of tweets, blogs and food-fight commentators, for whom fame is a goal and reality a show? Once accustomed to such high-velocity infotainment, how does one develop tolerance for the harder reads and the deeper conversations?

These questions are at the forefront of a growing news literacy movement aimed at teaching young people how to think critically and judge the quality of information. Two leaders in the movement are the News Literacy Project (NLP), led by Alan Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former Los Angeles Times investigative journalist, and the Center for News Literacy(CNL) at Stony Brook University…

News literacy programs provide some hope at least for a more sophisticated consumer. It’s a modest start, but learning to read critically is no less important than reading itself — a simple truth with which even incumbent politicians could agree.”