50 Laid-Off Journalists to Teach 'News Literacy'

The State Univeristy of New York at Stony Brook has announced a plan to hire 50 laid-off journalists to undergo training this summer with the goal of joining dozens of U.S. university campuses this fall to teach "news literacy" to non-journalism majors, Editor and Publisher reports.

Nearly 100 university presidents, administrators, journalists and education activists gathered at Stony Brook on Thursday and Friday with the shared aim of proposing a national effort to teach high school and college students to think more critically and adopt a skeptical approach to the news.

"This is a healthy coming together of the worlds of journalism and higher education that has been needed for some time," Sanford J. Ungar, president of Coucher College, told mediagiraffe.org.

The 50 journalists' salaries would be paid for by a planning grant from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Howard Schneider, dean of the Stony Brook School of Journalism, told mediagiraffe.

Schneider told the site he will seek funding from two potential sources: the federal government's economic stimulus plan and from foundations. He is also seeking other universities to aid the effort.