By: E&P Staff Long Island's Stony Brook University today unveiled a proposal 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 what they term "news literacy" to non-journalism majors.
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.
A grant from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will go for the attempt to secure full funding, Howard Schneider, dean of the Stony Brook School of Journalism, told mediagiraffe. Funds to begin any hiring are not yet in place.
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.
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