517885

research-article2013
JMCXXX10.1177/1077695813517885Journalism & Mass Communication EducatorFleming

Research Article
Journalism & Mass Communication Educator
2014, Vol. 69(2) 146­–165
Media Literacy, News © AEJMC 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1077695813517885
Appreciation? A Case Study jmce.sagepub.com

of the News Literacy Program

at Stony Brook University

Jennifer Fleming1

Abstract
This case study provides practical and theoretical insights into the Stony Brook news
literacy program, which is one of the most ambitious and well-funded curricular
experiments in modern journalism education and media literacy. Analysis of document,
interview, and observation data indicates that news literacy educators sought to
teach students how to access, evaluate, analyze, and appreciate journalism. Students
responded favorably to the approach that was designed for all undergraduates, instead
of just journalism majors. Implications and future directions include looking at the
preferred readings of news texts found in the Stony Brook curriculum in the same
way one would contextualize lessons in college-level music appreciation courses.

Keywords
news literacy, media literacy, journalism education, citizenship instruction, higher
education

The problem with journalism education in the digital age is both practical and philo-
sophical. The relevance of journalism in academia has been in question for more than
a century. It achieved a moderate level of scholarly legitimacy through widespread
integration with communication studies,1 but it is most consistently viewed as a disci-
pline of practice, not one of deep and reflective thought.2 The practice-oriented

1California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Jennifer Fleming, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., SPA 024, Long Beach,
CA, 90840, USA.
Email: jennifer.fleming@csulb.edu
Fleming 147

philosophy is reflected heavily in instructional norms that focus on journalistic skills

and sense-making as well as socialization for newsrooms.3 The thinking is that a jour-
nalism degree is a pathway to a career in news.4 However, the practical purpose of
journalism education has become a problem now more than ever as news professions
adjust to digital age realities of fragmenting audiences and disintegrating newsrooms.
In the midst of the structural storm in news, Howard Schneider, who had just ended
a thirty-five-year career at Newsday, agreed to start a new journalism school at Stony
Brook University in New York. As Schneider was building the school, he veered off of
journalism education’s skills-development tradition and into unchartered curricular
territory he called news literacy. Schneider positioned news literacy as an instructional
solution to the dilution of press influence and the disappearance of clearly defined
boundaries between journalism and other types of information. He reasoned that
young audiences on the “demand side” of the information equation who learned how
to identify well-sourced journalism would sharpen their critical thinking skills and
come to support high-quality news sources. Thereby, journalism schools now needed
two missions: “Our first mission was daunting enough: to train the next generation of
reporters and editors in a period of media transformation. But the second mission was
of equal—perhaps greater—importance: to educate the next generation of news
consumers.”5
From the beginning, Schneider positioned news literacy as a subset of media liter-
acy, even though he rejected using established media literacy frameworks. He rea-
soned that instructional programs aimed at teaching students how to access, evaluate,
analyze, and create all types of media messages were too general for news content, so
he designed a curriculum based primarily on his experiences as a newspaper reporter
and editor. Schneider’s claim to media literacy conceptual territory was not without
criticism. Hobbs, for example, suggests that the Stony Brook approach to news liter-
acy is little more than journalism’s old guard retelling newsroom war stories, and thus
is unlikely to develop skills at the heart of media literacy education.6 At the same time,
little independent scholarly research on news literacy at Stony Brook, which is the
largest and most ambitious program of its kind, is available.7 This article is designed
to address the gap in research.
In this article, I present the background of the Stony Brook news literacy project,
including an exploration of the literature about media literacy, the aims of the program,
and some findings that focus on student observations and interviews. It should be
noted, however, that this article does not include data supporting or not supporting
student learning. Rather, I identify the guiding principles of news literacy instruction
and connect them with key tenets of media literacy education. Analysis of observation
notes, interviews transcripts, and instructional materials determined that news literacy
instructors sought to teach students how to access, evaluate, and analyze news. Results
also suggest that they hoped to cultivate in students an appreciation for an investiga-
tive and accurate press. Possible studies that carry the ideas presented in this work
forward include assessment of the effectiveness of news literacy pedagogy and com-
parison of media literacy programs that focus on news analysis instruction.
148 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 69(2)

Literature Review
The primary goal of media literacy education is to help students develop informed and
critical understandings of the nature and influence of mass media. The normative
premise of the media literacy movement is that schools should neither ignore nor
blindly accept the curriculum that media are already teaching students outside of class-
rooms. Media literacy education is more advanced abroad, particularly in European
nations and Canada.8 Definitions of media literacy vary depending on theoretical
foundations of the educators who design each intervention.9 Generally speaking, to be
media literate means a person has developed the ability to access, evaluate, analyze,
and create media messages.10
Potter finds that the most frequently cited purpose of media literacy education is the
development of critical thinking skills. Potter adds, however, that these skills are infre-
quently spelled out and, as a result, critical thinking is used as an “umbrella idea for an
unspecified conglomeration of mental processes.”11 This ambiguity leads Potter to
conclude that articulations of specific skills and kinds of knowledge in media literacy
are rare. Even so, he identifies four common themes across media literacy literature.
They include a belief among advocates, researchers, and instructors that (1) media can
harm individuals, (2) the purpose of media literacy is to teach people how to guard
against being harmed by media, (3) media literacy skills and abilities must be culti-
vated, and (4) media literacy is multidimensional, meaning people are influenced by
media cognitively, attitudinally, emotionally, physiologically, and behaviorally.12
Silverblatt, Ferry, and Finan synthesize five ways to teach students how to become
media literate. Instruction in ideological analysis is informed by cultural studies and
thereby seeks to teach students how to recognize and challenge oppressive social
structures and stereotypes created and perpetuated by the media. Autobiographical
analysis uses personal experiences, attitudes, values, lifestyles, and decisions as peda-
gogical reference points to spur discussion and investigation. Nonverbal analysis
focuses on critiquing the meaning of unspoken communication in media messages
such as gestures and facial expressions. Mythic approaches instruct students on how to
identify and analyze allegorical elements in media programming that express deep and
commonly held beliefs about culture. Analysis of production elements is rooted in
media aesthetics and emphasizes interpretation of media presentations through the
examination of the style features such as editing, composition, point of view, angle,
graphics, and the use of sound and special effects.13
Similar to media literacy, approaches to news literacy depend on the theoretical
foundations and instructional purposes of educators. That being said, literature on
news literacy specifically is limited given the label news literacy is relatively new. The
need for a specialized category in media literacy that focuses exclusively on news rests
on the premise that news plays an important role in democracy and news providers,
therefore, have unique responsibilities to inform self-governing citizens.14 Altschull
calls this belief the democratic assumption:
Fleming 149

In a democracy, it is the people who rule, and their voices are heard in the voting booths.
The decisions made by the people in the voting booths are based on information made
available to them. That information is provided primarily by the news media. Hence, the
news media are indispensable to the survival of democracy.15

Scholarly critics of the U.S. news media system often point to structural factors
such as journalistic codes and conventions as well as private ownership of news orga-
nizations to explain why journalists seemingly fail to fulfill their social mission of
informing citizens.16
Instruction on news analysis is often part of media literacy education, given the
importance of news to democracy.17 Hobbs, for example, frames critical reading and
viewing habits as essential citizenship skills.18 Hobbs goes on to formulate seven news
literacy learning principles based on her observations of children who participated in
a program that connected real news events with media literacy lessons and activities.
According to Hobbs, news literacy educators should (1) start from the learner’s inter-
est by focusing on current news events, (2) connect comprehension and analysis
through close reading of news texts, (3) ask critical questions through dialogue and
debate, (4) focus on how news stories are constructed, (5) link critical analysis and
media composition, (6) use a variety of media to engage students, and (7) make con-
nections between the class and the community.19 Hobbs claims that these principles
work and therefore should guide established and emerging news literacy programs.20
Ashley, Maksl, and Craft formulate a statistically valid scale designed to assess
news media literacy knowledge.21 Their News Media Literacy or NML scale is based
on a previously applied media literacy framework that looks at attitudes and tactics
used by cigarette marketers across three domains of understanding: authors and audi-
ences, messages and meanings, and representation and reality. They reason news mes-
sages need a different yet conceptually similar scale because news represents
“fact-based media system knowledge” with special responsibilities to the public dis-
course.22 To assess the reliability of the instrument, student participants were asked to
rate their agreement or disagreement on a Likert-type scale with statements about
news media such as (1) The owner of a media company influences the content that is
produced, (2) News is designed to attract audience attention, and (3) News makes
things more dramatic than they really are.
Mihailidis provides the most comprehensive body of work to date on news literacy
in the context of journalism education at the college-level specifically.23 In one such
study, Mihailidis finds that a class focused on news analysis was successful in devel-
oping critical reading and viewing skills in students, but it also seemed to encourage
cynical views of the press. As a result, Mihailidis warns that programs without lessons
on personal interpretation habits and news theories and practices might lead to dismis-
sive attitudes about the press and civic responsibilities in general.24 Mihailidis adds
that approaches to news literacy must reflect the fact that the public sphere once domi-
nated by major news organizations has become increasingly democratic thanks to the
Internet, social media platforms, and mobile technologies.25
150 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 69(2)

Method
A case study of the Stony Brook news literacy program was conducted. Case study is
a qualitative approach to scholarly inquiry that emphasizes an understanding of peo-
ple, events, and processes in their natural settings. Case study researchers focus on
learning the meaning that the participants hold about the problem or issue under exam-
ination by examining documents, observing activities, and conducting interviews.26 To
learn about news literacy at Stony Brook from the perspective of its participants, this
study addressed the following questions:

RQ1: What are the guiding principles of news literacy instruction?

RQ2: How is news literacy understood by students?

Research Setting
Founded in 2006, the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University is the only
undergraduate journalism program in the State University of New York (SUNY) sys-
tem. In less than five years, the school attracted more than three hundred majors,
started a Master of Science program, and generated millions of dollars in grants to
assist in the development, instruction, and expansion of news literacy. The John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation allocated close to $2 million to the program in 2006 with
the stipulation that ten thousand undergraduates take the news literacy course.
Numerous other grants followed to further refine news literacy, host conferences and
workshops, and create a digital resource center.27

News Literacy Course

News literacy at Stony Brook refers both to a skill and a general education-granting
freshman-level course.28 News literacy as a skill is defined as an “ability to use critical
thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports, whether they
come via print, TV, or the Internet.” The ultimate goal of the news literacy course is
for students to become more regular and more skeptical news readers, watchers, and
listeners who are able to determine if information is reliable enough for them to “reach
a conclusion, make a judgment, or take an action.” A set of ten learning outcomes
divided into five key skills and five key concepts was created to guide instruction,
assessment, and the overall conceptual flow of the course.

Key skills
1. Recognize the difference between journalism and other kinds of information
and between journalists and other information purveyors;
2. In the context of journalism, recognize the difference between news and
opinion;
Fleming 151

3. In the context of news stories, analyze the difference between assertion and
verification and between evidence and inference;
4. Evaluate and deconstruct news reports based on the quality of evidence pre-
sented and the reliability of sources; understand and apply these principles
across all news media platforms; and
5. Distinguish between news media bias and audience bias.

Key concepts
1. Appreciate the power of reliable information and the importance of a free flow
of information in a democratic society.
2. Understand the nature and mission of the American press and its relationship
with the government; compare and contrast to other systems around the world.
3. Understand how journalists work and make decisions and why they make
mistakes.
4. Understand how the digital revolution and the structural changes in the news
media can affect news consumers; understand our new responsibilities as pub-
lishers as well as consumers.
5. Understand why news matters and why becoming a more discerning news con-
sumer can change individual lives and the life of the country.29

News literacy students meet twice a week: The first meeting takes place in a large
lecture hall filled with about two hundred students. The second meeting is known as a
recitation, which is a smaller, discussion-based classes of between twenty and twenty-
five students from the same lecture section. The recitations are designed to explore in
depth the topics and concepts introduced in the preceding lecture. The lectures and
recitations follow a fourteen-unit curriculum. The appendix provides an overview of
the fourteen units and the skills and concepts associated with each.

Data Collection
Following University of California Los Angeles Institutional Review Boards approval,
the researcher visited the Stony Brook campus during the fall 2010 semester when
1,230 students were enrolled in the news literacy course across seven lecture sections
and forty-three recitations.
During the site visit, hundreds of documents were retrieved, audiovisual and physi-
cal artifacts were collected, ten news literacy lectures, eight recitations, six meetings,
and two special events were directly observed, and twenty-eight people were inter-
viewed. A mixed purposeful sampling technique was followed to gain access to par-
ticipants. Purposeful sampling refers to the deliberate selection of informants with
special experience or competence in topics of central importance to the study.
Of the twenty-eight people who agreed to be interviewed, eight were administra-
tors, four were lecturers, two were recitation instructors, three were news fellows, and
eleven were students enrolled in the course at the time of the site visit. News fellows
152 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 69(2)

were graduate student teaching assistants from disciplines outside of journalism who
were hired to lead recitations. In addition, Howard Schneider and Center for News
Literacy Director Dean Miller also taught lectures and recitations but were classified
as administrators because of their supervisory roles. All of the administrators and lec-
turers agreed to be identified in materials resulting from the research, while the news
fellows and students were assigned pseudonyms.30

Data Organization and Analysis

Instructional materials, interview transcripts, and observation notes were uploaded into
a case study database in Nvivo. Nvivo is a software program that allows a researcher to
conduct code-based inquiries, develop and display dynamic documents, store and link
memos that capture theorizing about data, visualize connections between data catego-
ries through the creation of models, and track their movements within the data.31
According to the tenets of grounded theory, patterns and themes emerge through
the identification and comparison of categorized data. Naming or categorizing data is
referred to as coding. Coding for this study was extensive, given the large amount of
data collected.32 Comments and data excerpts that seemed to go together guided the
creation of classification system within Nvivo that reflected the themes and patterns of
news literacy instruction and student reaction to them. Nvivo-specific tools such as
word frequency and word cluster reports were also used to get a better sense of how
participants viewed news literacy and what they were saying about it.

Findings
In reporting the results, descriptions of the news literacy curriculum and classroom
environments are intertwined with interview excerpts and themes identified in the
data. The findings are divided into two sections: guiding principles and student
understandings.

Guiding Principles
Through the analysis of instructional documents, observations notes, and administra-
tor, lecturer, and news fellow interview transcripts, three guiding principles of news
literacy instruction emerged. News literacy at Stony Brook strived to teach students
how to (1) access news, (2) evaluate and analyze news, and (3) appreciate a specific
genre of news.

Access
Accessing news in news literacy meant developing the ability to identify it. To achieve
this outcome, Howard Schneider created the news neighborhood framework to encour-
age students to look at information as one would look at a map when trying to find a
specific address. According to the Taxonomy of Information Neighborhoods in Table 1,
Fleming 153

Table 1.  Taxonomy of Information Neighborhoods.

Raw
News Entertainment Promotion Propaganda Information
Goal To inform To amuse or To sell goods To build mass To bypass
to engage and services support institutional
people and talent for an filters and
during their personalities ideology by distribution
leisure time by increasing canonizing costs to sell,
in activities their appeal to its leaders publicize,
in which consumers and advocate,
they are demonizing entertain,
passive its and inform
participants opposition
Methods Verification, Storytelling, Paid advertising One-sided Facebook,
independence, performance, and public accounts or Twitter,
and the visual arts relations outright lies, YouTube,
accountability and music activities Press relying on blogs,
releases, public emotional websites,
statements, manipulation chain email,
staged events, through text message
sponsorship, images, forwarding,
product appeals to flyers, graffiti
placement, majority
websites, viral values and
videos, and so fallacious
on reasoning
Practitioners Reporters Actors, Ad agencies, Political Anyone
Photographers/ musicians, publicists, operatives with a web
videographers, writers and public relations and connection,
editors, and producers experts, organizations photocopier,
producers government or a can of
spokespersons paint
Outcomes Empowers Distraction Increased sales Helps a group Outlet for self-
citizens by from or of products seize or expression,
educating changed view and services maintain entertainment.
them of daily life. or higher fees power by promotion,
Reinforcement for talent being influencing advocacy,
or critique of promoted public opinion propaganda
social norms and motivating
the public to
take action
consistent
with its
ideology

Source. Stony Brook University. Center for News Literacy.

news is parsed from the other information sources because it has different goals, meth-
ods, practitioners, and outcomes. For example, the grid states that the goal of news
media is to inform, whereas the goal of entertainment media is to amuse. The methods
154 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 69(2)

of news include verification, independence, and accountability, while the methods of

entertainment include storytelling and performance. Therefore, if students wanted to
determine if they were accessing news, they needed to look for evidence that the infor-
mation was verified, independent, and accountable.
Schneider admitted that the news neighborhood grid was “not perfect” and could be
“a little confusing” especially in the assessment of satirical news programs such as The
Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report.33 Regardless, Schneider viewed
the framework as essential because he believed students would not be able to effec-
tively evaluate news unless they could first understand how and why it is different
from other information sources.

Evaluate and Analyze

Schneider described journalists as expert information gatherers and processors: “One
of the great skills of journalists is the ability to synthesize information.”34 Center for
News Literacy director and lecturer Dean Miller, a former editor at the Post Register,
referred to journalists as “honest brokers.”35 Lecturer and former TIME editor Richard
Hornik called them excellent “bullshit detectors.”36 Lecturer Steven Reiner, who had
worked as a producer at All Things Considered and 60 Minutes, said journalism was
fact based: “It’s about the facts. It’s rooted in the facts. It’s rooted in being able to
essentially prove things. . . . Get his age right. Get what he does for a living right. Get
what he said right. Get it all right, and get it all right regardless of the
ramifications.”37
Instructor understandings of news are important because they influenced how stu-
dents were taught to evaluate and analyze journalism. In brief, the journalists-turned-
educators interviewed expected news sources to be accurate; therefore, instruction on
how to evaluate and analyze news zeroed in on the veracity of information. The chief
pedagogical pathway in news literacy to teach students how to separate good, fact-
based journalism from bad, opinion- and emotion-ridden journalism was the
Deconstruction Guide, which directed students to dissect news reports according to
the following prompts:

1. Summarize the main points of the story.

2. Assess the evidence supporting the main points of the story. Was it verified?
What is asserted?
3. How close does the reporter come to opening the freezer?38 Is the evidence
direct or indirect?
4. Are the sources reliable?
5. Does the reporter make his or her work transparent?
6. Does the reporter place the story in context?
7. Are the key questions (who? what? when? where? why? how?) answered?
8. Is the story fair? Can you reach a conclusion, take an action, or make a
judgment?
Fleming 155

Jason, a PhD candidate in the social sciences and second-year news fellow, believed
in the value of deconstructing news and likened the method to a mechanical process:

I think they mean deconstruction not in the sense that they use it in English or philosophy
but in the sense of taking something apart, then putting it back together. . . . I think that’s
something valuable for people to be able to take apart every sentence, every source, every
bit of evidence and say, “Can I make a judgment here? Can I say for sure whether I agree
or disagree with this position? How do I know if this is reliable?”

Jason added that the news literacy curriculum had an underlying current of critical
thinking that came to life in deconstruction lessons:

Deconstruction is a great skill for students to learn. I think they hear it a lot at the
university: “We want you to be critical thinkers. Here are five critical thinking skills.” But
what does that really mean to think critically about the news? Well, here are some
techniques that are really helpful.39

Appreciate
Throughout the course, journalists committed to acting in the public interest by produc-
ing verified, independent, and accountable information were depicted as democracy-
enhancing crusaders. Dean Miller referred to the press as a “full-time citizen.”40
Lecturer Julia Mead, who was a regular contributor of science stories to The New York
Times, often talked with her students about the public service mission of the press and
how freedom of expression and reporting on those in power were professional and
personal imperatives:

I do talk [in class] about journalists being really idealistic people. We really do believe in
the public service element of what we do, the public’s right to know, the First Amendment.
All of those noble, high ideals are motivators for us because, surely, none of us are getting
rich doing this.41

Lecturer Steven Reiner commented, “There is certain inbred romanticism [in news
literacy] about journalism—a kind of love of and respect for journalism.”42 Reiner
credited the course’s respect for journalism to Howard Schneider, and it was clear
Schneider favored a specific type of journalist: the investigator and instigator who
watched, reported on, and exposed those in power.
For Schneider, news literacy was his way to teach a new generation of news audiences
how to access, evaluate, and analyze news as well as appreciate important principles
of the press he feared were disappearing as the lines between “responsible” journalism
and everything else blurred in the fast-moving digital sea of information and disinfor-
mation. On his final few years working in newspapers, Schneider recalled,

I was watching a news organization [Newsday] that I helped build be systematically

dismantled. I was watching colleagues who I thought were among the best journalists in
156 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 69(2)

the country being pushed out or fired. I was having a difficult time trying to accept the
fact that all the work that I had done, and I don’t mean me personally, but I mean my
generation had done, was now in jeopardy.43

Thus, Schneider concluded that news literacy was American journalism’s answer to
a disappearing professional press corps committed to watchdog reporting:

The ultimate check against an inaccurate or irresponsible press never would be just
better-trained journalists, or more press critics and ethical codes. It would be a generation
of news consumers who would learn how to distinguish for themselves between news and
propaganda, verification and mere assertion, evidence and inference, bias and fairness,
and between media bias and audience bias.44

Student Understandings
Through analysis of observation notes and student interview data, three outcomes of
news literacy instruction emerged: engagement, awareness of current affairs, and
knowledge of press principles and practices.

Engagement
Students seemed to like the dynamic atmosphere of news literacy classes and the exten-
sive use of “fresh” examples—“fresh” meaning recent, ripped-from-the-headlines
news articles and TV reports. Allison, a computer science major, commented, “It is
probably one of the classes that I enjoy the most because it is very applicable, and
everything that we talk about happened recently.”45 Mechanical engineering freshman
Barbara described news literacy as “interesting” and “interactive” adding, “It’s not
like you’re sitting there looking at slides. They play videos and use a lot of examples
so you get to see newspaper clippings of why this concept worked or didn’t work.”46
Students also responded favorably to the real-life knowledge and experiences jour-
nalists brought to news literacy classrooms. Allison remarked, “I can respect my pro-
fessor more and listen to what he has to say more because he actually has experience
in the field.”47 Shannon, a freshman who was pursuing a degree in health sciences,
thought the in-the-journalism-trenches stories strengthened the course because

you get to learn more in depth about it. You get to know opinions on certain insider
things. The fact that the recitation teachers have or are writing in newspapers [means]
they have personal and professional experiences to back up what they’re saying.48

History major Rochelle added that she learned that being a journalist was not easy
and described the realization as a “light bulb moment” because “now I was seeing it
[news] from the other side.”49
Fleming 157

Awareness of Current Events

All of the students interviewed said that they followed news more regularly as a result
of taking the class. Diana said that she enjoyed staying up-to-date on current affairs:

I mean, we have to pay attention to the news for class, for the quizzes, but we also
actually learn why news is important. I think I’m better at following stories. You know
once news lit ends, I will remember the lessons about why you should pay attention to
news and why it is important.50

In contrast to Diana, several students reported that they had already been regular
news readers and watchers when they signed up for the class. For these students, the
pedagogy taught them how to look at news differently and more critically. Jose, a
senior health science major, discussed how his news interpretation habits changed:
“I’m in my 40s, so for me I watch the news regularly for a lot of reasons—financial,
whatever. It’s like something I’ve done all of my life. But it’s never been broken down
to specifics.”51

Knowledge of Press Principles and Practices

Across the interview sample, students reported a deeper understanding of journalism
and, in numerous cases, a new appreciation for the work of journalists. Rochelle, for
example, thought that “everybody” could do journalism before she took news
literacy:

It’s like writing a little story and you put some facts in there and baam! You’ve got
journalism! But [the instructor taught me] that there is actually a thought process behind
it and so that stuck with me. Whenever I read an article I ask myself: Is this verified?
Where is the verification? Where is the independence?52

Health science student Shannon said that she found news literacy interesting,
revealing, and inspiring: “You always hear the news isn’t reliable and all this stuff, but
you never hear of how to look at it to make sure it is reliable. I think it teaches us new
ways to look at the news and judge it better.”53
John, a junior pursuing a degree in economics, concurred, “I do find that it’s open-
ing my eyes to a lot of things in journalism and news. The course is bringing how I
previously went about reading the news on a daily basis to a different light.”54

Implications, Discussion, and Future Directions

This study examined how Stony Brook University School of Journalism founding dean
Howard Schneider sought to preserve and promote the principles of the press he favored
by teaching college students how to look at information flashing across their screens the
way a newspaper journalist would—with an “eye for the lie,” as Stony Brook president
Shirley Strum Kenny put it,55 and with a journalistic passion for the public interest.
158 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 69(2)

Teaching students how to think like journalists translated into an instructional strategy
that taught students how to access, evaluate, analyze, and appreciate journalism.
Instructional consequences included high levels of engagement, a greater awareness of
current events, and deeper, more nuanced understandings of journalism. These findings
challenge previous perceptions of the Stony Brook news literacy program.
Hobbs’s suggestion that most Stony Brook students view news literacy as “another
meaningless class with more meaningless facts to recall and spit back to the teacher on
an exam” is not supported by data collected and analyzed for this study.56 News liter-
acy students were engaged at high levels during the lectures and recitations observed,
and the students who were interviewed viewed the insider journalism knowledge
brought to light in the course as useful. The primary criticisms of news literacy, from
student perspectives, were that it was too much work for a freshman course or assign-
ments were given at the last minute, thereby forcing students to rush through them.
Evidence also did not support the assertion that news literacy blindly evangelizes
journalism, as reflected in Hobbs’s comment that the course is nothing more than
“nostalgic propaganda from the old guard [of journalism] desperately trying to remind
young people about a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”57 The fact of the matter is that
news literacy is quite critical of sloppy, emotion-laden, unsubstantiated, or argumenta-
tive journalism most often associated with cable news outlets—the very same type of
journalism Hobbs also lambastes in her critique. Instead, news literacy presents a pre-
ferred reading of news texts through the news neighborhood framework and decon-
struction guide much in the same way media literacy recommends preferred readings
of media messages through frameworks such as the National Association for Media
Literacy Education Key Questions.58 The real question then is what are the best intel-
lectual strategies needed to access, analyze, and evaluate news.
At the same time, evidence supports Hobbs’s contention that news literacy does
little to teach students how to identify and assess commercial biases inherent in
American news construction and distribution practices.59 All three of the news fellows
interviewed said that absence of ideology and ownership issues was a significant
weakness of the program. Jason, a PhD candidate in sociology, commented, “In my
discipline we would talk about ownership, but this is certainly not how my discipline
would approach news, so it’s unfair to use the standards of what I would ideally like to
teach.”60 Instruction on how ownership influences news judgment and perpetuates
oppressive depictions of race, class, and gender in news content is of utmost impor-
tance to critical media literacy educators.61 However, calls for news literacy at Stony
Brook to conform to critical media literacy principles come at a time when the power
of a select few profit-seeking news organizations dominating the public agenda is
eroding as news audiences increasingly scatter across social and other media to satisfy
their information needs.62 In other words, critiquing news literacy as one would cri-
tique news industries before the Internet and social media blinds one to conceptual
contributions of the Stony Brook program.
What makes news literacy at Stony Brook distinct is its instructional focus on the
veracity of information, as opposed to media literacy’s traditional representation ver-
sus reality analytic frameworks, in addition to its willingness to promote
Fleming 159

key principles of the press such as verification, independence, accountability, and

investigation, which many agree serve democracy well. Sociologist and news media
scholar Michael Schudson argues that self-governing societies need a so-called
“unlovable” press, even as the number of alternative information sources rise.
According to Schudson, an unlovable press is made up of journalists who

get in the face of power—and are enabled to do so because both their doggedness and their
irreverence is protected by law, by a conducive political culture, and by a historical record
of having served self-government well when they hunt down elusive or hidden facts.63

Schudson’s description of an unlovable press mirrors the investigative, watchdog

reporter favored by Howard Schneider and celebrated in news literacy. Therefore, an
additional way to situate news literacy is proposed: to view it as a specialized approach
to media literacy and as journalism education’s equivalent to the college-level music
appreciation course.
Hafer writes that music appreciation courses represent one of the “few sustained
opportunities for a School or Department of Music to cultivate the audiences essential
to the survival of our profession.”64 Generally speaking, music appreciation students
do not learn how to play instruments or write music; rather, they learn how to listen to
music with a trained ear and a greater understanding of a variety of genres and styles,
some more commercially viable than others.65 The theory of news literacy at Stony
Brook is similar. News literacy students do not learn how to create news, instead they
are taught how to identify, evaluate, and analyze news, while building knowledge
about the rights and responsibilities often associated with a watchdog press in democ-
racy. This is not to suggest the Stony Brook approach is without fault—it is expensive,
it is not grounded in any identifiable body of scholarly literature, nor is it easily repli-
cated because of its cost, dependence on PowerPoint presentations, and last-minute
updates. Rather, the value of news literacy is found in the values of the press born in
newspapers that Schneider sought to preserve and promote—values Mihailidis warns
are missing from many media literacy programs that are laser-focused on critiquing
news content, instead of understanding and contextualizing it.66
Ultimately, this study offers journalism educators an intimate look at an ambitious
and well-funded “demand-side” curricular idea that was designed to help nonmajors
develop critical thinking skills about news and an appreciation for an accurate and
investigative press. It also provides media literacy educators a window in the world-
views of the journalists behind the course as well as firsthand accounts from students
who took it. The findings, however, cannot be generalized to make any larger claims
about other news literacy programs. In addition, this study would have benefited from
more rigorous quantitative assessments of learning outcomes. Future studies and peda-
gogies that intersect with media literacy, news literacy, news appreciation, or citizen-
ship instruction could use the ideas presented in this work as conceptual springboards
to move these fields forward, and with the perspectives of those trained in newspaper
reporting in mind, as digitization continues to revolutionize news industries as well as
the ways in which people live, learn, and communicate.
160 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 69(2)

Appendix

Unit No. Title Skills and concepts

1 Why news literacy matters -Define news literacy
-Situate news in personal, social, and cultural
contexts
-Break down the meaning of reliable information
2 The power of information -Explore the desire and need to receive and share
information
-Examine the role technology plays in the
distribution and consumption of information
-Understand the importance of freedom of
expression
3 Know your neighborhood- -Recognize the key values of journalism: verification,
What makes journalism independence, and accountability
different -Analyze information within the Taxonomy of
Information Neighborhoods framework
-Understand the difficulties in differentiating
journalism from other information sources
4 The mission of the American -Understand the philosophical and practical
Press underpinnings of journalism in the United States
-Examine presumed and assumed press
responsibilities in democracies
-Develop an argument about the tension between
access to information and control of it
5 What is news and who -Examine news judgment and the decision-making
decides? processes of journalists
-Identify and question the motives that drive news
decision making
6 Opinion journalism -Differentiate between news reports and opinions
in news
-Understand the purposes of opinion journalism
7 Balance, fairness, and bias -Understand the concepts of fairness, balance, and
bias in news texts
-Analyze news texts for examples of fairness,
balance, and bias
8 Truth and verification -Explain the Open the Freezer metaphor
-Distinguish between direct and indirect evidence,
assertion and verification, and evidence and
inference
-Compare how journalistic notions of truth and
peer review differ from scientific understandings
9 Evaluating sources -Distinguish between categories of sources in news
narratives
-Assess evidence provided by sources in journalistic
texts

(continued)
Fleming 161

Appendix (continued)

Unit No. Title Skills and concepts

10 Deconstructing the news -Apply news literacy principles in the analysis of
news reports
-Detect inconsistencies in news reports
-Test to see if conclusions in news reports are
supported by the evidence provided
11 Power of images and sound -Judge how images and sounds in news reports
influence audiences
-Explore how digital technologies can alter images
and sounds in news reports
12 Deconstructing TV news -Determine how news literacy deconstruction
elements apply to television news
-Think critically about television news reports and
production elements
13 The Internet and news -Examine the new opportunities and responsibilities
of digital age news consumption
-Think critically about how citizens are now the
consumers and producers of news
-Apply the APCs (Authority, Point-of-View,
Currency) in the analysis of web pages
14 The future of news -Discuss what it means to be news literate
-Assess the risks and responsibilities of posting
information and images online
-Explore how to pay for investigative journalism in
the digital age

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

Notes
  1. Barbie Zelizer, Taking Journalism Seriously: News and the Academy (Thousand Oaks:
Sage, 2004).
  2. J. Herbert Altschull, From Milton to McLuhan: The Ideas behind American Journalism
(White Plains, NY: Longman, 1990).
  3. Bonnie S. Brennen, “What the Hacks Say: The Ideological Prism of US Journalism Texts,”
Journalism 1, no. 1 (2000): 106–13; Donica Mensing, “Rethinking [Again] the Future of
Journalism Education,” Journalism Studies 11, no. 4 (2010): 511–23.
162 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 69(2)

 4. Betty Medsger, Winds of Change: Challenges Confronting Journalism Education

(Arlington, VA: The Freedom Forum, 1996); Betty Medsger, “The Evolution of Journalism
Education in the United States,” in Making Journalists: Diverse Models, Global Issues, ed.
Hugo de Burgh (London: Routledge, 2005), 205–26.
  5. Howard Schneider, “It’s the Audience, Stupid!” Nieman Reports 61, no. 3 (2007): 67.
  6. Renee Hobbs, “News Literacy: What Works and What Doesn't” (paper, Association for
Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Denver, CO, August 8 2010); Renee
Hobbs, “News Literacy: What Not to Do,” Nieman Reports (summer 2011), http://
www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102645/News-Literacy-What-Not-to-Do.aspx
(accessed August 25, 2013).
  7. Previous published commentary on the Stony Brook news literacy program includes: Alan
Finder, “Telling Bogus from True: A Class in Reading the News,” New York Times, May
9, 2007, p. 8; Megan Garber, “Leap of Faith: Inside the Movement to Build an Audience
of Citizens,” Columbia Journalism Review 48, no. 2 (2009): 41–45; Renee Loth, “What’s
Black and White and Retweeted All Over? Teaching News Literacy in the Digital Age,”
Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy Discussion Paper Series,
Harvard University, Boston, 2012.
 8. David Buckingham, Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003); Len Masterman, Teaching the Media (London: Routledge,
1985); Len Masterman and Francois Mariet, Media Education in the 1990s’ Europe: A
Teacher’s Guide (Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe Press, 1994); Gretchen Schwarz
and Pamela U. Brown, Media Literacy: Transforming Curriculum and Teaching (Malden:
Blackwell Publishing, 2005).
 9. Renee Hobbs, “The Seven Great Debates in the Media Literacy Movement,” Journal
of Communication 48, no. 1 (1998): 16–32; W. James Potter, “The State of Media
Literacy,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 54 (2010): 675–96; Gretchen
Schwarz, “Overview: What Is Media Literacy, Who Cares, and Why?” in Media Literacy:
Transforming Curriculum and Teaching, ed. Gretchen Schwarz and Pamela U. Brown
(Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 5–17; Kathleen Tyner, Literacy in a Digital World:
Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998).
10. Patricia Aufderheide, Media Literacy: A Report of the National Leadership Conference on
Media Literacy (Washington: Aspen Institute, 1993).
11. Potter, “The State of Media Literacy,” 680.
12. Potter, “The State of Media Literacy,” 681–82.
13. Art Silverblatt, Jane Ferry, and Barbara Finan, Approaches to Media Literacy: A Handbook
(Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999).
14. Clifford G. Christians, Theodore L. Glasser, Dennis McQuail, Kaarle Nordenstreng, and
Robert A. White, Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Geneva Overholser and Kathleen H. Jamieson,
eds., Institutions of American Democracy: The Press (New York: Oxford University Press,
2005).
15. J. Herbert Altschull, Agents of Power: The Media and Public Policy (White Plains:
Longman, 1995), 5.
16. Ben Bagdikian, The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); Herbert J. Gans,
Democracy and the News (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); William A. Hachten,
The Troubles of Journalism: A Critical Look at What’s Right and Wrong with the Press
(Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005); Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle and the Crisis
of Democracy: Terrorism, War & Election Battles (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2005);
Fleming 163

Robert W. McChesney, The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging

Dilemmas (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008).
17. See David Buckingham, “Young People, Politics and News Media: Beyond Political
Socialisation,” Oxford Review of Education 25, nos. 1–2 (1999): 171–84; Douglas Kellner
and Jeff Share, “Toward Critical Media Literacy: Core Concepts, Debates, Organizations,
and Policy,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 26, no. 3 (2005):
369–86; Robert Kubey, “Media Literacy and the Teaching of Civics and Social Studies at
the Dawn of the 21st Century,” American Behavioral Scientist 48, no. 1 (2004): 69–77;
Susan D. Moeller, Media Literacy: Understanding the News (Washington: Center for
International Media Assistance, 2009); W. James Potter, Media Literacy, 4th ed. (Los
Angeles: Sage, 2008).
18. Renee Hobbs, “Building Citizenship Skills through Media Literacy Education,” in The
Public Voice in a Democracy at Risk, ed. Michael Salvador and Patricia M. Sias (Westport:
Greenwood, 1998), 57–76; Renee Hobbs, Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action
(Washington: The Aspen Institute, 2010); Renee Hobbs and Richard Frost, “Measuring
the Acquisition of Media-Literacy Skills,” Reading Research Quarterly 38, no. 3 (2003):
330–55.
19. Hobbs, “News Literacy: What Works and What Doesn't”; Renee Hobbs, “Media Literacy:
Learning Principles,” Nieman Reports (summer 2011) http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/
reports/article/102646/Media-Literacy-Learning-Principles.aspx (accessed August 29,
2013).
20. Hobbs, “News Literacy: What Works and What Doesn't,” 1.
21. Seth Ashley, Adam Maksl, and Stephanie Craft, “Developing a News Media Literacy
Scale,” Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 68, no. 1 (2013): 7–21.
22. Ashley, Maksl, and Craft, “Developing a News Media Literacy Scale,” 17.
23. Paul Mihailidis, “Media Literacy in Journalism/Mass Communication Education: Can the
United States Learn from Sweden?” Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 60, no.
4 (2006): 416–28; Paul Mihailidis, “The First Step Is the Hardest: Finding Connections
in Media Literacy Education,” Journal of Media Literacy Education 1 (2009): 53–67;
Paul Mihailidis and Ray Hiebert, “Media Literacy in Journalism Education Curriculum,”
Academic Exchange Quarterly 9, 3 (2005) http://www.rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/
cho3074j5.htm (accessed December 19, 2013).
24. Paul Mihailidis, “Beyond Cynicism: Media Education and Civic Learning Outcomes in the
University,” International Journal of Learning and Media 1, no. 3 (2009): 19–31.
25. Paul Mihailidis, ed., News Literacy: Global Perspectives for the Newsroom and the
Classroom (New York: Peter Lang, 2012).
26. Sharan B. Merriam, Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998); Robert E. Stake, The Art of Case Study Research (Thousand
Oaks: Sage, 1995); Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 4th ed.
(Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2009).
27. Organizations that contributed funds to support news literacy development, instruction,
and/or expansion include: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, $1.75 million; Robert
R. McCormick Foundation, $530,000; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
$330,000; Ford Foundation, $385,000; Atlantic Philanthropies, $25,000; and, Laurence W.
Levine Foundation, $50,000.
28. The Stony Brook general education program is known as the Diversified Education
Curriculum and its various requirements are often referred to among faculty, staff, and stu-
dents as “DECs.” The news literacy course was permitted to satisfy two DEC categories.
164 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 69(2)

Students enrolled in “JRN 101-B: News Literacy” satisfied DEC B requirements. DEC B
courses facilitate the development of critical interpretation and analytical skills. Students
registered in “JRN 103-G: News Literacy” earned DEC G credits. DEC G offerings teach
about methods and disciplines in the humanities. The double DEC designation made news
literacy attractive to nonjournalism majors and thus played a significant role in attract-
ing the large number of students needed to satisfy the Knight Foundation’s ten-thousand-
student grant stipulation.
29. For more information on the curriculum, visit the Stony Brook University Center for News
Literacy: http://www.centerfornewsliteracy.org/
30. The default approach in qualitative research in education is to mask the identity of par-
ticipants as well as the institution examined. Simons, however, argues that anonymiza-
tion is not the most appropriate procedure to adopt in case studies that examine a single
institution, a program that is unique, or a program that includes high-profile individuals.
The news literacy program at Stony Brook satisfied these nonanonymization conditions.
As a result, two consent forms were formulated: one that notified participants that their
identities would be protected through the assignment of pseudonyms; the other stated that
informants could be identified in materials resulting from the research. For more on non-
anonymization case study research protocols, refer to Helen Simons, Case Study Research
in Practice (London: Sage, 2009).
31. Pat Bazeley, Qualitative Data Analysis with Nvivo (Los Angeles: Sage, 2007).
32. John W. Creswell, Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating
Quantitative and Qualitative Research (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2005);
Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory (Chicago, IL:
Aldine, 1967).
33. Howard Schneider, in-person interview with the author, November 5, 2010.
34. Howard Schneider, in-person interview with the author, November 5, 2010
35. Dean Miller, in-person interview with the author, October 22, 2010.
36. Richard Hornik, in-person interview with the author, October 21, 2010.
37. Steven Reiner, in-person interview with the author, November 3, 2010.
38. “Open the Freezer” refers to a seminal story about Hurricane Katrina in which a reporter
got the facts wrong because he failed to verify. The Times-Picayune journalist Brian
Thevenot reported that bodies were piled on top of each other inside the freezer of the
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Thevenot’s report was based on information provided
to him by National Guardsmen who were standing outside the freezer, but Thevenot did not
open the freezer to see the bodies for himself and, it turned out, the story was nothing more
than a rumor that made its way into the paper. Thevenot’s analysis of how and why he got
it wrong became required reading for news literacy students, and the “Open the Freezer”
phrase became a simple, albeit macabre, reminder to verify. For more, see Brian Thevenot,
“Myth-making in New Orleans,” American Journalism Review 27, no. 6 (2005/2006):
30–37.
39. Jason, in-person interview with the author, November 4, 2010.
40. Dean Miller, in-person interview with the author, October 22, 2010.
41. Julia Mead, in-person interview with the author, November 4, 2010.
42. Steven Reiner, in-person interview with the author, November 3, 2010.
43. Howard Schneider, in-person interview with the author, November 5, 2010.
44. Schneider, “It’s the Audience, Stupid!” 67.
45. Allison, in-person interview with the author, November 2, 2010.
46. Barbara, in-person interview with the author, November 3, 2010.
Fleming 165

47. Allison, in-person interview with the author, October 21, 2010.
48. Shannon, in-person interview with the author, October 27, 2010.
49. Rochelle, in-person interview with the author, October 28, 2010.
50. Diana, in-person interview with the author, October 26, 2010.
51. Jose, in-person interview with the author, November 1, 2010.
52. Rochelle, in-person interview with the author, October 28, 2010.
53. Shannon, in-person interview with the author, October 27, 2010.
54. John, in-person interview with the author, November 4, 2010.
55. Shirley Strum Kenny, email interview with the author, November 21, 2010.
56. Hobbs, “News Literacy: What Works and What Doesn’t,” 4.
57. Hobbs, “News Literacy: What Works and What Doesn’t,” 7.
58. National Association for Media Literacy Education, “Key Questions to Ask when
Analyzing Media Messages,” http://namle.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/NAMLEKey
Questions0708.pdf (accessed December 19, 2013).
59. Hobbs, “News Literacy: What Works and What Doesn't,” 6.
60. Jason, in-person interview with the author, November 4, 2010.
61. Douglas Kellner and Jeff Share, “Critical Media Literacy Is Not an Option,” Learning
Inquiry 1, no. 1 (2007): 59–69.
62. Mihailidis, News Literacy, 8.
63. Michael Schudson, Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press (Cambridge: Polity,
2008), 10.
64. Edward Hafer, “A Pedagogy of the Pedagogy of Music Appreciation,” Journal of Music
History Pedagogy 3, no. 1 (2012): 57–75.
65. Lewis W. Gordon, “College Music Appreciation: Pedagogical Approaches and Preliminary
Findings,” College Music Symposium 36 (1996): 103–13.
66. Mihailidis, News Literacy; Mihailidis, “Beyond Cynicism.”

Author Biography
Jennifer Fleming is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism & Mass
Communication at California State University, Long Beach. Prior to her CSULB appointment,
Jennifer worked as a writer and producer at CTV National News in Canada.