Smith is ASNE Education for Journalism Committee Chair, and editor, Times Union, Albany, N.Y. He attended the news literacy conference and filed this report. Reach him at rsmith@timesunion.com.

WHO GOES TO FLORIDA IN the middle of August? The warm sun in midwinter makes you feel like you're getting away with something naughty. In summer's stifling heat, you go only if something more compelling than a getaway is at hand.

This summer, what drew some two dozen newsroom leaders, journalism educators, young journalists and students to take refuge from the summer heat was an ASNE-sponsored conference on news literacy at the Poynter Institute.

It's a term most people understand only vaguely. But after two days of conversation and planning, no one left Poynter doubting that broadening the reach of news literacy training could strengthen both journalism and our communities. It also could refresh journalism education at a time when the industry needs the strong underpinning of academia to reinforce its core values.

First, a definition: If literacy is the ability to read and understand language, news literacy is the same with respect to journalism. People who are news literate are able to use critical thinking skills to assess the reliability and credibility of news reports.

What is the value of a well-reported news story compared with the latest rumor to float in from cyberspace, and how do you tell the difference? How do you weigh assertions in a letter to the editor alongside statements attributed to someone in a story on the front page? How much credence can you give what you hear from Rush Limbaugh? Is Jon Stewart a journalist?

Those are the kind of questions that may be raised by students of news literacy. Good journalism will be enhanced if more citizens can answer them.

Perhaps signaling the growing importance of the conversation about news literacy, the conference at Poynter — which drew participation from print, television and online media — was the first new initiative launched by ASNE President Charlotte Hall, editor of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, after she took the organization's helm in April. The ASNE Foundation and the Ford Foundation supported the ASNE-Poynter collaboration with the goal of identifying ways American newsrooms can further the news literacy movement.

“News literacy education has the potential to build future audiences for newspapers and their Web sites, which we naturally care about a great deal,” Hall said as the conference was being planned. “But really, what's more important is that it can strengthen democracy by building a more informed citizenry.”

That goal squares precisely with a key objective of journalism, and it's something every editor can stand behind.

For some who attended the conference, there's value in simply helping people understand what journalism is and is not. “I'm tired of being compared to bloggers sitting at home in their pajamas,” said Julia Robinson, a young staff photographer at the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune.

Kelly McBride, the Poynter Ethics Group Leader who was the key facilitator of the event, identified a major goal of helping journalists shape projects that might advance news literacy in their own communities.

Academic instruction in media literacy has been around for a long time. It is a fundamental part of the curriculum in many journalism programs, though it often doesn't go by that label.

The new push for news literacy arises with the recognition that the marketplace of ideas where great journalism has thrived is becoming increasingly cluttered by other messages — from blogs and billboards to ads on mobile devices — meaning that the survival of quality reporting may depend upon growing the number of consumers who recognize its value.

“It's not enough for us to train the next generation of journalists,” said Howard Schneider, the founding dean of the Stony Brook University journalism school and a former Newsday editor. “We need to train the next generation of journalism consumers. Quality journalism can only be sustained by a public that recognizes it.”

Schneider is a pioneer of the new effort. As he set out in 2005 to shape the curriculum of his soon-to-open journalism school, he recognized the benefits that could come from teaching news literacy to students who aren't interested in majoring in journalism or pursuing a career in communications. His idea took wing: The Knight Foundation provided funding to teach news literacy to 10,000 students over five years and measure the results, and the university (part of The State University of New York) has set up a Center for News Literacy to push the idea nationally. The Ford Foundation is asking Stony Brook to look into how the training could extend to the general public.

Stony Brook's basic news literacy course is taught in a lecture-hall setting, followed by small-group discussions led by faculty. It begins by helping students understand three fundamental values that good journalism adds to raw information, differentiating reliable news from, say, propaganda or public relations: verification, independence and accountability.

As Schneider sketched his program's approach, many around the conference tables began to imagine how the concept could be spread more broadly and rapidly. One key element, they agreed, might be to reach students before they get to college with news literacy training.

That's the goal of The News Literacy Project created by Alan Miller, who this year retired after 21 years at the Los Angeles Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize. With a Knight Foundation grant, Miller is setting up an organization that he believes could mobilize current and retired journalists nationwide to teach news literacy to high school and middle school students.

One hurdle Miller confronts is the heavy scheduling burden confronting public schools in an era when the curriculum is being stretched by testing requirements. So his initial forays into classrooms, Miller said, have been most successful in independent and charter schools. His hope is that when his project launches nationwide, ASNE editors will volunteer to help.

Miller's effort differs significantly from the Newspapers in Education programs that have been a staple of newspapers' relations with schools for decades. NIE is often run by circulation or marketing departments, and they typically encourage teachers to use newspapers in teaching their respective courses, with little education in journalism values. Rising newsprint costs are prompting many newspapers to trim NIE and other third-party-paid circulation programs.

Yet younger people may be a key to news literacy's success. The British Broadcasting Corp. has launched a national news literacy program targeting 11- and 12-year-olds. News literacy has become an important element of education across the United Kingdom, particularly since the rise of the Internet.

“The digital revolution builds the appetite for this sort of thing,” said Howard Finberg, a Poynter faculty member. “There's a realization that there are crucial skills for the information age.”

Indeed, several of the courses of News University, the Knight-funded online training program that Finberg runs at Poynter, have news literacy training at their core. News literacy can be taught online — Stony Brook is near completion of a basic course — though a challenge confronting the idea of news literacy programs outside the classroom is that there's little built-in demand for the product.

That issue was at the core of the Poynter conference: Attendees quickly agreed on the merit of news literacy training, and spent a great deal of time in small-group discussions focused on developing projects that might make it more broadly available. Some of those could be part of a news literacy agenda that ASNE and other journalism organizations might shape.

Among the ASNE members at the conference — including editors Hall, Marty Kaiser of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as well as a number of former editors now in academic settings — there was a consensus that editors need a road map for assisting in the news literacy effort. Perhaps that would include ASNE's encouragement for editors and newsroom staffers to participate in Miller's program, to interact with journalism faculty in their communities or to launch an outreach effort to present news literacy training to ordinary citizens. At next spring's convention in Chicago, Hall concluded, ASNE will provide a tool kit to help editors lead news literacy discussion and training.

The effort is being led by ASNE's Education for Journalism Committee, with key direction from Diana Mitsu Klos, ASNE's senior project director. The presence at the Poynter seminar of Kaiser, who will become ASNE president in the spring, and of next year's education committee chair, Pamela Luecke, a former editor who now teaches at Washington and Lee University, indicate that the news literacy effort is likely to be a multiyear commitment by the organization.

There's certainly self-interest in any push by editors to encourage news literacy. But the benefit of news literacy is much broader than that.

“In the end, news literacy is about self-interest,” Schneider said at one point in the conference. “As the digital revolution unleashes a flood of information, the ability to assess the value of news will be an essential skill. News literacy is about making you smarter.”

That's a goal worthy of giving up some sweat in a Florida summer. *