The American Society of News Editors is bringing news literacy beyond the classroom. The organization has launched the National Community and News Literacy Roundtables Project to help communities around the country build a robust news literacy capacity at the local level.

In partnership with the American Press Institute and The News Literacy Project, the two-year project will help local communities use the tools of news literacy to spark constructive dialogue on important issues facing communities and help build a better informed citizenry. The Robert R. McCormick Foundation is providing funding.

For each roundtable, the project will seek a local educational partner, a media partner and a community partner to identify a topic of local interest to be used as the basis for a discussion about how that topic is reported, consumed and debated in the community. The roundtables will lay the groundwork for positive civic engagement by sifting through the various information available and teaching and implementing the critical thinking skills involved in news literacy.

Intended to convene and engage a diverse mix of community residents, a key outcome of each roundtable will be identifying those who have a special interest in news literacy as a foundation for civic infrastructure and bringing them into a broader news literacy network to further their training and community engagement.