Because News Matters: A News Literacy Summit will take place Sept. 14-15 in Chicago and will focus on the importance of teaching young people to differentiate fact from fiction in the news.

About 100 students, journalists, scholars and teachers will share their ideas and concerns about the news, misinformation and reliable sources at the national event, organized by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This year’s summit will take on four “key issues” that shape the news literacy of students today: how to define and measure news, how to ensure students learn news literacy at school, how to teach news literacy and how technology affects news literacy.

Participants will seek to answer these and similar questions by attending small group discussions, writing and sharing new ideas and listening to experts on the subject. Speakers will include practicing journalists, professors and leaders at Poynter, Stony Brook University Center for News Literacy, Why News Matters and the News Literacy Project.

“For the past two years, our grantees have been actively collecting data, seeking to assess news literacy’s impact on critical thinking, online navigation, increased consumption of news, youth development and civic engagement,” said Clark Bell, Journalism Program Director at the McCormick Foundation. “We look forward to hosting some of the smartest minds in media education research as we search for the answers of ‘why news matters.’”

Additional event funders include the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Summit partners are the American Society of News Editors, Stony Brook University, the News Literacy Project, Baruch College and Chicago Youth Voices Network.

To join the summit from anywhere in the world, use #NewsLiteracy.