My letter advocating for media literacy appeared in the Oct. 4 print edition of the Minneapolis StarTribune. I wrote it in response to a Sept. 27 op-ed by Jack Davies titled “Can Democracy Survive the Internet?”
In my professional life I’m an associate professor of Mass Communication. By the time some students get to me, my class is their first in-depth exposure to media literacy. Based on their feedback, I think they learn a lot in my classes, but I’ve often wondered about the high school grads who don’t go on to college, or the ones who do but who choose not to take a mass comm course.
Not everyone goes to college, obviously, and not everyone needs to. So that’s why media literacy in grades K-12 is more important than ever. One of my friends who used to be a teacher told me that media literacy is indeed a standard in most states. But there are SO MANY standards that there’s no way to adequately address them all at the level that’s necessary. So my argument is let’s give priority to those media literacy standards. Media literacy has always been important, but right now our democracy may be suffering because of media illiteracy.
What do you think?
If You Have Five Seconds to Spare 
Hello there Rachel I hope you are doing really well. I was interested in reading your latest post on media literacy but unfortunately the link back to your website doesn’t seem to be working. Not sure if this is just my browser or not. I tried it a few times but no luck. The post is definitely there when I go to your blog but the ‘read more’ link doesn’t seem to be working. Just thought I’d mention this in case it’s something simple you can fix. Also, while I’m on the subject of things not working, would you like to check whether the link to your Facebook page is working? Sorry to be a pest but I’ve retired and have too much time on my hands! I could be writing of course, but I’m not making a lot of progress there. Cheers and best wishes Marg Moon
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Margaret, I appreciate the notice about the links! Now that you’re retired you could make some extra money offering proofreading services to writers 🙂 Are you talking about the links that are on my “About” page? I recently changed the host for my website, but the link appeared to be working when I just checked. I was worried perhaps in the switch something got messed up. And I deleted the Facebook link because I’m not using that page anymore. I forgot the link was still there, so thanks again for letting me now! I hope you start to make some writing progress soon 🙂
I would love to be a proofreader. I always see mistakes straight away except for in my own work when I become inexplicably blind. I was thinking of starting a business called The Bureau of Unsolicited Advice 😀 but of course most people don’t want criticism and if they want advice they’ll tell.
So, just to be clear, when I click on the ‘read more’ link in the email that comes into my inbox to tell me that you have a new post, it takes me to a page not found (404) error. From there, I have to click on ‘home’ to get to the actual post. This tells me that there’s something not quite right in that chain of events. I have some screen shots if you want them. It could very well work properly for you, but not your readers. This has happened to me. I would check with another subscriber to see if it’s working for them. It’s not like it’s a major problem, but you do want people to be able to click through to your post from their email notifications.
Cheers and I will stop bugging you now.