When the Poynter Institute launched the MediaWise Voter Project in 2020, the aim was to empower a million first-time voters against a national misinformation epidemic.
Following the presidential election and Jan. 6, false narratives about vaccines, elections and the LGBTQ+ community have trickled down to local communities. And with the support of the Google News Initiative, MediaWise will expand its Campus Correspondents program to build misinformation resilience at the local level.
The Poynter-Google News Initiative Misinformation Fellowship has placed 10 student journalists in newsrooms around the country, with an emphasis on publishers reaching underserved audiences. Fellows will write articles, assist in research or create engaging vertical videos infusing digital media literacy with local reporting — with the goal of reaching new audiences with factual information and debunking falsehoods.
“In the years since Jan. 6, those who promote falsehoods have largely failed in national elections, but it’s been frustrating to watch misinformation take hold in local communities — like my hometown,” said MediaWise Director Alex Mahadevan. “We’re going to address the conditions that are fueling this mess — fewer resources for local newsrooms, polarization, a dysfunctional information ecosystem — and empower future reporters.”
The program will also help local news organizations serving diverse audiences, including The Washington Informer, La Esquina and the Kansas City Defender, fight misinformation in their communities.
MediaWise is providing training and mentorship to the fellows as well as to the local newsrooms’ staffs. That includes hands-on workshops covering open-source intelligence tools, geolocation, verification and debunking — strategies that professional investigative journalists use in reporting on misinformation. The students’ work will be published by their respective news outlets and promoted on Poynter.org.
GNI is providing a $10,000 stipend to each of the fellows, who come from a variety of schools, including four historically black colleges and universities.
“We are excited to partner with Poynter on this new fellowship program to train the next generation of journalists to combat misinformation in news. Misinformation is a serious threat to our democracy, and we need to do everything we can to equip young people with the skills and knowledge they need to fight it,” said Ashley Alese Edwards, U.S. Partnerships Manager, Google News Lab. “This fellowship will give students the opportunity to work in local newsrooms with professional journalists and to make a difference in their communities.”
One of the fellows, Harvard graduate student Ramiro Hernández, grew up in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. He said he has seen firsthand how misinformation affected his hometown.
“It was disheartening to see people that deeply loved and cared for our border town share social media posts that were flat-out untrue, but truth seemed not to matter,” he said.
Hernandez, who will be working for the Spanish-language newspaper La Esquina, said this is what drove him to become involved in journalism.
“I hope that this fellowship will allow me to strengthen my journalism and media literacy skills so that I can continue to build upon the work I’ve committed myself to for the last four years,” he said.
The fellows are:
- Marena Gallo, University of Texas-Austin, The Dallas Morning News
- Ramiro A. Hernández, Harvard Graduate School of Education, La Esquina (Texas)
- Tyler Katzenberger, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- Chloe Nguyen, Duke University, WRAL News (North Carolina)
- Darius Osborne, Howard University, The Washington Informer Bridge (D.C.)
- Joshua Picazo, University of California-Berkeley, Bay City News (California)
- Victoria Rollins, Harris Stowe State University, Kansas City Defender
- Shajaka Shelton, Georgetown University, The Washington Informer (D.C.)
- Kiden-Aloyse Smith, Jackson State University, Mississippi Free Press
- Tyuanna Williams, Claflin University, YR Media (California)
About The Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a global leader in journalism education and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media, and 21st-century public discourse. Poynter faculty teach seminars and workshops at the Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, and at newsrooms, conferences, and organizations around the world. Its e-learning division, News University, offers the world’s largest online journalism curriculum, with hundreds of interactive courses and tens of thousands of registered international users. The Institute’s website produces 24-hour coverage about media, ethics, technology, and the business of news. Poynter is the home of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact, the International Fact-Checking Network and MediaWise, a digital information literacy project for young people, first-time voters, and senior citizens. The world’s top journalists and media innovators rely on Poynter to learn and teach new generations of reporters, storytellers, media inventors, designers, visual journalists, documentarians, and broadcasters. This work builds public awareness about journalism, media, the First Amendment, and discourse that serves democracy and the public good. Learn more at poynter.org.
About MediaWise
MediaWise is a nonpartisan, nonprofit digital media literacy initiative led by The Poynter Institute: Its mission is to teach Americans of all ages how to sort fact from fiction online. MediaWise content has been viewed more than 57 million times since the project launched in 2018. The MediaWise program teaches people through in-person and virtual training events, online educational videos, fact-checking content reported by the MediaWise Teen Fact-Checking Network, and its MediaWise Ambassador program — a group of prominent journalists and influencers who help promote the MediaWise mission. In 2020, Poynter launched the MediaWise Voter Project (#MVP2020) to teach first-time voters how to find reliable information online about the U.S. presidential election, a new initiative supported by Facebook. MediaWise for Seniors was announced in June 2020 to bring MediaWise tips to the 50+ population in advance of the general election. MediaWise for Seniors has a program funded by AARP to provide resources to their membership and a program funded by Facebook bringing virtual training and a social media awareness campaign to the senior population. The foundation of MediaWise was created with support from Google.org as part of Google News Initiative. Learn more at poynter.org/mediawise.
