News Literacy
News Literacy
In order to decide what news should be featured in The ReMarker, my staff and I must be “news literate.” In other words, we must be critical, analytical, even skeptical when observing and filtering global, national and local news. It’s also important to remember that The ReMarker isn’t in the breaking news business. We print seven times a year with roughly five weeks between print dates and a three day lag between completing our work and the release of the newspaper. With this in mind, we usually come at stories from an angle of educating and informing our readers rather than delivering breaking news.
Staying up to date
One of the best ways to improve my own news literacy is by just staying up to date with current events. By simply observing what’s going on in the world around me, I’m able to come up with plenty of ideas for stories. To keep in the loop, I’ve signed up for daily email “briefings” from the New York Times and Dallas Morning News, giving me both a national and local perspective. I also watch NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt as I believe it reports the news in an unbiased way. When reviewing these news outlets, I always ask myself, “How does this relate to St. Mark’s and what unique angle can The ReMarker present that the mainstream media can’t?”
From all angles
One of my most important jobs as Editor-in-Chief is deciding how to cover certain topics. Take the Jan. 6 capitol riots for instance. As soon as news broke of the insurrection, I knew we would cover it, but I wasn’t sure how we would do so at first. First, I decided to have the entire staff “journal” their thoughts and reactions to the riots the same day they happened. I figured we could use these raw feelings for columns and editorials down the road. Click here to see the staff’s immediate reactions. Second, I encouraged my very eager editorial board to wait until Jan. 7 to record a reactions podcast, so they could have time to gather their thoughts and approach the topic from a rational perspective rather than just emotional. Third, I met with my magazine editor, and we decided to center our March magazine on “Preserving democracy,” a topic that would include but not be limited to the capitol riots. I wanted to save as much coverage of the capitol riots for this magazine but knew we couldn’t completely avoid it in our February newspaper. So, we ran a column, an in-depth news story and an editorial all related to the issue, which can be seen below.
