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Weekly News Digest
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October 18, 2018 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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'College Students as News Consumers' by Barbara Fister
In a Library Babel Fish blog post in Inside Higher Ed, Barbara Fister highlights a new study from Project Information Literacy that examines how college students keep up with the news. She says, “The good news is students are not indifferent to news, nor are they gullible. Only 8 percent said they don’t follow news at all, one explaining it seemed a distraction from academics. This was encouraging. I’ve informally polled students about their news habits for years, and their interest seems higher now than it was a decade or two ago. … “A large majority of students believe journalism is essential to democracy, and most feel they have a civic responsibility to be informed, but nearly half feel journalists inject bias into their stories. Perhaps that skepticism is exacerbated because news comes through multiple channels that have different incentives. Ad placement is an important revenue source for traditional news organizations, but it’s not their purpose. Targeted advertising is Facebook’s business, and these survey respondents are more likely to see news on Facebook or other social media channels than on news organizations’ own sites.” Fister says that the study’s authors have some recommendations: “Of particular interest to librarians and faculty in the disciplines are the first three: give students practice sorting through and making sense of information in multiple formats, discuss current events in the classroom to model engagement and critical understanding of news, and develop better methods for teaching the evaluation of information.” For more information, read the blog post.
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Brandi Scardilli
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