What do readers wish they understood about your reporting — and what do these gaps mean for your efforts at building news literacy and trust? These questions, which the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin tackled in our latest research, reveal that people want journalists to dig more deeply in […]

People often don’t know whether the content they see is news or opinion, according to our recent pair of Media Insight Project surveys. In one survey, we asked people how easy or difficult it was to see the distinctions between news and opinion in media. Just over half of Americans say it’s easy to distinguish […]

People are strikingly unfamiliar with terms that many journalists use, probably without thinking — such as the difference between an editorial and a news story, what the term “attribution” means, or what an op‑ed is. Consider a few numbers. Fully 50 percent of the public say they are only a little familiar with the term […]

The extent of personal experience a person has with journalism — including being covered or interviewed in the news, or having some education in journalism themselves — impacts how well a person understands news processes and concepts. We explored several ways adults may have had personal experiences with journalism. We then examined how those experiences […]

Newspaper subscribers hold more positive views of many specific types of media — and have an easier time deciphering news from opinion — than do non-subscribers. Overall, 29 percent of Americans subscribe to a print or digital version of a newspaper. These subscribers tend to have more positive views than non‑subscribers on many components of […]

It should come as no surprise today that the partisan divide over news is a troubling and significant issue as the United States comes to grips with a polarized political landscape. The data, above, about general differences in many ways offer a path beyond those differences via efforts to increase clarity and transparency, among others. […]

While the survey finds distinctions among attitudes and understanding of the media by factors like party and ideology, it also finds some significant and cautionary distinctions by age. Consistent with previous Media Insight Project research findings, and those of other research as well, the survey shows older Americans are more likely to seek out news, […]

Every story is an opportunity to have a conversation with your audience about what journalism is for and how journalists conduct their work. Each type of story presents different questions and different ways to encourage news fluency, in an organic and contextual manner. In this section, we’ll list nine types of stories and the unique […]

When journalists talk about how they wish the public could recognize good reporting from bad reporting or even fakery, the subject often turns to whether the audience has the right skills. The discussion usually falls under the heading of “news literacy,” a body of work that typically involves a curriculum supervised by schools, heavily oriented […]

We hope this essay will provoke some new ideas about how to help people become more discriminating consumers of news. Our recommendations boil down to a few basic ideas: Journalists have a role to play in helping consumers become more discriminating. Being fluent as a news consumer is not only the responsibility of news audiences. […]