Jody Ruggiero Baden is the co-founder and program coordinator for the News Literate Community Initiative (NLCI), described on its website as a “a collaborative effort spanning local organizations, educators, civic leaders, and engaged residents who recognize the urgent need for stronger news literacy skills.” The group launched after a series of meetings that began in August 2025, and is currently developing a program to train “ambassadors” to go into the community and offer adults training on news literacy.
The NLCI is holding its first big community event from 5 to 8:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 29, at Reno Public Market, at 299 E. Plumb Lane, in Reno. “Community Conversation: Combatting Truth Decay” will include a panel discussion with an audience Q&A about the challenges of misinformation. A number of community groups, including the Reno News & Review, will have tables at the event, and NLCI is holding a raffle for prizes including coffee (in person or via Zoom) with the publisher of the RN&R … in other words, me! Admission to the event is free; click here to register for the event or get more information.
Tell me about the News Literate Community Initiative.
I did a lot of thinking before the 2016 election, and more thinking in ’22, and more thinking in ’24, and I was very curious about how people made decisions at the ballot box. What I concluded was that there were a variety of reasons (for people’s decisions). Some were emotional; some of them were based on misinformation. There’s also a large segment of people who can’t read. When the average reading level in the United States is fifth- or sixth-grade, we have a big problem. … Telling fact from fiction is a huge problem for everyone. It doesn’t matter what your education level is. When you layer AI on that, we’re all twisted up. So, I thought, well, if there are ways for people to tell fact from fiction in a more effective way, and they can be taught some skills, we might be able to make some progress in at least developing a common set of facts.
When I heard (NPR senior political editor/correspondent) Domenico Montanaro speak before the ’24 election, a comment stuck with me: We can never really have productive dialogue if we don’t have a common set of facts. When you think the sky’s blue, and I think the sky’s green, we’re not really going to be talking about the sky very much. … I did a lot of research on news literacy and discovered the News Literacy Project, and they have great materials. I realized it was possible to teach skills, tips, tools and techniques to help people distinguish fact from fiction in a more effective way.
Share one of those tips or techniques, if you don’t mind.
Well, if you read something that causes a big emotional reaction, you need to stop and check yourself and find out who’s saying it, what they’re trying to get out of it, what’s their angle, what’s their expertise, and what are they trying to get you to think? That really stuck with me—the emotional part, because so much of news and sharing on social media is driven by emotion.
I got very interested in what (the News Literacy Project) is doing, and their focus is curriculum and resources for K-12—they’re working with students. That’s great. We need to be doing that, but what about all of these adults, especially the adults who are voting? Then there are seniors, who are really in a totally different world when it comes to news and information, and they have no idea how to handle this information highway we’re on. So, I thought, well, let’s focus on the adults.
Interesting.
I needed some help. I was on the (Washoe County) school board from 2000 to 2008. During that time, Steve Mulvenon was the communications director. I actually left Reno in 2010 and was gone for 12 years and came back, and I happened to run into Steve at an event. … So I said, “Hey, Steve, I had this idea for a project. You want to get together and talk about it?” So we went to Great Basin (Brewing Co.) and had lunch, and I told him all about my idea … and he says, “OK, I’m in.” Steve had been doing some consulting for school districts around the country with communications audits to look at what school districts were doing with communication, both internal and external. He said he kept running into these problems with all this misinformation.
Tell me more about the event on April 29.
At the very first meeting that we had back in August, the idea of a “summit” kept coming up … so we’re having a big event. We previously had a fairly small gathering at PBS Reno, for National News Literacy Week (in February). We had a panel discussion. (Former Reno Gazette-Journal journalist) Ray Hagar moderated it, and we had five or six other people from the community, and it was very popular. It was a free event, but the registration filled up in a matter of days … so we had a clue that there’s a hunger for this kind of information.
On April 29, we’re having a panel moderated by Terry Russell from KOLO Channel 8. On the panel, it will be Dr. Gi Yun from the Reynolds School of Journalism at UNR. We’re having Mark Robinson from the Reno Gazette Journal, and also Natalie Van Hoozer, who was formerly with KUNR. She’s a bilingual journalist and has worked in the fact-checking space. … We’re going to do about a half-hour with the panel and about a half-hour with a Q&A with the audience, and so people will have time to interact with them. … I’m hoping this really takes off and at least makes people think. Just getting people to think will be a big step in combating misinformation.