A new tool to help teach students which news outlets to trust; the UN releases its second book club list; and libraries are having their moment on Jeopardy!  All of that and more in this edition of News Bites. 

New Tool Tracks Newsroom Transparency

PEN America and the Trust Project have released a digital tool that aims to track the transparency of more than 50 national and regional media outlets by surfacing the policies, practices, and people behind the news.

The Newsroom Transparency Tracker will serve as:

● An educational and research tool that helps teachers, librarians, media industry professionals, and academics assess and teach the standards and practices behind news reporting

● A media literacy tool that empowers the public to home in on reliable sources of news and defend themselves from fraudulent news and misinformation

● An accountability tool that encourages news outlets to be more responsive to the interests of the public

The Transparency Tracker uses four of the Trust Project’s “Trust Indicators” to highlight the information that each featured media outlet publicly reveals about its ethics codes and related commitments, how it does its work, and the expertise of its journalists. The four indicators are: best practices (what are the news outlet’s standards and mission? who funds it? commitment to ethics, diverse voices, accuracy, corrections, and other best practices); journalist expertise; type of work (labels to distinguish opinion, analysis, and sponsored content from news reports); and diverse voices (What are the news outlet’s efforts and commitments to including diverse perspectives).

Developed collaboratively by over 100 senior news executives within the Trust Project network, the Trust Indicators are transparency standards rooted in core journalistic values and based on in-depth research capturing what the public values and trusts in news.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Book Club has released its booklist for Goal 2—Zero Hunger.

The books for the English language list are: The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunger to Having Enough by Katie Smith Milway; Thank You, Omu! by Oge Moraj; Maddi’s Fridge by Lois Brandt; Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth; The Lunch Thief by Anne C. Bromley.

The initiative—which is a collaboration among the United Nations, the International Publishers Association , International Federation of Librarian Associations , European & International Booksellers Federation , International Board on Books for Young People , and the  Bologna Children’s Book Fair—aims to provide an opportunity to encourage children ages 6-12 to learn about the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and “discover new voices and concepts from around the world

Lists are also available in Arabic , Chinese , French , Russian , and Spanish.

Speak: The Graphic Novel by Laurie Halse Anderson and illustrated by Emily Carroll is the winner of the 2019 SEE-IT Award .

Developed by EBSCO and the Children’s Book Council, the SEE-IT Award “recognizes the cultural and literary impacts of youth graphic novels and was designed to celebrate the year’s most distinguished graphic novels for young readers.”

The other finalists for this year’s award were:

Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation , adapted by Ari Folman and illustrated by David Polonsky (Pantheon)

The Cardboard Kingdom by Chad Sell (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Scholastic/Graphix)

Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin and illustrated by Giovanni Rigano (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky)

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang (First Second)

A panel of 10 librarians evaluated more than 150 submissions based on “literary quality, interweaving of art and story, lasting impact and distinguished contributions to youth literature, and an audience range of K-12, or young readers through young adults.”