MAKE LITERACY A FAMILY ISSUE

Newspapers are the most widely and often read printed product in the United States. They are read by millions every day of every week of every year. It is a business and an industry that demands a literate public, one that seeks out and consumes newspaper products in vast amounts at every opportunity.

It is imperative, therefore, that the newspaper industry assume a prominent, visible role in the national effort to combat the horrifying number of people who cannot read our products. It is an obligation the industry should willingly assume for both business and humanitarian reasons. Our future growth and continued success depend on an educated public that can and does read. It must be a public that has the ability to read before it is a public that wants to read a newspaper.

Secondly, newspapers are servants of their community, institutions that are often the heart of their community. Thus, they have a responsibility to serve, a responsibility engendered by the support and trust a community invests in its newspaper.

All newspapers work to build readership. Perhaps this work should be expanded to include literacy as well, not just focusing on projects for a functionally literate population of teens and adults and not just on helping 5- to 9-year-olds to read, but on building a compelling need in the community for people of all ages -- families, workers, citizens, immigrants -- to read the printed word and to be informed about what is going on around them.

It appears that a family approach to literacy is, perhaps, the most viable way for the newspaper industry to use its power and resources. Studies have shown that young readers in programs do not succeed when they return to homes where their caregivers do not read or are unable to read to them. Low-level readers in middle school and high school do not do well if their households and neighborhoods put little value on reading. It is extremely difficult, professionals in the field say, to overcome the large number of adult non-readers with a one-to-one approach. It is a successful approach, but one that reaches too few clients to have a cumulative effect on the problem. An emphasis on family literacy speaks to each of these possible problems. It allows the industry to partner with the numerous national, state and local groups involved in the field. Most importantly, it would allow newspapers to serve as catalysts for change and help them create individualized programs in their own communities.

It is difficult in the best of circumstances for a national foundation to serve the individualized needs of each of its constituent members. If, however, that foundation gathered information, maintained a library of research and related materials and served as a clearinghouse for its members, it could easily, over time, provide the basic building blocks for programs large and small, urban and rural, multifaceted and single-track with ease.

Wes Hasden is a member of the Literacy Task Force of the Newspaper Association of America.