If I could switch professional places with anyone, it would likely be with Henry Jenkins, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose job is to read lots of newspapers, watch all kinds of TV programs, ingest all kinds of books, collect comics and play videogames. He does all this so he can think and write intelligently about popular culture and teach others how to think and write intelligently about popular culture. Basically, he gets paid to do a lot of the things I think most of us would want to spend most of our day doing. Mind you, he's a pretty smart cookie, too, and, if you get a chance to hear him speak, an engaging lecturer.

This week, Jenkins has some important things to say about media literacy programs in public and high schools:

"Media literacy education must be integrated into our curriculum from kindergarten through college. But to succeed, educators need to update and rethink the assumptions shaping many existing media literacy programs. . . . . Much media literacy education is actually anti-media indoctrination rather than an attempt to develop the skills and competencies needed to function meaningfully in the current media environment . . . Too often, media literacy advocates depict kids as victims. We are told that advertising is "killing us softly," that we are "amusing ourselves to death," and that the only real alternative is to "unplug the plug-in drug" [But] Increasingly, kids are demonstrating the capacity to use media to their own ends and adult authorities are holding them accountable for their practices. Schools are suspending students for things they post on their Web sites; the recording industry is suing kids and their parents for the music they download. The problem of media power hasn't disappeared, but it operates very differently in an age of participatory media. The new media literacy education needs to be about empowerment and responsibility."

I think this is a really valuable idea.

But we urgently need just Media Literarcy 101. I'm frequently surprised at how poorly understood even the basic workings of a newspaper are by otherwise sophisticated business and academic professionals. Many don't have any idea what the difference is between a columnist and a reporter; between an editor and a publisher; and so on. One of the big problems with our (by our I mean, those of us in the craft) relationship with a news audience, is that they have a better understanding of the making of a blockbuster like Lord of the Rings than they do of their own letters-to-the-editor page.