Newspaper in Education content available to NNA members; committee plans for 2023-2024

May 1, 2022

For 2023-2024, the committee discussed STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) topics and sourcing scientists from all over the Midwest. With the upcoming April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, astrology will also be featured in the series.

Thanks to an annual grant from the National Newspaper Association (NNA) Foundation to the Missouri Press Foundation, NNA members have free access to annual Newspaper in Education series.

Topics have centered on Missouri but have also held strong national importance. For 2023-2024, the committee — led by Helen Headrick, Missouri NIE Coordinator — discussed STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) topics and sourcing scientists from all over the Midwest.

With the upcoming April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, astrology will also be featured in the series. We — Earth inhabitants — had the last total lunar eclipse on July 27, 2018.

(Solar eclipses appear when the moon navigates between Earth and the Sun, leaving a moving region of shadow on Earth's surface; whereas, a lunar eclipse takes place when Earth navigates between the Sun and the Moon, casting a shadow on the Moon’s surface.)

The series will also feature activities to do at school or home.

The 2022 story, Generations of Missouri, is an eight-chapter story focusing on family members from the year 1821 to the present.
Chapter 1 is set in 1821, with a young girl and her father joining others at the market in St. Louis, on the banks of the Mississippi River, to watch the announcement of Missouri achieving statehood. Events from the Dred Scott decision, the building of the Eads Bridge, to connect Illinois to Missouri, the 1904 World’s Fair, the 19th Amendment, Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, the Arch Protest and the Flood of 1993.

Miles and the Monarchs, the 2021 story, is also still available here. 

Miles and the Monarchs centers on a father and son trip to see the final game of the 1942 Negro League World Series, between the Kansas City Monarchs and the Washington-Homestead Grays. Major League Baseball has recently announced that players from the Negro Leagues will be considered Major Leaguers. All 3,400 players, from 1920 to 1948, will be elevated to MLB status. Andrew “Rube” Foster established the Negro National League in 1920, in Kansas City, Missouri.