This is one of the best journalism ideas I’ve heard all year: The U.S. Stony Brook University proposes to hire and train 50 laid-off journalists to teach a new discipline, “news literacy.” They’ll begin this fall at dozens of U.S. campuses, teaching non-journalism majors about the importance of news to democracy.

A media giraffe piece is here. Stony Brook’s Center for News Literacy is here.

Can “news literacy” help people detect and avoid junk media, the way health campaigns target junk food junkies?