On Sunday, The Mercury of Manhattan, Kan., reprinted the statement of values that is published daily on page 2 in all 10 of the daily newspapers owned by WEHCO Media. In doing so, the newspaper promised its readers that it also is committed to the values held by Walter E. Hussman Jr. and that it will attempt "to live by this statement, day after day, regardless of the form our journalistic work takes."

The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction, Colo., and other newspapers owned by Seaton Publishing will soon be adopting their own set of Core Values, inspired by the column that Walter Hussman Jr., ran recently in the Wall Street Journal.

Jay Seaton, publisher of The Daily Sentinel, said their statement of values won't be a verbatim copy of the WEHCO Media statement, but – in many respects – will be a strong reflection of the values the WEHCO papers hold.

In an age of vast amounts of (mis)information, we all need a better understanding of what credible information looks like, and when the local news media is discredited, it doesn’t just hurt us, it hurts the community that now has no source of valid information.

While 88 percent of respondents reported they are confident in their critical thinking skills, only 9 percent received an "A" on a digital literacy test, according to a new national study from edtech firm MindEdge Learning. The third annual State of Critical Thinking study, commissioned by MindEdge and conducted by Qualtrics, found that a large majority of college-educated Americans could not pass a basic, nine-question digital literacy and fake news identification, and critical thinking skills test. Fully 69 percent of survey respondents failed to answer more than five of the questions correctly.

Studies from the Media Insight Project, Trusting News and others show that audiences put their trust in the news depending on certain factors that are present within the organization. In order to uncover where news outlets are on target or lacking in these factors, Discovery Fellow Taylor Gion from the University of Missouri did some research with new sites across the country.

In a new study conducted by the Institute for the Future, a California-based nonprofit think tank, researchers found more than 80 percent of journalists admitted to falling for false information online. The data was based on a survey of 1,018 journalists at regional and national publications in the United States.

Perhaps more concerning: Only 14.9 percent of journalists surveyed said they had been trained on how to best report on misinformation.

Read more from Poynter.org

Journalists, elected officials and government communicators committed to concrete steps aimed at increasing trust and civility in public life following two days of intensive conversations at the National Press Club.

Hosted by the club's nonprofit Journalism Institute and facilitated by the National Institute of Civil Discourse, the "Dialogue in a Divided Democracy" brought together more than 60 people – news media leaders and the people they cover – for face-to-face conversations about the challenges facing key American institutions. PEN America and the Stennis Center for Public Service Leadership partnered in the event.

In this article, read about the steps participants agreed to take.

The Associated Press is expanding its robust efforts to debunk false and misleading information, including in video and Spanish-language content appearing on Facebook.

With a focus on Spanish-language text, photos and video seen by a U.S. audience, AP will debunk misinformation and publish corresponding fact checks in Spanish. AP is the first fact-checker in Facebook's program to focus on content consumed by Spanish speakers in the U.S.

Fundamentally, news consumers trust journalism that they find to be balanced, in-depth, honest and reputable.

Those qualities appeared over and over in an analysis of 81 in-depth interviews our newsroom partners conducted with members of their communities. And when asked directly about what defines quality journalism, they were at the top of the list.

Newspapers are all about storytelling and, yet, "with the crisis that we face as an industry, we don't do a great job of telling our very, very compelling story," Terry Egger, publisher and CEO of Philadelphia Media Network, told attendees at the Mega-Conference last week.

In his keynote address to 700 industry executives in Las Vegas, Egger called on newspapers across the country to establish conversations with local community and business leaders about the important role that newspapers play.

As an industry, he said we have suffered a lot of self-inflicted wounds. "We wish we had do-overs," he said, "but we don't. What we do have, though, is a compelling story that needs to be told."