In the late 1980s, as a school teacher in the United Kingdom, George Kelly remembers melding newspapers and current events with his classroom lessons.

The project grew into a twice-monthly, student-run newspaper that helped tell the stories of the community while teaching 11- and 12-year-old initiative and resourcefulness.

“It was like a newsroom, but it was also a classroom,” Kelly said.

Now, as director of the NEWS Foundation, Kelly works to help accomplish its stated goal to provide young people access to news of all types and help them grasp its significance in their lives.

Stopping in Bowling Green on Thursday on his way to a gathering of newspapers in education advocates in Lexington, Kelly found common ground with small-town American newspapers searching for their footing in a news landscape driven by clicks.

“We are both living in societies where news has become fractured,” Kelly told the Daily News.

In the past 15 years, newspaper circulation has fallen sharply, as has employment in the industry – with financial cutbacks leading to the closure of nearly 1,800 daily and weekly newspapers. The number of working newspaper journalists has been sliced in half since 2004, the Associated Press reported this year.

The development has given rise to a new term, “news deserts,” which refers to communities that are no longer covered by daily journalists, according to the AP. Additionally, some research has shown that without local watchdog coverage, local governments run less efficiently.

Rising in its place is an online media market where news and commentary stir together in a dizzying mix and social media influencers guide and shape public opinion through their large followings.

“The biggest problem we have now is the idea of news awareness,” Kelly said.

He often sees young people take pronouncements from their favored celebrities at face value and struggle with distinguishing facts and opinions.

Traditionally, newspapers in education programs have been used to enable schools to teach history, reading, social science, math, economics, writing and composition and government, and they continue to serve that purpose.

“I think it’s being able to take what’s in the newspaper and apply it to their curriculum today,” said Sharrye Noel, who oversees the Daily News’ Newspapers in Education program.

Across all subject areas, Noel said, “there are ways to apply what they’re learning in the classroom” to current events.

But in the “fake news” era, they also have another purpose – offering insight into credible news sources and what the reporting process realistically looks like.

When students understand how news is gathered, translated and broadcast, “then they can then recognize why there are maybe, for instance, errors” or how a story develops over time, Kelly said.

Local news with national or even global consequences can spark students’ curiosity, Kelly said, bringing the world into their classroom.

“With NIE you can build that – or you hope you can build that – inquisitiveness,” Kelly said.