Digital literacy mortally wounded in budget battle

[Commentary] If you're one of the thousands of teachers who've found inspiration in the National Writing Project, think of the end of its federal funding as a bit of foreshadowing.

This sort of pulling the fiscal rug out from under a valuable program is likely to happen with depressing frequency as the endless budget battle in Washington rages on. Foreshadowing, cliché, hyperbole. If you're among those who've found inspiration in the National Writing Project, then surely you've talked about writing devices when you gather for the Berkeley-based program's intense summer sessions on college campuses nationwide. And increasingly you've talked about the literary power of Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs and multimedia storytelling. Now the dramatic tension: The writing project, which started on the UC Berkeley campus 37 years ago, is staring death in the face. When Congress passed a resolution early this month to keep the government running, something had to give. Literally -- and in this case literarily. Among the nearly $4 billion in cuts in the March 2 resolution was $25.6 million for the writing project, money that the national organization uses to attract an equal amount of matching money from states, universities, local school districts and nonprofits.