A screen grab of Brian Stelter's Instagram photo page. He used the photo sharing app to report on the aftermath of the tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri.

I am adding “What I Learned in Joplin,” a personal blog post by New York Times reporter Brian Stelter, to the reading list for my fall Online Journalism course.

In the post, Stelter’s reflects on his experience of trying to cover the aftermath of the tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri in May. Due to unreliable Internet and phone service, Stelter did much of his reporting using social media – texting, tweeting, and posting photos via Instagram.

Stelter’s post has generated some spirited debate on journalism blogs, including Jeff Jarvis questioning if traditional news articles might be a luxury in the Internet age and Michael Ingram’s response to Jarvis, “No, Twitter is Not a Replacement for Journalism.” While I find this debate intriguing, I am including Stelter’s article in my course for more practical reasons.

Here are some things I like about his experience and blog post:

It’s About Reporting
Stelter covers TV and media for the New York Times and was traveling to Chicago to cover the final episode of the Oprah Winfrey show a few hours after the tornado hit. On the plane, he decided to delay his trip and go report on the devastation of the small town. He lacked preparation and experience, but he followed his instincts.

It seems like an obvious choice, but on the night Osama bin Laden death was announced rowdy student-led celebrations broke out on my college campus, I observed a range of responses from my journalism students. Some continued to study for exams. Some stayed in their dorm rooms and followed it on Facebook and Twitter. And some grabbed cameras and went live on the campus TV station to report the story.

Old Advice for New Media Reporting
Many of the things Stelter lists as his lessons learned sound like a nagging journalism instructor or an Intro to News Reporting textbook. Carry extra pens. Bring backup batteries. Avoid the pack of reporters. Wear sturdy, comfortable shoes. McDonald’s has WiFi. All obvious, but essential, advice.

Using Social Media as a Reporting Tool
With his cell phone, Stelter was able to send out short bursts of texts and photos. He tweeted and snapped photos as a form of note taking, but also to relay that information to others.

He writes:

I parked a block from the south side of the hospital and approached on foot, taking as many pictures as possible, knowing I’d need them later to remember what I was seeing.

And:

I started trying to tweet everything I saw — the search of the rubble pile, the sounds coming from the hospital, the dazed look on peoples’ faces. Some of the texts didn’t send, but most did. Practically speaking, text messages were my only way to relay information.

And because he created this record of online information, it could be easily incorporated into the overall news coverage. A link to Stelter’s Twitter feed, which has more than 60,000 followers, was put on the homepage of NYTimes.com.

Revisiting Tweets to Create a Stronger Story
Stelter’s tweets from the scene tell their own unique story. There are concrete facts, descriptive scenes, and quotes from survivors and rescue workers. But Stelter also notes the limits of this kind of reporting and storytelling. He writes that it would be helpful to have an editor “rewriting the reporters’ tweets and reworking them into the live news story.”

He also writes:

I believe it’s true that ‘my best reporting was on Twitter,’ but only up until a certain point on Monday, probably around 11 p.m. local time. After that point, with a more stable Internet connection, I was able to file complete stories for NYTimes.com, not just chunks of copy.

At that point, Stelter could incorporate his reporting into a front-page story that provided a richer overview of the events, not just brief snapshots.

“What I Learned in Joplin” also has a simple, yet effective, story structure. Stelter begins with an anecdote that contains concrete and vivid details. And then he has a moment of reflection (“What I Learned”) when he explains the point of the anecdote. He repeats this refrain – anecdote and moment of reflection – seven times in the blog post.

By revisiting his tweets and experiences, Stelter turns even “a stream of consciousness” blog post into a compelling narrative.

Each student selects a topic or beat to cover for the semester and creates a blog dedicated to that subject. Then students report, write, photograph, gather audio, shoot and edit video for Web, and create interactive maps and timelines. All the student work is public, and the authors must cultivate an audience.

I like using the blog format for a number of reasons:

• It’s a free (or relatively inexpensive) way to create an online publication.
• Blogs can serve as an open-source reporter’s notebook – a place to try things, develop sources, and advance a story.
• It’s a hands-on way to learn about things like  HTML, CSS, feeds, linking, traffic, search engine optimization, and copyright and fair use.
• Students are required to generate ideas, write frequently, and learn to edit their own work.
• It allows for experimentation with multimedia and a chance to explore which elements can or should be used to tell a particular story.
• Students often have their work picked up by other publications or noticed by other reporters and editors.
• When students finish the semester, they have an online publication for internships and job applications. From my own experience, I know that an editor can tell a lot more about an applicant from 15 weeks of covering a single topic than from a stack of clips from the school newspaper.

When I began teaching several years ago, I was one of only a few instructors in my journalism department to use blogs for student work; today, many do.  Some students now complain that they have to maintain three or four blogs at the same time.

At the end of each semester, I ask myself: Is blogging outdated? Should I move on to another platform?

A recent report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which found that blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults, raised these questions for me again.

I regularly remind my students that the class is not about blogging. It isn’t about the technology, software, or equipment. All of those things will be outdated in a few years.  I hope they take away lessons in reporting, writing, editing, fact checking, producing, informing, sharing, storytelling, and connecting with an audience.

I’d abandon blogs if I found another way to create that same experience in an introductory online journalism course. Much of the traffic on the Web has moved away from blogs to social networking sites. But I’ve yet to see a social networking experience that allows for all of the elements listed above.

I welcome suggestions.

—

I read through my course evaluations from last semester and in addition to comments like “he’s long-winded, but nice enough,” a number of students gave high marks to the free Web tutorials I assigned in my online journalism classes. I was pleasantly surprised because I wasn’t sure how to measure their usefulness, and I had to create graded assignments to make the student actually do them.

But overall, students said they found the tutorials helpful, liked that they could learn at their own pace, and returned to them over and over again.

I found out about many of these tutorials from Mindy McAdams, who has written a great series of posts called a Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency on her blog. NewsU and the Knight Digital Media Center are also great resources.

So below is a list of tutorials I’ve used in my courses. They are all free and all aimed at beginners.

Any you would suggest?

Also this fall, I plan to create a series of video tutorials for my students and will post them here.

STORYTELLING
Five Steps of Multimedia Storytelling (NewsU)
Ira Glass of This American Life on the building blocks of good storytelling (25 minutes of YouTube videos)
Part 1: On the basics
Part 2: On finding a great story
Part 3: On taste
Part 4: On common pitfalls

DIPITY TIMELINE
How to Make a Timeline Using Dipity (Berkey-Gerard)

GOOGLE MAPS
11 Exercises to Learn How to Make a Google Map (Berkey-Gerard)

Google Map Video Tours:
Getting Started
Add a Place
Google Street View
Create a Map
Add Third Party Content
Create a Google Map profile

HTML and CSS
Beginner HTML Tutorial (HTML Dog)
Beginner CSS Tutorial (HTML Dog)

PHOTOGRAPHY
Language of the Image (NewsU)
Photoshop How-To for Online Photos (Mindy McAdams)

AUDIO
Telling Stories with Sound (NewsU)
Gathering Audio by Brian Storm (MediaStorm)
How to convert .wma, .wmv, or .mp3 files using Switch (Berkey-Gerard)
How to Use Garage Band (Knight Digital Media Center)
How to Use Audacity (Knight Digital Media Center)

SOUND SLIDES
Photoshop How To for Sound Slides (Mindy McAdams)
How to Use the Sound Slides (Knight Digital Media Center)

VIDEO
How to Use iMovie (Knight Digital Media Center)

MULTIMEDIA COLLAGE
How to Make a Multimedia Collage Using VuVox (VuVox)

A friend recommended I read a book called  The Little Book of Contemplative Photography by  Howard Zehr, a professor and documentary photographer who contends that the words and metaphors of photography – “taking a picture,” “shooting,” “aiming” – are predominately aggressive and predatory, but also inaccurate.

Zehr writes:

This metaphor of taking an image does not accurately reflect the photographic process itself. When we photograph, we do not actually reach out and take anything. A camera is basically a dark box with a receptor (film or digital sensor) on one side and a small opening on the other… When we do photography, we receive an image that is reflected from the subject. Instead of photography as taking, then we can envision it as receiving. Instead of a trophy that is hunted, an image is a gift.

Zehr goes on to suggest new ways of talking about photography. He sees:

• Image as received vs. image taken
• Image as ours vs. image as mine
• Subject as co-creator, collaborator vs. subject as an object
• Photography as revelation vs. photography as expose.

I found the idea compelling, but wondered if it could be translated to other forms of journalism.

For one, Zehr’s photography is deeply connected to his religious, philosophical, and personal beliefs. He is an advocate for restorative justice, a way of approaching crime that emphasizes repairing the harm done to the whole community, not just punishing the offender. This is evident in his portraits of  victims of crimes, as well as photographs of men and women serving life sentences in prison.

Many journalists, I thought, might be suspicious of such a value-laden approach and suspicious of the language shift as well.

A few days later I stumbled upon a Web site called Journalism That Matters founded by group of news editors who hope to save the industry by rethinking traditional newsroom culture, approaches, and metaphors.

Journalism That Matters argues that the news process should be defined as:

• Conversation rather than a lecture
• Many-to-many rather than one-to-many
• Community connector rather than a central authority
• Relationship-centric rather than knowledge-centric.

I find both of these vocab-lessons valuable in thinking about how journalism might be re-imagined.

In both of these paradigms, journalism education might be less about teaching students how to gather and distribute information and more about helping students engage with the people and communities they are covering.

After running an article about an effort to revive instant film cameras, NYTimes.com asked readers to submit their own Polaroids. The Times received 932 submissions before its deadline and posted 406 of them on the Lens photography blog. They even received a Polaroid of Walker Evans by Bruce Jackson.

The Times chose to display the collection in several different ways — small thumbnails with pop-ups, medium-sized thumbnails in rows that shift, and a full screen option.

I saw the Lens post shortly after reading this quote from Daniel Bell, “Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of human imagination.”