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.

As I shift to my summer schedule, I wanted to take note of a few general lessons I’ve learned. Most of these are things I came to through trial-and-error, often with instruction from my students.

Lecturing is not the best way to teach that “news is a conversation”
Higher education and journalism are biased toward a “one-to-many” mode of communication; the web is not. In order to understand how journalism works in a digital age, a course on interactive news has to be participatory, conversational and collaborative. In my experience, this can also mean unpredictable and occasionally chaotic, but it is a lot more fun than lecturing everyday.

Follow smart people
My blog roll (see “Sites I Like and Use” on the sidebar) and my Twitter account are my key sources of information on what is happening in the profession and in teaching. If I don’t know something, I turn to those who do.

Don’t assume students are active web users
There is a difference between “passive” and “active” web users. Despite growing up with the Internet, some of my students navigate the web like they watch TV; they surf and consume. Or they only know how to participate within a defined structure like Facebook.

Don’t skimp on HTML and CSS
An assignment to build a simple web page can fill my email box with complaints. Then at the end of the semester, students say they want to learn more coding. So each semester, I give them more.

Raw audio interviews are gold
At the suggestion of veteran online journalism professor Mindy McAdams, I now require students turn in unedited audio recordings of interviews. They take a time to review, but they provide invaluable insight into a student’s interviewing and reporting techniques. I can hear the leading questions, the lack of a follow-up question, or the student reporter who does not allow the subject enough time to tell the real story. I can also tell if the student is interviewing a friend or relative.

Online tutorials are useful, but need follow-up
I use “how-to” online tutorials to free up class time and allow students to learn at their own pace. However, I’ve found that students will rush through them — or skip them entirely — unless they are followed up with some kind of review or assessment.

Experiment first, become an expert later
I used to spend a lot of time explaining a new piece of equipment or software before giving assignments. Now I cover a few basics and get students using it as soon as possible. I cover the more advanced techniques after they have some experience practicing.

The audience can be the best editor
I require that my students publish their work for an online audience (see a previous post It’s Not About the Blog). Despite the potential risks of this practice — like making mistakes in a public forum or having to endure spam and trolls — an online audience can provide a level of feedback that I cannot. Last semester, a student created an interactive map of all of the schools in his town. Eight minutes after it was published online, a reader contacted the student to say one school was missing.

Allow students to pursue a passion
I often ask students to report on subjects that they are passionate about. Some students respond, “I don’t have any passions.” I tell them to use my class as an excuse to find that new passion.  Then, over the course of the semester, I urge students to cover the topic as a “beat,” developing story ideas, cultivating sources, and digging deeper into the subject. It is satisfying to watch a student turn a hobby into an area of expertise. And reporters in the field routinely seek out students who have built up an online portfolio of work on a specific subject and quote them as sources.

Push beyond “write what you know”
While I allow students to write about things that interest them, I also require students to go places and cover subjects that do not interest them. I have found that it is essential to give very specific requirements (i.e. no quotes from anyone 17-25 years old) to get students to move out of their comfort zones.

Expect resistance to convergence
I have instituted convergence projects which require my online journalism students to work alongside broadcast journalism and photojournalism students. I underestimated how intensely students can identify with their particular specializations and can resent having to work with “those TV people.”

Storytelling is hard work
I can teach someone to edit an audio clip, crop a photo or compress a video. Or they can Google it and teach themselves. Teaching students to recognize, report and tell a compelling story is a real challenge, but that seems like a central goal of journalism education.

Students don’t remember PowerPoint presentations
I have now been teaching long enough to get an occasional “thank you” e-mail or note from a former student. While they often mention the content of my courses and how it helped in grad school or on the job, it is clear that interactions and conversations outside of the classroom are as meaningful — and often more significant — than the information I try to convey in the classroom.

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.

When we started the semester, most of the students had limited experience recording and editing audio. Most had not taken a photojournalism course. And it was my first time trying to teach students each step of creating an audio slide show: how to record an interview, gather natural and ambient sound, take photographs, and then edit it all into a coherent story.

I found One in 8 Million to be a great learning tool for all of us. It is a series of personal profiles presented as two-minute audio slide shows with photographs by Todd Heisler.

The subjects are characters, often with quirky jobs, backgrounds, and stories to tell. There is a profile of an urban taxidermist, a bus-depot barber, a mozzarella cheese maker, a singing waitress, and a maid who has cleaned up after four different mayors at Gracie Mansion.

The story index even gives the visual sense that the viewer is standing on a subway platform and the faces of the people appear in the subway car windows as it pulls into the station.

I did not plan out how I would use the material before the semester began. I stumbled upon a routine as we went along.

I often began class by shutting off the lights and showing the latest profile on a big projector screen. We would watch the profile and then discuss it for several minutes. Then we would watch it again and discuss it a bit more.

Then I would turn off the projector and we would just listen to the sound. We talked about why the producer might have put the sound of the cash register at that exact spot or why a specific anecdote had been included.

Then I muted the sound and we watched it again. I asked students to pay attention to the composition, as well as the content of the photographs. “Why did the photographer focus on a person’s hand or a religious icon?” we wondered. “Why were the images arranged in that specific order?”

This process usually took about 20 minutes.

Basically, we broke down the audio slide show into its smallest parts – and we tried to figure out how the producers put it all together to make a unified whole.

We spent a lot of class time learning the technical aspects of audio and photography — and how to convert the files into the proper format. One in 8 Million helped us the focus on the storytelling.

I also stuck with the series because I like how the stories are presented.

• The profiles are often of “everyday” people – a store owner, a guy with the cool sneakers, a teenage mom – that we routinely pass by on the way to cover a “real” news story.

• The subject herself tells the story. The audience doesn’t hear the reporter’s voice, narration, or questions. There is no moral or kicker at the end saying what it means.

• The person’s story is the story. There isn’t a news peg, just an interesting person with something to say.

The highlight of the experiment came near the end of the semester as the students scrambled to complete their audio slide shows. I arranged a live video chat (using Google chats, nothing fancy) with Joshua Brustein, an interactive producer at NYTimes.com. Josh answered student questions about the profiles he produced, how he found a specific person, and how he approached the interviews.

Here are two examples of Josh’s work: Paul Bockwaldt, who joined a predominantly gay rugby team to bond with his brother and Ra Ruiz, a former Christopher Street pier kid.

When Josh said he usually spent 10 hours collecting and editing audio for a two minute piece, the students were stunned. But they also seemed inspired that they were attempting to do similar work.