An OU visiting professor will spend the next year embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan as an ABC News correspondent, and OU students will deliver some of his stories online.

''We will feed information to students every day, and they'll work with it and structure it and submit it to abcnews.com," said Mike Boettcher, a professor at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Boettcher, an Emmy Award- and Peabody Award-winning journalist, also will keep a written and video blog on NewsOK.com, just as he and his newsman son Carlos did in 2009 from Iraq and Afghanistan.

''We will travel with our cameras and our clothes and our sleeping bag and our body armor," he said.

Boettcher is an OU graduate from Ponca City who spent 30 years working as a news correspondent for CNN, NBC and ABC, often working in war zones and other crisis areas, before joining the OU faculty last year.

He plans to leave Oklahoma on Aug. 25 with his son and head to Afghanistan, where they will spend time with all four brigades of the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

The job's official start is Sept. 1.

About the assignment

They will interview soldiers about their personal stories, shoot footage of their experiences in Afghanistan, and then use technology to relay those stories back to ABC News and to Oklahoma.

Boettcher said he and his son will keep tabs on the people they meet and update their stories whenever possible.

''People may or may not want to see the war," Boettcher said, "but they are sure as heck interested in the people we have over there."

Some reports will air on ABC news programs; many others will be seen online. That's where Boettcher's ongoing relationship with the Gaylord College and its students comes in.

About 15 students enrolled in an advanced multimedia class taught by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Schmeltzer will produce some of Boettcher's material. In addition to the ABC News submissions, they will post footage onto a Gaylord College website dedicated to the project.

Boettcher also will produce tutorials for OU classes on the latest multimedia journalism techniques.

''Mike cares deeply about the next generation of journalists and has bold ideas on how to inspire and help them," said Gaylord College Dean Joe Foote.

''We're excited that this partnership between Mike and ABC News will allow our students to have a unique view of how a war is covered," Foote said, "and how multimedia journalism is playing out in real time on an international level."

The Norman-based Sarkeys Foundation is paying for transmission costs related to the project.

Boettcher said universities could play an expanded role in covering news stories such as the war in Afghanistan by serving as a home base to journalists who want to deliver long-range, in-depth coverage in an age of shrinking newsroom budgets and diminishing attention spans.

''(OU) President David Boren is really interested in this model because no one is really out there," Boettcher said.

''Networks parachute people in for a couple of weeks and then pull them out, but this war deserves more coverage, and we need someone there full time."