Growing up in St. Louis, most of Bob Dotson’s friends knew they were going to the University of Missouri.

But Dotson had another school in mind: one a little farther alongInterstate 70, where his uncle had gone to law school.

Dotson, now a correspondent for NBC News, attended Kansas University, graduating from the School of Journalism in 1968. He will be the featured speaker during Editors Day at KU.

“I came with the idea that I might be an attorney like my grandfather, but writing dusty briefs just didn’t sound like fun,” Dotson said.

So instead he began writing stories about people. He’ll show an example of the sort of stories he does for the “Today” show during his speech at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

Dotson is on campus today speaking to students in various classes in the School of Journalism. He said he wanted to show them how storytelling can be the cornerstone of future journalism.

“The real challenge for those of us who get paychecks every week – the professional storytellers – we have to figure out how to do something that has value added,” Dotson said. “We have to go back to our roots as storytellers.”

Susanne Shaw, the professor of journalism who coordinates Editors Day each year, said that Dotson’s words ring true.

“I think storytelling is important,” Shaw said. “I think it’s reflected in today’s journalism. That’s what good journalists do. They tell stories every day.”

Dotson will bring a wide breadth of experience to his speech and the classes he visits. He’s covered wars, revolutions and 17 hurricanes.

But through each of those experiences, Dotson said, he tried to cover the stories that were being left behind. The stories of us, as he put it.

“The most underreported area in our country is us,” Dotson said. “Just folks going about the basic work of making the world work. I’ve tried to forge a beat that was reporting on regular people like they were the governor.”

Dotson said it’s more important than ever to teach college students about storytelling, because college students are the ones who will dictate the future of journalism.

“We’re always being told that the golden age of journalism was two weeks before we got in to it,” Dotson said. “People who are going to come up with a solution (to journalism’s future) are the people sitting in front of me listening to me talk.”

Dotson is the first broadcaster to address the Editors Day crowd in recent memory. Last year, a team of Pulitzer Prize winners from the Rocky Mountain News spoke. That, however, is not an issue for Shaw.

“He’s a journalist,” she said. “The journalist is the important part.”

One of Dotson’s stories will air on NBC’s “Today” show this morning. The “Today” show airs from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Sunflower Broadband Channels 8 and 14.