A year ago this week I got a call from the College of Journalism at the University of Nebraska.

One of two faculty members had to cancel out on a depth-reporting class mission to South Africa in June and early July. I was asked to substitute. I checked with my bosses here and at home and, with approval from both, called back and said I would go.

Ten students were in the group from Nebraska, meeting up with about 10 at Witswatersrand University in Johannesburg, which would provide dorm rooms and an operational base.

In addition to the impending anniversary, the Africa trip comes to mind for two reasons.

One is that most of the Nebraska students’ work — budding photojournalists — is now available on the Internet. Those with high-speed connections can find it at http://www.unl.edu/photojournalism/. It’s too voluminous for slow-speed connections.

The other is a comment by investment genius and super-billionaire Warren Buffett earlier this month.

Before the comment is reprinted, a little context: Buffett is a Nebraskan, who lives the simple life in a modest Omaha home. He’s the largest stockholder in The Washington Post and an owner of other media interests. As part of his answer, Buffett said he reads five newspapers a day, a lifelong practice he said he would never give up.

But about the financial future of newspaper companies, here’s what he said: “The current environment is accentuating problem in newspapers, but it’s not the basic cause. We would not buy them at any price. They have the possibility of going to unending losses. They were essential to the public 20 years ago. Their pricing power was essential with customers. They lost the essential nature. The erosion has accelerated dramatically. They were only essential to advertiser as long as essential to reader. No one liked buying ads in the paper — it’s just that they worked. I don’t see anything on the horizon that causes that erosion to end.”

In addition to the fact that he’s a newspaper company owner and fan, another reason Warren Buffett’s analysis is so striking is that the whole tab for the Africa trip was picked up by a foundation created by one of his sons, Howard Buffett.

Those who are willing and able to take the time to find the students’ work on the Internet — and I hope many readers will do so — don’t need to take the hour or more necessary to download and view all the photos or listen to all the stories.

It should be self-evident in just a few minutes that these are serious stories with serious consequences. Seeing them and hearing them should make us think about the larger world and our stewardship.

Buffett didn’t make his billions by checking a stock ticker. He had to have information in depth — tips from newspapers he followed up by studying financial data.

If his point is that newspapers are on the cusp of disappearing because their business models are poor (and many corporate chains are in that situation) or because people can communicate information more swiftly on the Internet, getting their baseball scores and one-sentence information nuggets, that’s one thing.

If he’s saying the work of journalists who work to gather information from myriad sources, condense it and explain it in understandable text has become irrelevant, that’s something else entirely.

The latest rage, as most folks know, is using something called Twitter to send masses of people “tweets,” each of which must be shorter than this single sentence.

The students’ work reflects their belief some stories merit more than a tweet and cannot, in fact, be told in a tweet.

I hope they’re right, and that there always will be those who do what it takes to find the stories and tell them. And that there are people who take the time to read, listen and learn.