About Borderlines

Dozens of Newhouse School students deployed to New York’s border with Canada to report stories about the people, cultures, businesses and landscapes at the edge of two nations.

Published: May 30, 2019 | Updated: May 21st, 2020 at 1:15 am

Stories

More than 50 students at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications joined forces on Borderlines, an international reporting project on the border in Syracuse’s backyard.

Three dozen of those students fanned out along and across the U.S.-Canada border on April 5-7 and came back with stories about Indigenous people, security, business, government, history, and, of course, comparisons to the southern border.

Following the trips, students in the school’s News Editing and Web Journalism & Innovation courses handled editing, graphic development and digital production on The NewsHouse.

Freshmen, graduate students and students at all levels in between participated in the project. It attracted students from a majority of Newhouse majors and all of the school’s journalism programs including Magazine, News & Digital Journalism, Visual Communications and Broadcast & Digital Journalism.

Together, they produced Borderlines, a project that captures the beauty and complexity of the border between Canada and the United States, and the people who live there.

About Borderlines: Reporter interviewing Gill family at Rose Ridge Farms in Niagara Falls, Ontario

Photojournalism senior Alexandra Moreo served as Borderlines’ visuals editor as part of the Visual Editing & Project Development course under the guidance of VIS Professor Mike Davis. Graphic Design senior Emma Comtois designed the project logo. Journalism seniors Mary Catalfamo and Sabrina Brodkin devoted extra work as project coordinators and members of the Web Journalism & Innovation class.

Most Magazine, News & Digital Journalism professors contributed to the project by recruiting interested students, editing articles and offering input. MND professors Jon Glass and Greg Munno led the project and accompanied students to the border in April. Professor Seth Gitner provided significant support with digital design and CMS development. Professors Aileen Gallagher, Eric Grode, Gustav Niebuhr, Teri Weaver and Cheryl Reed were particularly helpful during the editing stage. Department Chair Melissa Chessher supported the project throughout, contributing time, money and encouragement. Academic Coordinator Jessica Tarrats was enormously helpful as always, particularly in managing our accommodations in the field.

The department is grateful to Newhouse alumnus David Flaum and his wife Jackie Flaum for their generous donation that helped to make this project possible.

Professors Munno and Glass, and the reporters who covered stories on the Mohawk Nation territory of Akwesasne, are also grateful to Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, a Newhouse alumna and reporter at Indian Country Today, for her guidance on story development, sourcing, language and style.

We also thank Elizabeth Calabria, the senior computer support technician at Newhouse who also oversees the equipment cage. The logistics of training and equipping a team of reporters this size for stills, audio and video was no small feat and required significant extra work.

There are many others worth thanking, too. Borderlines was truly a team effort.