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 student reporters and visual journalists 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 with Mexico.
On one side of the state, the Buffalo/Niagara border crossing is the busiest on the northern border and the fourth busiest in the country. Due north, the Saint Lawrence River is the lifeline of those who make their way to and often homes on one side of the border in the Thousand Islands. And in the far northeastern part of the state, the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation is bisected by the border, burdening the tribe, creating an enforcement nightmare for border patrol and illuminating the many ways in which a border is an artificial construct.
Following the trips, 20 more students in the school’s News Editing and Web Journalism & Innovation courses handled editing, graphics development and digital production of 24 stories, photo galleries, videos and interactives in a special presentation for The NewsHouse.
The final outcome is Borderlines, a project that captures the beauty and complexity of the border between Canada and the United States, and the people who live there.
