New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism will collaborate on a cross-cultural reporting project bringing students to the Arizona-Sonora border to report on issues facing both Americans and Mexicans in the region and to New York City to cover local Latino communities. Under the project, “Beyond the Border”, journalism students will also produce multi-media reports to be published on NYU’s and the University of Arizona’s online journalism outlets.

This project aims to train future journalists by giving students tools to report in cross-cultural settings, as well as to teach them how to create journalism that puts issues and events in historical, economic, social, and cultural contexts.

The two-week project, which will run in non-consecutive weeks in October and November, will include upper-division undergraduate students and graduate students. During the first phase (Oct. 15-18), NYU and University of Arizona (UA) students will travel to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to report on issues and problems affecting the peoples of the region, including migration, violence, environmental degradation, and ethnic and racial conflict. During the second phase (Nov. 7-10), UA students travel to New York to report alongside their NYU counterparts on issues and problems facing local Latino communities, including Mexican and Mexican-American enclaves in New York City.

“Beyond the Border” is directed by Yvonne Latty, a clinical associate professor in the Carter Journalism Institute, and Celeste González de Bustamante, an assistant professor in UA’s School of Journalism. As part of the project, Latty and González de Bustamante will document and interview students during their reporting experience, which will result in a first-of-its-kind educational video for journalism educators who teach reporting in areas of conflict and trauma.

Latty is the director of the Institute’s “Reporting New York” and “Reporting the Nation” graduate concentrations, from which the NYU students will be drawn.

The project has received additional support from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Continental Airlines, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.