Syllabus - Transborder Seminar Spring 2009

The Transborder World of the Southwest

Tuesday, 1:30 p.m. to 4:20 p.m.

This seminar will be a prerequisite for News 21, providing the necessary background and context for students to propose projects for in-depth reporting in the summer. The seminar will draw on the expertise of borderlands scholars from throughout ASU’s campus in order to give students a broad-based view of Latino and other issues in the Southwest.

Instructors

The seminar will be directed by Rick Rodriguez, Carnegie professor of practice. The course is part of ASU’s Southwest Borderlands Initiative. Rodriguez is the former executive editor of The Sacramento Bee and the first Latino to serve as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Under his direction The Bee won many of journalism’s top awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, the Polk Award for investigative journalism, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, Sigma Delta Chi, Overseas Press Club, American Society of Newspaper Editors writing award and others.

There will be two primary co-facilitators, Carlos Velez-Ibanez, chair of the Department of Transborder Chicano/a and Latina/o Studies, and Raul Yzaguirre, executive director of ASU’s Center for Community Development and Civil Rights, and presidential professor of practice in community development. Velez-Ibanez, an anthropologist, is a noted author and one of the foremost experts on the Latino Southwest. Yzaguirre is the former president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza and a nationally prominent civil rights leader. They will be periodic guest lecturers and help shape the seminar’s content.

In addition, Jason Manning, the director of student media at ASU and the former political editor of Washingtonpost.com, will be a frequent participant in the classroom, participating in discussions and idea formulations. Manning will serve as the News 21 managing editor in the summer.

Rodriguez Contact info: Office, room 367. E-mail: Rick.Rodriguez@asu.edu Phone: Office: (602) 496-6884; cell (916) 764-6422

Rodriguez office hours: Tuesday, 11 a.m. to noon; Wednesday 9:30 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. I am also available for meetings by arrangement.

Class structure

In addition, to Rodriguez, Velez-Ibanez, Yzaguirre and Manning, seven ASU faculty members will lecture and lead discussions in their areas of expertise: Barbara Robles, economics on the border; Lisa Magana, immigration policy and Latino politics; Francisco Lara-Valencia, urban planning and demographics; Paul Espinosa, documentary film; Eugene Garcia, education; Maria Garcia Perez, border health issues; and Daniel Ramirez, religion.

All faculty participants will be submitting readings for the seminar, most of which are listed in this syllabus. Other readings will be posted soon. Please do the readings prior to the guest lectures. The lectures will last about two hours, with a 20-minute break after the first hour.

At the conclusion of each topic, students will be asked to participate in discussion about the topic, with the purpose being to try to come up with potential story ideas.

After each lecture and discussion, students will be required to write one to two-page papers expanding on story ideas and how they might develop them for a News21 project. The papers will be due at the beginning of the next class.

All of the lectures will be taped and shared on the News21 website.

Class rules

Please be prompt and be courteous to our guest lecturers by not “multi-tasking” on laptops, I-phones, Blackberrys, mobile phones or the like. In fact, I would prefer notes be taken the old-fashioned way, by hand, so as not to be tempted or disruptive to the speakers.

Please meet deadlines. It is very important to get this skill ingrained before your enter the job market. Failure to turn in papers on time will result in a zero for that paper.

Please participate in class discussions. As we plan in-depth stories, the more we know about a subject, the deeper we can go.

Attendance

You are expected to attend every class. There are no excused absences or lateness. If you miss more than two classes, your final grade will be dropped one-half letter for every class you miss (an A will become an A-, and so on). Tardiness is counted as an absence.

Academic integrity

Adhering to a high ethical standard is of special importance in the world of journalism, where reliability and credibility are the cornerstones of the field.

Therefore, the Cronkite School has adopted a “zero tolerance” policy on academic dishonesty. If any student is found to have engaged in academic dishonesty in any form -- including but not limited to cheating, plagiarizing and fabricating -- that student will receive a grade of XE for the class and will be dismissed from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Reinstatement will not be considered. There will be no exceptions. At the beginning of class, each student will be given a copy of the full academic integrity policy, along with accompanying information on how to avoid plagiarism.

Students must sign a pledge that indicates they have read and understood the material and agree to abide by the policy.

Grading

As I mentioned, 1 to 2-page memos outlining potential story ideas based on the lectures or for the more ambitious, additional reporting, will be due at the beginning of class the week after each speaker. We will have 10 such papers due, each worth 10 points. What I will be looking for is insight into the subjects, ideas for story development and how you might tell such stories for News21. Collectively, they will count for a third of the grade.

In addition, a final paper will be due the week before finals. It should be 10 pages, double-spaced, 12-point type. It should reflect original research in addition to information gleaned from the lectures such as interviews and background research. It will count for two-thirds of the grade. The final paper should be the blueprint for the intensive summer reporting project.

Selection for News21

The final selections for the News21 project will be made before the semester ends based on class participation, proposed story ideas and potential for developing in-depth stories in new ways. We will be looking for innovative ways to tell stories, a range of technical skills, the ability to work cooperatively, adherence to deadlines and interest in the subject matter.

NEWS21.NING.COM <http://news21.ning.com/> : A key News21 mission is to collaborate and experiment, so the national News21 team has created a site for us to post material and highlights from our seminar. It’s a platform that will encourage interaction with other students from schools in the News21 alliance; share tips and techniques for doing journalism; provide links to relevant material from other similar seminars occurring around the country; and other purposes to be invented. The News21 team wants us to use it, to learn its benefits and shortcomings, which is a good lesson for learning to adapt available tools for your news organization. On the Ning site, we have our own Arizona State University tab, as well as an ASU Group, which is listed under “Essentials.” You can also join groups relevant to your interests (i.e., designers, photographers, web developers). Whereas some planning for the News21 summer incubator will be centralized here, everyone in the seminar can engage in the community. For each class, a different student will act as reporter, posting a summary and relevant material from our session and/or guest speakers. This will help with online learning with the students from Harvard and ASU, who are participating in our class from afar. The student from Harvard is Josh Stephan and from ASU is Deanna Dent, who is studying from Latin America.

Recommended reading

There are two textbooks that I recommend for background reading: Border Visions:  Mexican Cultures of the Southwest United States(University of Arizona Press): 1996; Carlos Velez-Ibanez.

Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Samuel Truett, William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies. Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN 030011091X, 9780300110913. 259 pages.

Speaker schedule and readings

Jan. 20 – Rick Rodriguez, class organization and outline

Jan. 27 – Carlos Velez-Ibanez, the history of the region

Feb. 3 – Carlos Velez-Ibanez, the history of the region, continued

First two chapters of Border Visions (above) Pages 20-87.

Feb. 10 – Francisco Lara-Valencia, demographics

Reading: "Fifty years of change on the U.S.-Mexico border: growth, development and quality of life" by Joan B. Anderson and James Gerber (2008). Chapters 1 and 2. Published  by the University of Texas Press.

Feb. 17 -- Barbara Robles,Wealth Inequality and Asset Building Policies in the Borderlands

Readings/Websites:

http://www.epa.gov/border2012/framework/index.html Overview of Border & People; see especially the People section (if you have the computer capability, please see the video posted on this website: Border 2012)

Luna-Firebaugh, E., “The Border Crossed Us: Border Crossing Issues of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas,” Wicazo Sa Review - Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2002, pp. 159-181

Velez-Ibanez, C. “Regions of Refuge in the United States: Issues, Problems and Concerns for the Future of Mexican-Americans in the United States,” Human Organization, Vol. 63, No.1, (2004), pp. 1-20

http://www.bls.gov/cps/labor2006/chart2-4.pdf Chart of weekly earnings by education

http://www.bls.gov/cps/labor2006/chart2-5.pdf Chart of weekly earnings by education & race/ethnicity

Robles, B., ““Estimating the Wealth Returns to Latino Student Degree Completions” Journal of Hispanics in Higher Education, forthcoming ( to be posted)

Feb. 24 – Daniel Ramirez, religion

Readings to come

March 3 – Eugene Garcia, education

Readings to come

March 17 – Hilda Garcia Perez, health

Readings:Lloyd LS. Border Health. In: Loue S,(ed.) Handbook of Immigrant Health. New York, NY: Plenum Press, 1998:243-60.

USMBHC. Healthy Border 2010: An Agenda for Improving Health on the United States-Mexico Border. El Paso, TX: The United States-Mexico Border Health Commission, 2003:1-18.

March 24 – Raul Yzaguirre, civil rights

March 31 – Raul Yzaguirre and Rick Rodriguez, media coverage

April 7 – Lisa Magana, immigration and politics

April 14 – Paul Espinosa, documentary film-making

Readings Camarillo, Alberto, "Alambrista and the Historical Context of Mexican Immigration to the United States in the Twentieth Century," pp. 13-35 in Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border, Nicholas Cull and David Carrasco (Eds.), University of New Mexico Press, 2004.