In the fall of my senior year of college, I enrolled in Syracuse University’s Urban Affairs reporting class. The students acted as community reporters for the newspaper, South Side Stand, that covered news on Syracuse’s impoverished and violence-ridden South Side. During the fall I produced a series on racial profiling, which you can read elsewhere on the site. Another component of the project was to compare and draw parallels between the African-American community on the South Side, with the residents of a township in South Africa. In January 2011, we spent two weeks in a township in Grahamstown, South Africa, where we produced multimedia human interest stories on the community. The official project site is worldjournalism.syr.edu. My work included a video piece on a young boy initiated into manhood in South Africa, a profile of an African-American police officer, and various text pieces.

“I Am So Happy I Am a Man”

January 2011

Asanda Ncwadi carefully smeared red clay along his jawline, using his fingertips to spread the sticky color over his nose and forehead. “It protects my skin from the sun and helps my skin to be lighter,” he said.

The makeup, called embolla in the Xhosa language, wards off evil spirits and protects Ncwadi’s “essence” from the curious stares of others as he goes through the months-long process of read more…

Officer’s Challenge: Keeping Kids on the Straight and Narrow

January 2011

Officer Leon Saddler stood by the front door of the middle school, observing the chattering students pouring in at the start of the school day.

“Conversations,” he said. “If the kids aren’t talking, then you know something ain’t right.”

Talking with the students is just one way that the school resource officer …read more...