A reflection

This blog was conceived in a online journalism course at the University of Arizona in conjunction with our class' semester-long project, Borderbeat.net.

In the past few months, our class has written stories of artists, political leaders, caring do-gooders, and even immigrants themselves. From those stories, I have learned the intricacies of the border and how its influence spreads indiscriminately across culture lines.

For instance, the assignment was to create a Web site dealing with the U.S.-Mexico border, but many times over the Border Beat staff would mistakingly write a story about Tucson, or a Tucsonan. As editor, this caused me much ire, but interestingly enough, with minimal tweaking those stories could easily become "border stories."

The reason is that as a border town, Tucson IS a border story.

The culture south of our city limits plays a part in the architecture of the city, flavors the celebrations of masses, and plays on the compassion of the people. Most importantly our proximity to the border morphs our feelings towards the immigration debate. To us, it is not some hypothetical situation that can be solved by men spitting cold logic at a round-table discussion. The long term affects of immigration have enhanced our culture in many ways. It has become an economic strain to the working people, and--as more and more men, women, and children die in the desert each year--it has also dangerously tested our limits of humanity and compassion.

For those who are not fortunate to experience this first-hand, our online magazine is now available to the entire world. I encourage anyone who feels strongly that this country should do something, or anything, about immigration to earn their opinion first--as we are all stake holders here.

The Web site is re-invented each semester and there is new content added every few weeks or less. Next semester, I hope that the staff becomes as passionate about the issue at hand as the staff had this semester.

Additionally, I hope that the class will continue to explore and exploit multimedia offerings of the journalism department. I hope to see more videos and narrated stories, so that the important people we find as journalists are able to tell their own stories too. Their faces should be seen and their stories heard by the world.