UPDATED: March 5, 2020 at 11:11 a.m.

Ashley Kang stood surrounded by photographs, their vibrant colors brightening up the cold concrete walls of a shop room in basement of The Nancy Cantor Warehouse. She pointed out her favorite one, in which Jovan Daniel, a young boy from the South Side of Syracuse, stands face-to-face with a horse. The image accompanied a 2010 article about Daniel’s dream of becoming an equestrian published in The Stand, a newspaper that covers the South Side.

Now, 10 years later, this image will be displayed as a part of “The Stand: 10 Years in Print,” an exhibit at The Nancy Cantor Warehouse’s Link Gallery in celebration of the paper’s 10-year anniversary. There will be a reception at the Link Gallery on Sunday, March 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. to celebrate the exhibit and the accomplishments of The Stand.

The gallery will feature the most memorable photograph from every year that The Stand has printed. There will also be photos on display from the 10th annual Photo Walk, an event in which members of the community of all skill levels come together to take photos around a neighborhood in the South Side.

Other photographs include a community pool overlooking Interstate 81, and a child sitting with pictures of his two uncles who passed away from a hereditary disease.

Kang graduated from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 2004 and returned in 2009 to earn her master’s degree in higher education and community engagement at SU. She then began working as director on a project that would later become known as The Stand — all while earning her master’s degree. At first, she was working 20 hours a week, but it quickly rose to 30, she said.

Bob Gates (from left), Justin Fogarty, Ashley Kang and Mike Greenlar sit in the Link Gallery behind four of the photos in the exhibit. Courtesy of Maranie Rae Staab

In 2010, Kang helped to officially launch the newspaper. She has been the director of The Stand since 2009, working with the South Side community and SU communities to cover topics that local media isn’t always covering, she said.

Steve Davis, founder of The Stand, ran the publication for its first eight years. Davis was the chair of the newspaper and online journalism department and a professor in Newhouse for 19 years. He was always looking for a way to get his students out into the community and brought two sections of his classes into the South Side to get them “out of their comfort zone,” he said.

His students ended up producing about two dozen stories, which they printed into a special edition paper and hand-delivered to residents of the South Side. It was such a success that Davis decided it should be turned into a permanent project.

“When I started it, I think it would be fair to say nine out of 10 people, maybe nine and a half, said it wouldn’t last a year,” Davis said. “Which, of course — you don’t want to tell a journalist they won’t do something, because they’ll do it.”

“The Stand: 10 Years in Print” gallery features the most memorable photographs from each year that the newspaper has been in print. Courtesy of Maranie Rae Staab

But the publication rose past this criticism and has facilitated outreach into the Syracuse community as a whole through photo and writing workshops in addition to the annual Photo Walk.

When Bea González, the vice president of the SU Office of Community Engagement, looks at the exhibit, she sees people who she has known throughout her life living in the South Side, and she sees leaders in the community.

“It’s brought voice to the South Side community,” González said. “It has provided opportunities for understanding the newspaper business, for understanding journalism. It has really served to give voice to that particular community.”

The Office of Community Engagement at SU is sponsoring the gallery and has been involved with The Stand since before González became vice president in 2016, she said. The Stand operates out of the South Side Communication Center, which is run by the Office of Community Engagement and the Southside Community Coalition.

One of the most successful story series that Kang has seen over the past 10 years of The Stand has been the “fatherhood series,” in which South Side citizens nominated fathers in the community to share their stories. This led to a special Valentine’s Day collection of stories about couples in the community, which fought stereotypes about Black romantic relationships, Kang said.

One of the photographs in the exhibit shows a child sitting with pictures of his two uncles who died from a hereditary disease. Courtesy of Maranie Rae Staab

“The stereotype there is that Black couples jump through relationships or they don’t stay married, and that’s not true,” she said. “There are so many couples in the community whom people look up to.”

Throughout the past 10 years, The Stand has been able to show both the issues facing the South Side and the more mundane moments of life in the community, Gonzalez said. By covering people such as Daniels and his passion for horses, journalists are shedding a light on stories that wouldn’t be well-known by other members of the South Side, Davis said.

“Just because you live in a community doesn’t mean that you know everything about it,” Davis said. “It’s super important that journalists find and share stories so people get to know their own community better.”

The Stand is starting to look at the impacts that the construction on I-81 will have on the surrounding community. The publication is looking into the environmental and health effects on the elementary school and the Toomey Abbott Towers senior home that line the highway. Both establishments will be in a construction zone for multiple years.

As the publication celebrates its 10th year, Kang hopes to keep the paper funded and connected with Newhouse, which she said has been up in the air since the death of Dean Loraine Branham last April. She wants to keep connecting the university to the community in order to share the South Side’s stories.

“A lot of local media is cutting back,” Kang said. “And what suffers is communities of color or communities that don’t have a voice. That’s not centric to Syracuse that’s everywhere.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, a quote was taken out of context. The quote has been removed. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on March 4, 2020 at 11:42 pm

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