My Multimedia Project

For my multimedia report, I was considering doing it on the town/gown relationships between the University of New Hampshire and the town of Durham. According to this years Princeton Review rankings, the University of New Hampshire was ranked number six on the most strained town gown relationships. I think that this story could certainly lend itself to a multimedia approach. The “who” of the story is very expansive. I could cover everyone from the Durham Town Council, UNH Administrators, policemen and women who monitor the relationships between the town and students, alumni to see if they felt there was a problem when they were on campus, residents of the town, and business owners of the area. “What” I could to present the story in a multimedia format would be a combination of still pictures, voice recordings of people that I have interviewed, filming other interviews to mix in within the still pictures and my own voice recording to narrative the video. The “where” of this story is evidently obvious. I would have to interview people all around Durham because that is where the heart of the story takes place. Within Durham, I could find almost all of the necessary elements to create this multimedia story. The “when” of the story seems to be the one that is the most pressing. These rankings did come out this summer, which makes the story seem a little out dated, however the story is not that the University of New Hampshire ranked so high on the relationships being strained. The story is what the town and the university are doing to solve the problem. I have already spoken with a few members of the Durham Town Council, and they are in talks with the university right now to help rectify the situation. This seems to me as the much more pressing story, rather than the fact that the university was ranked. Lastly the “how” of the story will be through many of the methods that I have already talked about. This includes interviews, pictures, video, and voice. But why is this story important? So what? Why does it matter that the relationships are strained? It is important because it is something that is relatively unheard of. College students are forced fed university food, books, services and other aspects that are made almost entirely tax free, while the town provides many of the same while having to make up for the taxes that UNH does not pay. We as students should realize just that, that we are only a small part of the town of Durham. We should care about the people who make up the town. Without them, there are no bars downtown, no Wings Your Way, no Kurt’s Lunchbox, which leaves everything entirely run by the college. The downtown, granted small, are what draws many of the students to the University. Without this, we lose the essence of everything we love about Durham, the ability for the town of Durham and the University of New Hampshire to exist as one unified entity. That is why this is important.