By Carolyn Shapiro

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when news reporters had to write about state legislative activity from afar, New Hampshire Public Radio asked student journalists at Franklin Pierce University to handle remote coverage of the New Hampshire statehouse.

The students had access to top-quality video technology at the Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication, which serves as a media production hub and experiential learning lab for Franklin Pierce students interested in broadcast journalism and audio and video work. Just three months before the pandemic shutdown, an alumni donation allowed Fitzwater to upgrade its equipment.

The center bought a TriCaster Mini multicamera system, professional audio gear and remote video technology that allowed it to connect the university’s three campuses in New Hampshire and one in Arizona into a single communications network, said Kristen Nevious, director of the Fitzwater Center. It essentially created a satellite TV system that could livestream content.

And it created an ideal opportunity for Franklin Pierce students. Because of COVID, many of their internship plans had fizzled, and they looked for ways to get hands-on experience, Nevious said.

“They learn skills in the classroom and they can come to the Fitzwater Center to apply those in really great opportunities that the university has fortunately supported,” Nevious said.

Franklin Pierce students get the benefit of longtime partnerships that the Fitzwater Center, which launched 21 years ago, has cultivated with New Hampshire Public Radio and New Hampshire Public Broadcasting System. Nevious also helped found the Granite State News Collaborative, a partnership of more than 20 media, community and education organizations that work together to produce solutions-oriented stories for state residents.

During the 2020 presidential campaigns, Franklin Pierce students covered the national conventions for the collaborative and for the Boston Herald. They produce several podcasts: $100 Plus Mileage is an overview of legislative activities in partnership with Citizens Count, a voter engagement group; the Common Ground Initiative, with interviews and discussions focused on unity with host Anthony Payton; and Granite Justice, in partnership with the University of New Hampshire law school. The Fitzwater Center also works with the Granite State News Collaborative and New Hampshire PBS on The State We’re In, a public affaris TV show.

“There’s nothing like working in production,” said Violet Schuttler, who graduated from Franklin Pierce in 2021 and spent much of her school years at the Fitzwater Center, where she now works full-time as an associate producer and assists the students. “I really like working under the pressure, and I like working on deadline. I feel like there’s a certain amount of energy to it that you don’t get in other fields.”

The Fitzwater Center also handles special projects, such as Radically Rural, an annual conference with a journalism component that the center sponsors. Franklin Pierce students report on the event. 

“Our students go in as reporters covering the entire first day of Radially Rural,” Nevious said. “And that’s a real world experience for them.”

During the school year, the student journalists receive no pay, just course credit. Most of the students who come to the Fitzwater Center are taking one of the Franklin Pierce journalism courses, but they can have any interest or major, Nevious said.

Some students from the music technology program “are really doing great things with our audio,” she said.

About eight students at a time work on The State We’re In, and one to three students handle each of the podcasts.

Schuttler enjoys working with the TriCaster, she said, layering camera shots on top of one another or switching back and forth between different views of a host. The final product has the quality of any professional broadcast, she added.

“It really is all about the experience and being able to actually use the equipment,” Schuttler said.

Franklin Pierce graduates have landed with the Granite State News Collaborative and at a TV station in Providence, R.I., Nevious said. “It’s translating into impressive resume.”

Nevious sees a dual mission between giving students a chance to jump in and try the work and providing a needed service for local news outlets. And that all happens without much funding, she added.

“We don't have a big endowment,” Nevious said. “Everybody believes in the mission and we make it work, we make it affordable. And the university supports it.”