How Do You Become A TV News Stringer?
Staff video cameramen in most television stations might begin earlier and stop later than 9-5 office workers, but they don’t work the streets overnight when much of the news happens. For this, television stations rely on squads of independent cameramen that roam the streets of every big city in the United States known as stringers. Becoming a stringer is a great way to break into television news. Step 1 First scout the market. Call your local television stations. Find out from whom they obtain their stringer footage. In some markets, when you have a news worthy story, you’ll have to approach the stations directly. In bigger markets, you’ll be dropping your tape off at an agency that will supply the footage to the stations via a feed. Step 2 Get yourself a quality ENG electronic news gathering package. For many years, Betacam SP was the standard. In fact you can’t really go wrong shooting with a Sony Betacam 400A, still one of my favorite cameras. Every television station and distributo
