Let me chime in on this regarding the life of a “stringer”
You won’t make any money, period.
I retired from a large fire agency in CA during 2016, after 30 years. A year earlier, we had a large wild land fire in Central California which burned many homes and thousands of acres. I shot a 35 second video of civilians being rescued just ahead of the fire front and posted it on my personal Twitter account. Within 15 minutes, it went viral and I received multiple inquiries for its use from all the major networks. None of them wanted to pay a single dime for it, nada, zilch.
I had a good conversation with the NBC Affiliate in SF regarding its use. We came to a fairly up front deal - they help me get Media Credentials and they get exclusive use rights. The very next day, I had a nice letter on official letterhead which did just that - I obtained credentials and a other items needed to do freelance work here in CA. On a side note; the exceptional person who helped me with this in now the Chief White House correspondent.
In CA, media are allowed access to incident scenes by state law (Penal Code Section 409.5). I believe New Jersey has something similar. We are NOT allowed anywhere near crime scenes, for obvious reasons. Even with media credentials and the law on my side, I have been denied access, threatened with arrest, detained, and just simply treated poorly by law enforcement. I have had to get attorneys involved on 2 separate occasions. Can you afford to keep a media attorney on retainer? I can assure you that you’ll need an attorney at some point.
I can almost guarantee you one thing - if you show up at an incident without any sort of credentials or PPE, you are going to look like a whacker in the eyes of LE, and you WILL get hassled. As I said, out side of a couple of states, media have no rights to entry at any emergency incidents.
You also need the infrastructure to run your operations also. If LE does hassle you, I guarantee they are going to look for a business license when they investigate, and they will, believe me. You are also going to need a personal server to limit access to those outlets that do want to buy anything you have, which is rare. (If you just “throw it out there” anyone watching it will record it and use it as fair use) It needs to be password protected so that you can track who uses the video for billing purposes. Who is going to do your invoicing to the affiliates?
Which format do the local affiliates want the video in? They may have specific parameters they use.
Have you made an appointment with the agency PIO’s you will be “documenting” and got to know them and their take on freelancers? Make sure you do it with ALL agencies that maybe involved so that you have some sort of basis for a working relationship. You will find out there is a love/hate relationship with the media.
I can also tell you that any agency that has encrypted radio traffic IS NOT going to give a stringer a radio, period.
Getting a camera and a scanner is easy, it’s everything else that seals the deal. Free cell phone video is much easier to obtain than paying for the same thing. Cell phone cameras killed freelancing for the most part.
I’ve been doing it basically as a hobby, or when I’m asked to cover an event. The total amount I’ve made in the last 5 years?
$400.00