Why newsrooms call me instead of sending a crew

Your 6pm producer needs a press conference covered at 2. Your crew is already on a fire in Norristown.

Your 6pm producer needs a press conference covered at 2. Your crew is already on a fire in Norristown. That's the whole business, right there.

Newsrooms run lean now. Everybody knows it, nobody puts it in a press release. So when there's an event worth covering and no crew to send, they call someone like me. I show up with the gear, shoot it multi-angle, and the footage is cut for air the same day.

The good outlets brief me like staff. They tell me what the story is, what the anchor needs, and I shoot for that. The audience never knows I don't work there. Most days, neither do I.