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Originally Posted by shakran
I love the idea. Now here are the snags:
1) journalists generally aren't allowed to do reports outside of their job without permission from their news director / editor. You certainly are almost never allowed to use your company's gear for non-company business. So at the very least, you gotta go buy your own newsgathering stuff.
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Excelent point. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of media such as television or radio. What about the annonymous idea? If one were properly protected (heh, now YOU get to be the source that WE get to go to jail over), then maybe more reporters and investigators would be willing to come forward.
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Originally Posted by shakran
2) Gathering news is EXPENSIVE. I go through around $20 a day in gas alone. My camera costs a little over 50 thousand dollars - not counting the lens - that's $25,000 by itself. My tripod is a grand. My shotgun mic is $2,000 and my wireless lapel mic is $2,500. Various necessary accessories to all that gear totals around 3 grand. My scanners, at $500 a pop, cost $3500. Fortunately my station paid for most of that, because very few individuals could afford all that crap. Especially if they were buying it for a website that paid little to nothing. And I didn't even tally up the cost of long distance phone calls, video licensing, wire services, etc. Of course we'd need to add to that around a $5,000 computer to edit everything, and that's if I did it on the cheap. Oh, and then there's recording media, which is also much more expensive than the digital-8 or miniDV the amateurs shoot on.
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Jeez. Well, I suppose we could charge (adn thus become a corporation). The thing is that Freee Speech TV seems to be staying afloat simply through donations. PBS has been on for years (since 1969 I believe). I would suggest working as a non profit (sorry, journalists) organization.