How to handle covering news footage
 

I was driving around today and wound up right next to a police traffic stop, with three cop cars and drawn guns! The first instinct was to stop right there on the side of the road and tape with my ever-present GL2, but I decided to quickly drive to a safer place and tape from there. This was west county so nothing happened of course but cops usually don't draw without a (good) reason.

Still, this made me wonder: What do you do if you find yourself covering breaking news, which might be worth $$$ to a news carrier? Would you auction it to varying channels? Can you be screwed by the channels? Will they steal your footage from each other? What is footage worth? Can you find yourself in trouble doing this?

And on the technical side, what settings are worth more to newsfolk? F'rinstance, would you switch to 4:3 and 60i?

Anecdote:
When I was a kid, a house down the street exploded (!). My dad tore down the street behind the fire company with our Pentax Movie8, and shot some video that wound up on the local news. I don't think we got any money, but dad's name was titled over the clip, and we did get a pretty cool tour of the TV station. Money comes and goes, mostly the latter, but I'll always remember that tour :}

Search for the " Film at 11 " post. I think it was in the XL1 watchdog forum, there you will find a very long post with the complete information, tips, press passes and everything.

There are several good recent posts in the business section that might also interest you.