Anyone do Stringing here?

[AIRMAN]

Just wondered if anyone here is or was a 'Stringer' for a newspaper?

During the early 1980's I used to be a freelance stringer for a city newspaper. The work was mainly around night time or at the weekends. For those who don't know what a Stringer is, it's listening to emergency services frequency on one or more scanning receivers and as soon as something newsworthy comes up on the scanner, you call it in to a pre-arranged phone on the editors floor, or by two-way radio or fax. The Editor interviews you first before he decides to freelance you, so making sure he's not dealing with an idiot. Money is paid on a sliding scale of newsworthiness. If your call gets the paper an exclusive on a serious event, then I used to get around $100 - $150. Big money in those days! For other stuff like MVA's or house fires only about $30-$50. Some Stringers used to go to the scene with a camera, but unless you have a Press card, you can be told to get lost, especially if the cops are there, or if you get in their way, they can accidentally 'drop' your equipment.
I never went out. I had a back room (Shack) with three scanners going, AM/FM and UHF CB and a shortwave receiver with SSB capability and a phone/fax. I has several roof antenna including a discone, a Yagi and an HF longwire array. I had this setup as it was my main hobby. Someone I knew asked me if I wanted the Stringer job as he was quitting, so I took it and did it for about a year, then I got fed up with the hours and gave it away. I had no PC in those days. My logs were all handwritten and sometimes I would fax the log sheet to the newspaper. The following year the cops went digital in the area where I lived. Many cops I knew were real smug about it and one told me that my 'days' of illegal eavesdropping were done. Nice.

These days, many TV crews use scanners in their vehicles to keep UTD on stuff. Fire channels are probably the best to monitor for most action nowadays. Those cops you get to hear on analog now do not have best radio procedures and most of their stuff is routine traffic over the air and if something needs to be passed of a confidential nature, they will use mobile phones. There's talk of cars getting computers for name checks and other matters, so I reckon they will be even quieter times ahead for VKR on 468mHz.

These days I have one scanner set on the local QFRS and the other scanning presets. I am hoping to get a dual watch capability scanner when funds permit, something like the Icom R20.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has one on this forum.

Airband monitoring can be interesting to those who have knowledge of the 'lingo'. Civil aviation voice traffic is largely routine. Airband frequencies for airline company matters are on their own frequencies. You may hear take off times, arrival times, minor or major airplane problems, blocked toilets, broken seating, wheelchair PAX, special meals for PAX, UM's (Unaccompanied Minors) and and problems that the Captain wants e.g. Police waiting on arrival to pick up a drunk and disorderly PAX or worse.

All monitoring requires patience and luck of having your scanner on when it happens.


Cheers
Steve

[fire_rescue]

used to string for ch nine in the ipswich area two years ago, thats was film stuff from wat i ahve heard now there only looking for high quality camera stuff for news, i just do pics now and submit them to my local newspaper for publishing

[AIRMAN]

used to string for ch nine in the ipswich area two years ago, thats was film stuff from wat i ahve heard now there only looking for high quality camera stuff for news, i just do pics now and submit them to my local newspaper for publishing

Did you use a scanner?

[fire_rescue]

yes only went to interesting stuff i heard, other times nine would ring or text me to get some shots of a job and meet me there or i go to the studios up at mt cootha, all the stuff i photograph currently is off scanner or sms from other sources

[vkrscanner]

im a Stringer for nine and ten news on the gold coast ive being doing it for 1 year now its good i like it

[Stretch]

im a Stringer for nine and ten news on the gold coast ive being doing it for 1 year now its good i like it

How did you get into it??

[alinco21]

.

[vkrscanner]

i knew some people from channel 9 and 10 and i just asked if they would be interested.

[fIlThY]

I sometimes drop a news story about to break upon a newsroom and have done for years and years

Just last Wednesday morning I caught the last part of a transmission on the Bris ambulance frequencies with an Ambo asking the operator who he was suppossed to report to at the Ambulance and what flight they were to be meeting and the number of patients and confirming that 2 other Backup units were enroute behind him.. That was about 6:40am

Called it into 4mmm and it was on the broadcast radio within minutes and then within half an hour the Airport, Ambulance service and the Health Dept were forced to officially confirm 3 travellers were being taken for observation and tests for potentially carrying the swine flue as they showed symptoms on an International inbound flight.

I noticed that other stations had picked up the story and were running with "in unconfirmed reports of a story just breaking..." about 7:10am

Copycats lol

[bodyguard]

I sometimes drop a news story about to break upon a newsroom and have done for years and years

Just last Wednesday morning I caught the last part of a transmission on the Bris ambulance frequencies with an Ambo asking the operator who he was suppossed to report to at the Ambulance and what flight they were to be meeting and the number of patients and confirming that 2 other Backup units were enroute behind him.. That was about 6:40am

Called it into 4mmm and it was on the broadcast radio within minutes and then within half an hour the Airport, Ambulance service and the Health Dept were forced to officially confirm 3 travellers were being taken for observation and tests for potentially carrying the swine flue as they showed symptoms on an International inbound flight.

I noticed that other stations had picked up the story and were running with "in unconfirmed reports of a story just breaking..." about 7:10am

Copycats lol

or you could just get it off the pager network or voice channels