Has this ever happened to you? You’re standing on a busy street corner, minding your own business, when all of a sudden a masked gunman comes running out of a nearby bank with the cops in hot pursuit. Luckily, you have your video cell phone and capture the whole scene on video. But how would you submit network news video clip footage like this to ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox?

Being in the right place at the right time armed with a video cellphone when something newsworthy occurs means you could potentially reap some financial rewards. Did you know that news organizations pay handsomely for exclusive video like this?

So what do you do now that you’ve captured some great video or picture with your cell phone? There are basically three steps to take if you want to get paid for the video footage you have shot. Edit, upload, and announce it to the media.

Most video cellphones come with movie editing software built-in (or packaged with the phone). Even if the bundled software is sub-par (which it usually is) there are many off-the-shelf software solutions that can enhance the quality and reduce the file size of the video you have captured.

Remember, you do not want to manipulate the video extensively, since this will jeopardize the ‘man on the street’ quality that the news networks are looking for. Besides, the news stations have much more sophisticated software than you could probably afford to massage your video into the desired format, length and content.

You probably don’t need to do much to your raw video footage except reduce the length of the clip to the smallest size. This is important because you don’t want to pay to upload your video and the free video hosting services only give you so much storage space that can quickly run out if you are uploading large files.

Next, you need to upload your video to an online video sharing service. There are bunch of these available, some offering a meager amount of free storage and charging extra for larger portions of space. Other services limit the amount of bandwidth your video can consume. This means the number of people that can watch your video at one time is limited.

After choosing a suitable place to host your newsworthy video, you need to tell the news broadcasters about it. In whatever city you live in, there are local news affiliates that are part of larger news organizations like Fox News or ABC. You can easily determine which news stations are in your area by turning on a TV and seeing what the call-letters are for your local broadcast news stations.

Once you have the call-letters (for example, WABC) then simply go online and do a search for those call-letters in your favorite search engine. Once you find the web site for that broadcaster, navigate to the page on the site that has a link for submitting breaking news and supply the basic information that applies to your video, such as a description and the URL of the video where you uploaded it.

Aaron Benbaruch knows the ins and outs of submitting breaking news captured by citizen journalists. To instantly submit newsworthy video and pictures to all the TV News Broadcasters for free, visit submit news clip

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Mainstream media has become a single-minded authority on how we should perceive life. Theirs is a negative perspective. Could there be a new way of hearing the stories we feel are relevant in our lives?

If you’re anything like me you are really getting tired of the mainstream media’s one-voice-to-many analysis of life on Earth. First of all, it’s just too negative! I read a survey recently that stated that fourteen out of fifteen newspaper and TV News stories had negative fear-based stories. I don’t know about you, but if I look at my everyday life, the amount of good and bad I experience seems to be much more balanced. Why does the ‘big’ media think we all love hearing the dark side of things so much?

If you look at what news stories truly are in historical terms, it is a person sitting around the tribal campfire at night telling a tale to inform the people both in wisdom and knowledge. In any tribe there were many storytellers, so different perspectives were always available to the masses. Well, if you think today’s media sources are too monopolized in their power of authority over the stories we are told, there’s a new option for humanity. The answers and views we are seeking in our daily lives could lie in the Internet. This Internet thing really could be the key for humanity to evolving into a species that thinks independently, leaving this age of fear behind.

It’s time to bypass the main media sources. On the Web we can access non-profit news organizations, we can hear personal views of individuals in news forums and blogs, we can even express our own views on world issues as well as sharing our own personal experiences! With this newly accepted technology called RSS Readers we can start to get the type of information that we feel is most relevant to ourselves as individuals. It comes straight to us and then we can sort through it and decide which people and sources we want to hear from on a regular basis. This is awesome as it means we don’t have to search through a bunch of stories that have little interest to us. It also means if we want to hear more positivism, we can push the negative views out of our perceptions.

Although this idea is in its infancy, the repercussions once realized could have a mammoth impact on how individual humans see and live their lives on Earth. Imagine a society that stretches across the globe where a collective consciousness speaks to itself in an informative many-to-many communicative process. There are a lot of happy, positive, intelligent people in this world who are interested in similar things to you. Wouldn’t you like to hear their stories and share their knowledge as a way of constructing your view of reality?

Let’s leave behind this era of negative perspectives and singular authorities telling us how life on Earth should be viewed. It is interesting that some of the most over-wealthy, greedy individuals media moguls who tell us what is important. Don’t you want to have a say in how you look at your life while you are here? Positivism and wisdom surrounds us at all times. Would the Universe exist otherwise? Lets reconnect with that source of energy that makes us smile so many times each day. If life were meant to have so bleak an outlook, would there even be stars in the sky?

About The Author

Jesse S. Somer is a writer thinking about how all this new technology could one day be utilized by the masses of technologically challenged people like him. If it could be incorporated into everyday life in a positive way, life itself could evolve to a higher plane. http://www.m6.net

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When it comes to getting your message out to the media, there are two forces at work. The first is the diversity of media outlets that exist today. In addition to the mainstream print, television, and radio media, there are now millions of websites that publish news as text, audio, and video. The second force at work is the media’s insatiable appetite for content. In an era of 24/7 cable news channels and Internet access, there is a never-ending demand for news. Both of these factors work for you as you design a plan for press release distribution.

Unfortunately, balancing the media’s ongoing need for content is the exploding growth of competition among those wanting to get their message out. Everyone from the President of the United States to the most recently launched website is competing for airtime, column inches, click-throughs, and blog entries. There’s nothing more frustrating than to carefully craft news releases, only to find they don’t even create a blip on the media’s radar. Today’s competition demands that, in order to get your message out, you have to adopt a sophisticated strategy when it comes to press releases and press release distribution.

The path of least resistance - and often the path of greatest success - is to engage the services of a PR service or news release services. They have access to professional writers and reporters who are well versed in the art of creating an attention-grabbing press release. News release services also have extensive media contact databases, which means that your release can reach hundreds of thousands of members of the media. A PR service can also distribute news releases through multiple channels, such as radio, fax, and email. Conversely, it can personalize and target press releases to a specific segment of the media. Most importantly, news release services have triggers that can make press releases available online at a moment’s notice. This capability can be very important to editors, who rely on established press release distribution networks to gather information about new products, services, business relationships, and other announcements before their competitors.

If you choose to write and distribute your own press releases, keep these tips in mind:

Make it Newsworthy: Regardless of how well-written your news release might be, it won’t get picked up if it’s not newsworthy. Not every topic is earth shattering, but help it along by hooking it to current events. Editors are always looking for a new angle on a current story.

Make it Well-Written: A poorly written news release will end up in any editor’s trash bin. Make sure the headline commands attention and that the text follows the “Five Ws” - Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Editors should only have to read the first paragraph to understand your point. Above all, don’t forget to run a spell check and grammar check. If you’re not a good writer, hire a PR service and have them write your press releases for you.

Distribute it Properly: If you’re announcing an event two weeks ahead of time, don’t bother sending your press releases to magazines that go to press more than a month before they hit the newsstands. If your news releases are specific to a certain industry, don’t waste your time sending them to consumer publications. Above all, don’t simply post it on your website and hope that the media finds it. A press release distribution service is well worth the money it can disseminate your news as broadly or as narrowly as you wish.

Chris Robertson is an author of Majon International, one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing companies on the web.
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