News stringers licensing of valuable news footage question.

March 25, 2014 forum topics
I have a question for video stringers out there involving who/how to handle footage that you know is "must-broadcast" material.

This weekend there was a incident involving a Police shooting and the question came to me, what if you come upon the scene early on and got breaking footage nobody else could get before all the news trucks and Police backup arrived?

I’ve been reading a lot lately from guys that have been doing this while discussing how to handle the selling of content with contract stipulations as to how it’s used. Just selling something like this to the first local station might be a bad move without telling them where it can be shown, how many times, etc… reasoning being of the great chance it’ll be used nationally, perhaps later it’s needed again, etc etc.
Selling it like a normal story, they may just send it off to their affiliates and you never see more then the $85 you let it go for and now being on every nightly news and now dateline NBC wants to use it for a special. Or do you give the early footage to a station to supplement they coverage they’re now getting with the loose understanding maybe they put you on the short list when they need freelancers?

I think you see where I’m going with this. Major content you know will go at least National, only you have it. How do you correctly maximize it compared to just some story of local-only interest?