Beat

A beat is the specific assignment filled by a reporter. Each beat is a general topic area, usually [Page 73]relating to some special part of the newspaper, television, or radio news.

Typical beats include city hall, police, entertainment, finance, social scenes, religion, education, fashion, and sports. Weather is another beat. Some news organizations even have environmental quality and consumer protection beats. Certain news organizations have national and international beats. They might have state capital and Washington, DC, beats.

By dividing reporters by beats, news organizations can be sure that they cover all of the important topics, groups, and institutions within their community where news is likely to occur. That means that once beats are established, specific reporters are responsible for covering them—knowing what is going on in that segment of the community. This increases the likelihood that the news organization will know what is going on over the full range of news. Thus, beats allow for breadth of news coverage.

They also facilitate coverage in depth. Each reporter becomes an expert on the events, people, opinions, and issues relevant to that beat. The dynamics of a community's social scene (society page beat), for example, are quite different—even if interdependent at times—from the city hall beat. Which socialite is hosting which nonprofit event is different from what member of city council is fighting for or against some measure pending before the council. Financial reporting on business trends, economic forces, and publicly traded companies takes special knowledge and insights that differ from sports reporting. Sports reporters need to know the ERAs (earned run averages) of the baseball leagues' pitchers. The financial or business beat reporters need to know about IRAs (individual retirement accounts). And they must work to meet reporters' needs for the details they require to report the “news.”

Just as beats are important for news organizations, they have a parallel importance for public relations. If a publicly held company is hosting a golf tour tournament, that is sports news, and it is financial news. In the sports page, the company wants its name mentioned as often as possible because that gives it name recognition and brand equity with customers. In the financial section, it wants to be seen as a company that knows how to gain name recognition and sell products. Such an event might also make the social page if the CEO gives a large check to some charity. That news also can help drive sales and might attract investors.

The savvy public relations practitioner knows the reporters in each beat that is relevant to his or her practice. They know what each reporter believes to be newsworthy and how each reporter investigates and reports on a story.

In that sense, public relations practitioners work through skilled media relations to help reporters do their business. Media releases and photo-ops are standard tools of the practice. So are newsworthy events.