Beat Reporting

Media organizations develop systems to provide information of interest to their audiences and to cover a broad range of emerging and ongoing issues within their communities. Beat reporting is part of a newsroom's system for managing and prioritizing news coverage. Beats are subject-matter divisions for potential news reporting. Typical news beats may include police, courts, government, education, business, sports, health, science, travel, entertainment, and lifestyle. Much like “beat cops”—police officers who patrol a certain geographic area—beat reporters may be assigned a particular geographic area. The government beat, for example, is often subdivided into city, county, state, and national government beats.

Beats also may be subdivided by level. For example, the education beat may be divided between K–12 and higher education. Similarly, the court beat may be divided into state and federal court beats. Larger beats also may be subdivided into areas of specific topical interest. The sports beat often is divided according to level—high school, college, and professional—and along topical lines, with reporters focusing on specific sports such as football, basketball, baseball, or hockey. Generally speaking, the larger the news organization, the more beats it covers and the more specific those beats are. At smaller organizations, one reporter may cover the entertainment beat, while a larger organization may have separate film, theater, television, art, and music reporters.

Often considered specialized beats, requiring additional background and specific area expertise, the health, science, and technology beats often do not exist in the very smallest news organization—such as those with five or fewer reporters. At somewhat larger institutions, one reporter may cover all three beats. At the largest organizations, however, several reporters will be assigned to these beats, and the beats may be subdivided along topical lines. For example, in some cases, the science beat may be divided into life, environmental, and physical science beats. In 2002, the New York Times, which has one of the few remaining stand-alone science sections, had more than 20 staff writers and regular contributors assigned to the section.