News beats will soon celebrate their 200th anniversary. Two centuries since George W. Wisner, one of the first known beat reporters, was assigned to cover crime by Benjamin Day, the editor of the first penny paper “The New York Sun”, back in 1833 (Schudson Citation1978; Fellow Citation2010).
Such a significant anniversary invites reflection, which this special issue tries to undertake, on the past, present and future of news beats, as well as on the broader issues of expertise and division of labor in journalism. We also examine the most vexing question concerning news beats: do they have a future at all?
Despite the pessimism dominating journalistic and scholarly discourse on beats (including among several authors in this special issue) and despite the alarming signs of job cuts, “freelancization”, beat mergers and conglomeration, the rumors regarding the death of beats (Brumfiel Citation2009; Dick Citation2012; Nikunen Citation2014) seem premature.
There is still no effective substitute for the organizational and epistemic roles of beats: as a major venue for specialization in journalism, as an organizing principle behind modern newsrooms, and as “trading zones” for information and news materials, where sources and reporters are shaping not only the exchange rates but also the rules of the trade. News beats survive thanks to their exceptional adaptability to changing news circumstances, serving large and small outlets; local, national and global ones; elite and popular, print, online, and broadcast, during times of emergency and of routine, shape the news supplied to audiences.
Yet, as a production method that emerged between the second and the third industrial revolutions, news beats are highly challenged on the verge of the fourth industrial revolution. News beats currently seem to be caught between older paradigms of the division of labor, assembly lines, and mass production on the one hand, and new paradigms of “smart factories”, interconnectedness, integration, the internet of things, cloud computing, cyber workforce, and artificial intelligence on the other (Schwab Citation2017).
The numerous changes that news beats face can be summarized into five major trends:
Generalism. As several authors of this special issue suggest, the major trend in beat reporting is less specialism, more generalism. This latter means reporters’ growing reliance on external knowledge and narrower access to insider truths; that reporters specialize in content mediation more than in the mediated content, moving closer to the worlds of lay audiences than those of their expert sources; those beats are becoming areas of responsibility more than domains of expertise, relying on attributed more than substantive expertise (Reich and Godler Citation2016; Reich and Lahav Citation2020).
And yet, one should bear in mind that journalism always oscillates on the continuum between generalism and expertise (Marchetti Citation2005); that in journalism “each specialist must be a generalist” (Tuchman, Citation1978, 67). Furthermore, generalism has its advantages, enabling more interdisciplinary and integrative coverage, more cross-beat analogies, and greater communicative access to lay audiences (Epstein Citation2019), as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic news coverage.
Diversification. Beat reporting is diversifying, but not in a positive sense. In most newsrooms, outside the small club of superstar and financially safe outlets, a shrinking share of senior staff reporters with job security give way to a growing cohort of human and technological substitutes, whose contributions are used in different combinations and doses, to fill the holes in the news net. These substitutes include freelancers, precariat workers, interns and citizen journalists, through parachute journalists, fixers, aggregators, social media, algorithms and lifted content, ending up with PR practitioners and NGOs. Almost every substitute brings its ethical complications and epistemic biases and bottlenecks.
Shrinking jurisdiction. Reporters’ capacity to maintain an “exclusive jurisdiction” over their domain, a marker of professionalism and autonomy (Abbott Citation1988; Feyereisen and Goodrick Citation2019), is challenged from every angle by their broadening, and globalizing terrains, by new contributors of materials, by the emergencies of pandemics as well as by the subordination of journalists’ judgement to web analytics, and by the rise of new gatekeepers such as homepage, social and breaking news editors, who are often authorized to publish materials from other sources in their domain, over reporters’ heads.
Fluidity. A post-industrial state of mind is more tolerant than its industrial predecessors to the growing interdisciplinarity, fluidity, and chaotic nature of events (Deuze Citation2007), which often refuse to fall exactly within the pigeonholes of particular beats.
Economic disillusion. In a news environment haunted by downsizing and layoffs, the illusion that the constant stream of new topics can somehow be addressed by establishing new beats has dissipated. The newsrooms’ existential challenge is how to cover the current beats, rather than establish new ones. And yet, one should bear in mind that the ideal of one-beat-one-reporter (at least) was never fully applicable at least in some countries, some media and some news beats.
Where are news beats going from here? It is somewhat ludicrous to predict the future of a tree of beats when the fate of the entire journalistic forest is so obscure. Still, whatever kind of reporting survives into the third century of beats, it won’t escape the colossal knowledge gap between a universe that is too big, too complex, and too specialized to be covered by too small and generalist a reporting workforce, armed with too few knowledge resources. Under such circumstances news organizations will have to maintain some division of topical, spatial and cognitive labor, between human and/or robotic workforce, along lines that enable minimal accumulation of subject matter expertise, and rapport with potential sources. This division of labor will have to maintain at least some of the characteristics of existing news beat systems.
The Articles
This extended special issue covers one country overview, two international comparisons, five single-beat studies, and two articles that discuss challenges and trends.
Van Leuven, Vanhaelewyn and Raeymaeckers offer a synoptic overview on the state of news beats following the media business crisis. Based on consecutive surveys of Belgian journalists, they show the high toll of cost-cutting on reporters’ declining specialization. While the total number of beat reporters remains stable, this number includes more freelancers, who are expected to cover more beats.
Jenkins and Jerónimo open the comparative dimension of this special issue by exploring how local newsrooms are adapting to digital realities in five countries – UK, Germany, France, Finland and Portugal. Local beat reporters are taking on new editorial and commercial responsibilities, engaging in more mobile reporting, shifting between beats and participating in inter-departmental teams.
Mellado, Márquez, Mothes and Humanes present a comparative perspective analysing the performance of professional roles ןn print news in six beats across 18 countries, based on actual coverage of more than 33 K news items from 64 media outlets. The extensive sample enabled a comprehensive and cross-national perspective on the impact of news beats on reporters’ performance of the service, civic and infotainment roles, as well as the limitations of that impact, showing how news beats strongly and significantly affect the practice of audience-oriented roles.
The next part presents five articles dedicated to particular beats: economics, environment, the courts, culture and mafia news. To better understand the “mainstreaming” of economic news and its democratic consequences, van Dalen, Skovsgaard, de Vreese and Albæk examine Danish economic reporters. While they are committed to their audiences, economic journalists maintain a top-down perspective, ignoring their role as active participants in society. Robbins and Wheatley examine environmental journalism as an “indicator species” that epitomizes the dynamics of other beats. Environment reporters deal with challenges that either can already be seen in other beats or may emerge in the next few years. These challenges include increasing beat complexity, greater reliance on data, exposure to online negativity and co-option into polarized political debate.
Jones focuses on a traditional beat that enables a time perspective on longitudinal changes – local court reporting. Their decline is epitomized in locked pressrooms; a minority of reporters still visit the courts daily, carrying out new jobs such as taking photos and live blogging. Kristensen and Riegert use their rich experience with research on the cultural beat in the Nordic countries to reflect on the changes that this beat is undergoing following globalization, digitalization and conglomeration. The authors identify three major trends: the blurring of the boundaries between the beat and other news desks; the diversification of professionals and roles; and the spread of an interpretive approach.
Closing the series of beat-specific case studies is Splendore’s portrait of mafia journalism in Italy. He offers to see mafia journalism as a discursive and networked beat, manifested in the rhetoric of journalists and their shared conceptions. These journalists emphasize cooperation over competition, to cope with the challenges of danger, threat and scarcity of trusted information.
Concluding this special issue are two articles on more general trends and challenges concerning news beats. Cancela explores the complex coexistence of beat systems and investigative reporting, analysing how three Swiss newsrooms integrated or separated their investigative and news activities. She concludes that beat reporters mostly fail to undertake investigative endeavors, partly due to conflicting demands and work ambiguity.
Blach-Ørsten, Bendix Wittchen and Møller Hartley show that beats have clear ethical consequences. Analysing a sample of complaints to the Danish Press Council, they show that some beats are not only more prone to ethical breaches but also to particular types of breaches. For example, while crime reporters are often accused of unnecessary identification, business reporters attract more complaints on their lack of follow-up on a ruling, unethical research methods, or the use of undocumented facts.
We hope you find this collection of articles enlightening.
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References
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