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3.4: News beats

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    We can distinguish between different news “beats”. Beats refer to different categories of news (or feature) journalists who specialise in reporting about specific categories of news. In many newsrooms of the past, there were specialised health journalists, science journalists, religious affairs journalists, and others.

    There are still journalists who specialise, especially people who work for niche mass media, for example, as a technology or business media outlet.

    At specialised media outlets, all journalists are experts in their field; they focus on only the news that they have expertise in. But at most mass media outlets, journalists are now expected to cover all categories of news due to staff shortages and monetary constraints.

    Some news categories (or beats) are:

    • Politics: News about political events, political leaders, municipal politics, elections, what happens in Parliament, the work of politicians.
    • Business: News about financial and business issues, such as the petrol price, the rate of inflation, employment, joblessness, student loans, student funding, the stock exchange, the price of books.
    • Sports: News about sports events, big sports matches, sports stars and their lives, preparation for major sporting events (such as the Olympic Games).
    • Development: News about issues affecting the development of the country, new houses, hospitals, roads, schools.
    • Weather: The weather is always news; people like to know about weather events that might affect them, snow, very hot or very cold weather, storms, even good weather when it is holiday season.
    • Crime: This includes all kinds of crimes, robbery, murder, sexual offences, and also crimes such as corruption and financial misdeeds.
    • Emergencies: News about disasters and sudden, unexpected events, such as when the coronavirus first spread around the world – this was a sudden and unexpected emergency.
    • Human interest: Stories about people and animals doing interesting things. • Famous people: Similar to human interest, but the difference is that these stories are about famous people doing interesting things, not ordinary people. Sometimes, famous people make the news even if they do quite ordinary things, for example, if Justin Bieber went to a supermarket during his tour of South Africa to buy a chocolate bar and many hundreds of customers saw him and surrounded him for autographs, then this would be news.
    • Fact-checking: Some media outlets now specialise in fact-checking. Journalists work on checking that stories are true. There are fact-checking organisations, where all journalists are specialists in fact-checking.
    • Specialised categories: There are many specialised beats, such as motoring, travel, technology, science, religion and various others.
    • Entertainment: Audiences generally enjoy stories about entertainment, for example stories about concerts, art shows, festivals.
    • Reviews: Many outlets specialise in reviews of new products. Journalists provide a service to consumers by offering well-informed advice about whether to buy a new product, or not.
    • Food: Cooking and food shows have become very popular on streaming services and televisions. Many news outlets, therefore, also hire specialised food writers.

    This page titled 3.4: News beats is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.