Specialist journalism: rounds, beats and patches

Published on Tuesday, 21 February 2012

Written by The News Manual

Rounds, beats and patches

Some journalists concentrate on a particular areas of news, such as politics, education, agriculture, etc.

This is referred to with different names depending where you live.

Some of the common names include having a round, a beat, a patch, or more directly, a specialism.

A reporter covering a specialism takes responsibility to make sure that the readers or listeners are helped to understand the full significance of the news concerning that particular topic.

This article is an edited version of a longer training module by The News Manual. This site is sharing training resources with The News Manual to ensure the material reaches more people. Anyone wanting to reproduce material from The News Manual needs to contact the site directly

Advantages of specialist reporting

• Knowing your subject
• Knowing the key players
• Knowing the history of the story
• Knowing the context

Dangers of specialist reporting

• Getting too close to the subject
• Getting closer to the contacts
• Becoming compromised by confidential conversations
• Forgetting the news angle
• Losing objectivity and judgement

How to work as a specialist reporter

1 - Homework: Do your homework, not just in work hours but during the evenings and weekends too. It's not a part time job or a 9-5 occupation. Being a specialist involves a level of ownership and commitment.

2 - Research: Research the history of your specialism so you can add authoritative context and analysis. You will be expected to provide a depth of knowledge and explain things when they don't seem to make sense.

3 - Who's Who: Know who is who and how they got there. You need to have a wide background knowledge of all the key players, where they came from, where they are now and how they got there

4 - Structures: Know the structures of the organisations that may feature in your specialism. This is important if you are to piece together developments in a way that makes sense.

5 - Politics: Understand the political pressures that play out in the specialism. There will be stakeholders involved in all the stories you do who have aims and objectives. You need to know what's going on behind the scenes.

6 - Contacts: Work on your contacts book to ensure that you have a name and number for every topic that may arise under your specialism. Use social networks and keep lists in order to follow real time developments.

7 - Voices: If you can’t speak to the person at the top, find out who is just below and keep dropping down the food chain until you find a reliable and talkative contact. There is usually someone prepared to talk.

8 - Co-operation: Be helpful, without doing deals. There will be some in your specialist area who will be grateful for coverage of something they are working on; equally, there may be some at the top who may not be.

Be helpful, without doing deals

9 - Face-to-face: Arrange visits rather than just talk on the phone. These will probably have to be done in your own time. You are more likely to get useful information if you talk to someone face-to-face.

10 - Understanding: Ensure your contacts understand the nature of the relationship you are building from the start and that your first duty is to your readers, listeners and viewers.

11 - Care: Nurture your contacts and set up a routine of checking in with them. Leave them a number to call if you are going to be away. If they have an important story it is important to hand it over to a trusted colleague if you are likely to be unavailable.

12 - Caution: Be cautious when any of your contacts is a press officer. Your relationship with such a person will not be the same as with most other contacts. You will need to remember at all times what the press officer's job is in order to understand their motives.

13 - Control: Remember that you are supposed to have the news sense, not your contacts. You decide what is a good story, not them. Even if they stress that it's a good story you need to step back and make the call.

Remember that you have the news sense, not your contacts

14 - Integrity: Don’t do deals to inflate a story that should remain flat or is not a story at all. Beware of the danger of being manipulated on quiet news days when you are desperate for a story and your contact is desperate for publicity.

15 - Accessibility: Translate jargon and don’t just repeat what the contact says presuming your audience will understand. Stick to plain language. The specialist needs to understand the complex and simplify it in ways that make sense to the non-specialist.

Translate jargon and don’t just repeat what the contact says

16 - Even-handed: Give your contacts a fair opportunity to get their point of view across to the public. Ensure that you are even-handed and cover interesting and positive developments. Be prepared to give them free copies of your newspaper in which they are featured or recordings of programmes they have appeared in.

17 - Realistic: Do not be naive. Whatever you do, imagine yourself being asked later by your editor, your parents or your partner about what you have done. If you would be ashamed to admit the actions you took to any of these people, then it what you did was probably wrong.

18 - Quality: Specialist reporters are meant to improve the quality of their newspaper, radio or television station by finding original journalism or explaining complex developments in a way that makes sense to the general public.

19 - Objectivity: Specialists must be careful to stay emotionally detached from their round. It is possible to get too close to a topic and lose your objectivity. Once that happens it's hard to put things into context.

20 - In summary: To do a round well you need to prepare well, establish good contacts, rely on your own news sense, translate the jargon, be honest with yourself and be as helpful as you can.

The image used in this piece is courtesy of Red Mum and released under Creative Commons

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