Why Does the Beat Go on?

One of the most striking features of the scientific literature on how news is created is the assumption that newsrooms have a beat structure. Warren Breed, in his classic study of social control in the newsroom, argued that beat reporters had more control over news gathering than did general assignment reporters.1 Delmar Dunn, in his study of the interactions between public officials and reporters, said that reporters meet political sources when they make their routine "rounds. "2 Leon Sigal, in his study of the coverage of public affairs news in the Washington Post and the New York Times, noted that the beat system plays a key role in news gathering because it concentrates "staff at locations where news emerges through routine channels. "3 Bernard Roshco argued that the news media could not meet daily deadlines if they began each workday unaware of the locales from which the day's stories were likely to emanate. Beats are used to overcome this obstacle.4 Gaye Tuchman said that journalists create a "news net" to gather the raw material for their stories, and beat and bureau structures are part of that net.5 The net is designed to catch big fish and is therefore cast around locations such as city hall and police stations. Mark Fishman noted that happenings become news only when they become known to journalists through their routines.6 Events are more likely to become news if they happen during the times and at the places reporters make observations. This classic literature on the construction of news treats beats as essential, largely nonvariable characteristics of newsrooms. It suggests that at least some fundamental level of beat structure is needed for the creation of news. But it does not say why that should be the case or really explain the nature of beat structure. The television anomaly In contrast to newspapers, television newsrooms have been found not to rely heavily on a beat structure. Edward Epstein, Fishman and others have found that television reporters seldom cover beats in the same sense that print reporters do, and, in fact, television news relies heavily on newspapers for story leads.7 Dan Berkowitz concluded that few television news items are gathered through reporter enterprise.8 Lee Becker found that television reporters were considerably less likely than newspaper reporters to have beats, and that this finding holds even when the size of the news organization is controlled.9 David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit have replicated this finding with more recent data.10 Television newsrooms are generally smaller than daily newspaper newsrooms in the same communities, and it is possible that the television anomaly is simply a reflection of the smaller newsroom size. Consistent with this view, Becker found that reporters from smaller newspapers were slightly less likely to say that they had beat assignments than were reporters at larger papers.11 Alternative views of beats Considerable research in organizational sociology has documented the relationship between structural diversity and organizational size. A common finding is that increasing size fosters structural differentiation on several dimensions, such as number of departments, sections and subsections, number of hierarchic levels and degree of role specialization and differentiation.12 Peter Blau and R.A. Schoenherr even have written that size is the most important condition affecting the structure of organizations.13 Size, however, is not the sole determinant of structural complexity. Other determinants are environment within which the organization operates and its reliance on technology. Michael DuBick found that the more complex the environment of a newspaper, for example, the more complex the organizational structure.14 Rate of growth and age also have been shown to impact organizational structure, as has organizational lifecycle.15 It is possible that beat structure in newsrooms is simply a form of job differentiation, and that this differentiation increases as newsrooms become larger. …