[Commlist] Call for a special issue of Journalism Practice: The State of the News Beat

Call for Special issue of Journalism Practice

The State of the News Beat:
Expertise and division of labour in current newsrooms

Guest editor:
Zvi Reich, Ben Gurion University of the Negev ((zreich /at/ bgu.ac.il))

Theme rationale and scope
         More than hundred years after their inception, news beats 
reporting is facing transformative changes. The major roles they played 
in modern journalism – both on stage and behind the scenes – is now 
threatened by a series of layoffs and downsizing, growing reliance on a 
smaller workforce with fewer years of experience, who are expected to 
cover broader and growingly complex domains; the demise of older beats 
and the emergence of new ones, not necessarily along traditional 
thematic and geographical lines.
The existing scholarly literature doesn't supply a coherent and updated 
picture on current structures of newsrooms, the prevailing division of 
labor inside and outside them, and the social, cultural and epistemic 
consequences of these aspects on published and unpublished news 
contents. Interestingly, scholars agree that beats were born in late 
19th century, culminated in the second half of the 20th century, and 
transformed since the beginning of the 21st century following trends of 
downsizing, restructuring, digitization and the rise of online sourcing 
and social media. However, the actual nature of this transformation 
remains unclear. While the classic studies that focused on entire beat 
system are growingly outdated, recent works cannot encompass the current 
state of the beat system due to their overwhelming focus on single beats.
        This theoretical and empirical void gives rise to a series of 
questions. Are we facing the death of the news beat, as some scholars 
lament, or the end of their “golden era” during which beats served as 
the leading principle of division of labor in journalism; as the 
assembly-line for most news; as journalistic “micro-cultures”; as 
domains of knowledge and expertise and as venues where journalists make 
friends and enemies? Are there alternative modes of professional and 
non-professional reporting and principles of division of labor that can 
substitute for the dwindling beat system?

      The special issue wishes to answer these and other questions and 
map the current state of the news beats in their broadest sense.

Suggested topics:
Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
•	Emerging modes of division of labour in current newsrooms (e.g. topic 
teams, “obsessions”, single-issue newsrooms, personal franchise sites, 
specialized blogs, press clubs, combined newsrooms).
•	Comparative studies on mixes of beats and other modes of reporting 
across organizations. For example: small, mid-sized and metro / national 
news outlets; comparisons across media, types of ownership, format 
(elite and popular) and nationality (including democratic and 
non-democratic countries).
•	Comparisons between beats (e.g. old and new beats, online and offline; 
“soft” and “hard”; scientific and “common-sensical”).
•	Epistemic aspects of beats and alternative modes of reporting: 
knowledge, expertise in different beats; modes of recruitment; training, 
socialization, skill set acquisition and different stages in the shift 
from novice to expert reporting.
•	Life cycles of beats: the emergence, maturation, decline and death of 
news beats.
•	Coverage of reporter-less beats: e.g., using plagiarism and content 
lifting, reliance on general assignment reporters and aggregation.

FIRST STAGE: SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS
If you are interested in participating in this special issue, please 
submit an extended abstract (500-750 words), accompanied by a 100-150- 
word bio introducing your relevant expertise Abstracts should be sent no 
later than February 1, 2010 to:

(beats.specialissue /at/ bgu.ac.il)

Upon selection, scholars will be invited to submit full papers.
Article submissions should be about 8,000 words in length, including 
references, and are subject to full blind peer-review, in accordance 
with the peer-review procedure of Journalism Practice. Manuscripts will 
be submitted through the journal’s ScholarOne website.

TIMELINE
•	Deadline for submission of extended abstracts: February 1st 2020.
•	Decision on abstracts: March 15th 2020
•	Deadline for final submission: September 1st 2020.
•	Publication: Online first after acceptance, and later in a forthcoming 
issue of Journalism Practice.
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