What is a news beat journalism ?

A news beat is a news territory assigned to a reporter who is then expected to

keep track of all events taking place in his or her beat.

The reporter has to ensure that he covers all routine events on his news beat.
More important, he is required to develop contacts that can help him generate
special and exclusive stories.

All hell breaks loose if a reporter misses a story on his beat. If this happens too
often, the reporter may even be taken off the beat.

The news beat system has been developed to achieve two goals:

 The first is to ensure that the newspaper does not miss any major news
story pertaining to that beat.
 The second is to give focus and direction to the news generation
activity.

Specialised Beats
 The next level of beats is specialised beats. These include sports, business,
education, health, science, environment, civil aviation, defence, gender,
lifestyle, etc.
 The most prestigious news beat in India is politics. The city reporters, as
they become more experienced, are assigned political beats.
 The specialisation depends on the nature of political activity. In small
cities one reporter may cover two or three political parties while in big
cities like Delhi and Mumbai, each reporter may be assigned a specific
party.
 There is specialisation within news beats also, especially in the case of
sports and business beats. A sports reporter, for instance, may specialise
in cricket, hockey, tennis or motor sports. He will then cover all national
and international events pertaining to his beat.
 The same applies to business journalism. Business journalists specialise
in macro-economics, stock markets, corporate stories, etc. depending
upon their areas of interest.
 Lifestyle has emerged as an important news beat in recent years. All
newspapers and wire services have started hiring reporters who can
cover fashion, films, food, etc.

News source
These are the news sources which are prominent in today’s time:

1. Radio: It is an audio medium used by many in today’s time. We can see

people are relying on Radio as a source of information. Radio is prominent
and seen in both rural and urban areas. People in rural who cannot afford
 television rely on radio as it is cheap. If we talk about urban areas where
we do not see many using radio at their houses instead they listen in their
cars. Over decades radio has gained popularity and is said is a good source
of news.
2. Television: television telecasts their news on television through which
other newspaper takes there sources. It is said to be the most authentic
source of news as it has visuals to establish the authenticity. Television
helps and provides newspapers to give detailed information to the
audience but television news just doesn’t act as the source to the
newspaper but also the audience itself.
3. Newspapers and magazines: these two also act as a good source of news.
Newspaper on both the levels national and international provides the best
information in details. The newspaper has 5W’s and 1H which gives all the
significant information at the starting of the news and further deals with
the minor details and same is done in the magazines.
4. Press release: Press Releases are generally used for the release of a
particular news. The Press Release should contain worthwhile material
which has some news value. A Press Release should be written in a
journalistic style and provide facts and information of interest to readers
and should cover all aspects of a specific subject. The release should be on
current subject and a piece of clear writing without any ambiguity, color or
ornamentation but it should at the same time not be generally lengthy.
5. Press notes: The press notes are less formal in character. These are also
issued on important official matters e.g. raising or lowering of tariff rates,
price fixation of food grains, subsidy announcement of seeds, fertilizer etc.
Apart from the name of department, place and date, a press note mentions
headings. Unlike the press communiqué, the newspaper can edit or
condense the press notes.
6. Handouts: The handouts are issued on a variety of subjects like the day-to-
day activities of the ministry or departments, VIP speeches, question and
answers in Parliament or legislature and the developmental programmes
of government departments. It covers the name of the PIB or information
department. No official handout is issued, if the minister or a government
official has spoken in his personal capacity.
7. Press statement: the statements are usually given by known people, then
he shares his statement with media and later this becomes press
statement.
8. Police station: every event which is of big concern to the police station
would be firstly found in the police station. If the reporter wants to know
about a crime scene he would get first-hand information from there.

Elements of TV reporting
1) Impact
People want to know how a story is going to affect them. What consequences will
be suffered if they don’t take action on your issue? How can they improve their
lives by buying your product or service?
2) Timeliness
It’s called news for a reason—because it’s new information. The more recent
your information, the more likely people will find it of interest. In today’s age of
internet immediacy, this is even truer than it used to be.
3) Proximity
Although the internet is breaking this one down, to some degree, but we are still
more likely to care about something down the street than across the world.
4) Human Interest
This is one of the most broad categories, and also one of my favorite. These are
stories that show something about the human condition. From rags to riches
stories, experiential pieces and the like are things that make us feel very strong
emotions, they make us smile or laugh, derive purpose and meaning or want to
help others.
5) Conflict
Fight! Fight! Fight! It’s in our nature to gravitate toward conflict. Just think of
how much “news” comes out of every single election—A versus B is a simple
conflict to report, and we always want to know who’s going to come out on top.
6) The Bizarre
Two words. Octo Mom. Anything with shock value might seem like click bait, but
sure enough, we will keep on clicking!
7) Celebrity
Whenever something happens to someone important or semi-famous, we tend to
care more about it because these people seem special to us, and we feel like—to
some extent—we know them.

Parliamentary correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is usually a journalist or
commentator for a magazine, or more speaking, an agent who contributes
reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company,
from a remote, often distant, location.

District correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is usually a journalist or
commentator for a magazine, or more speaking, an agent who contributes
reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company,
from a remote, often distant, location.

SPECIAL TERMS

'Editor" means a person who directs and supervises the editorial side of a
newspaper.
"Executive Editor" means a person who assists in the editorial and production
functions of a newspaper, whether or not he supervises the work of Resident
Editor, Assistant Editor, etc.
'Resident Editor" means a person who performs the functions of an Editor of a
newspaper at a centre other than the one from which the newspaper was
originally published.
"Associate Editor" or "Joint Editor" or "Deputy Editor' means a person who
generally assists the Editor in the performance of the work of the Editor.
"Assistant Editor" means a person who regularly assist the Editor in the
discharge of his duties generally in relation to the comments and opinions and
writes leader and may also write other copy involving review, comment or
criticism.
"Leader Writer' means a person who regularly writes leaders and may also
write other copy involving review, comment or criticism.
'News Editor" means a person who co-ordinates and supervises the work of the
news department and is responsible for the news content of all the editions of a
newspaper.
'Chief of News Bureau" means a person who supervises the work of the news
bureau and assigns work to the Bureau members.
'Special Correspondent" means a person whose duties regularly include
reporting and interpreting all news of Parliamentary, political and general
importance as an accredited correspondent or, other-wise at the head-quarters
of the Central Government or at a foreign centre or who regularly performs
similar functions in more than one State or at any other place where he is
assigned as such.

"Deputy or Assistant News Editor" means a person who assists the news editor
in the discharge of his duties generally and/or is in charge of bringing out the
city edition.
"Chief Reporter" means a person who is in charge of all reporters at a centre of
publication, supervises their work and also regularly reports and interprets all
news of legislative, political or general importance.
'Chief Sub-Editor' means a person who takes charge of a shift at the news desk,
allocates and supervises the work of one or more sub-editors and is generally
responsible for the determination of news space and the general display of news
in the paper or in a particular edition or part of it.
'Sports Editors" means a person in charge of the sports section of a newspaper,
deals with news and views on sports and allied activities, allocates and
supervises the work of one or more reporters and of one or more sub-editors
and is generally responsible for the determination of news space and the general
display of sports news.
"Commercial Editor" means a person who deals with news and views bearing
on commerce, finance, trade and industry, and comments on them and allocates
and supervises the work of one or more reporters.
"Film Editor" means a person who deals with news and views bearing on films
and stage and is in charge of specified column or page on stage and screen and
supervises the work of one or more working journalists.
"Magazine Editor" means a person who deals with news and views bearing on
literary or entertainment items of relevant news and thoughts and other
connected subjects of literature is in charge of specified columns or pages and
two or more working journalists who supervises their work.
"Cartoonist" means a person who comments upon news and events through
cartoons and caricatures.
"Chief of Statistical or Research Division" means a person in charge of
statistical or research division which deals with matters bearing on commerce,
finance, trade and industry in a financial paper and supervises the work of one or
more working journalists.
"Chief News Photographer" means a Person who allocates and supervises the
work of one or more news photographers.
'Chief Librarian" or 'Chief Index Assistant" or "Chief Calligraphist" or "Chief
Artist' means a person who supervises the work of one or more librarians. Index
Assistants, Calligraphist and Artists respectively.
"Principal Correspondent" is a correspondent who is accredited to the State
Government and Correspondent is a person accredited to the Central
Government other than Special Correspondent and other sectional or batch
heads.
"Deputy Chief Sub-Editor" or "Senior Sub-Editor" means a person who
regularly assists the Chief Sub-Editor in the discharge of his duties and acts in his
place in his absence.
"Deputy Chief Reporter" or "Senior Reporter' means a person who assists the
Chief Reporter and acts in his place in his absence.
'Senior Correspondent" means a person other than special and principal
correspondent and his duties include the reporting on important news at any
important centre other than the centre of publication and has put in service of
not less than five years.
"Senior Calligraphist" or "Senior Artist" or "Senior Librarian" or 'Senior
Index Assistant" or "Senior Reference Assistant" means a person who assists
the Chief Calligraphist or Chief Artist or Chief Librarian or Chief Index Assistant,
as the case may be, and has put in service of not less than five years.

"Sub-Editor" means a person who receives, selects, shortens, summarises,

elaborates, translates, edits and headlines news items of all descriptions and may
do some or all of these functions.
'Reporter" means a person who gathers and presents news at a particular
centre.
"Correspondent" means a person who gathers and dispatches by wire, post or
any other means, news from any centre other than the centre of publication.
"News Photographer" means a person who covers news events of public
interest through photographs.
'Artist" means a person who prepares for publication drawing, layouts, maps,
graphs or other similar embellishments, illustrations of any kind or of creative
art. He may do some or all of these functions.
'Calligraphist" means an artist who performs journalistic work and also
calligraphs matters.
'Librarian" or "Index Assistant' means a person who prepares and maintains
records relating to news and views which are used as background or fill out for
current stories. Persons not performing any of these functions shall not be
covered.
'Chief Proof Reader" means one who allocates and supervises the work of one
or more proof leaders and is in charge of a shift.

"Proof Reader" means a person who checks up printed matter of proof with
Editor's copy to ensure strict conformity of the former with the latter. Factual
discrepancies, slips of spelling mistakes of grammar and syntax may also be
discovered by him and he either corrects or get them corrected.
"Planner" means a person who assists in the job of photo editing, colour editing
and shadow eding to highlight any news matter given by the Editor.

Correspondents

There are different kinds of correspondents who work for a newspaper. Some
of these are discussed below:

1. The Liner:
The liner is not a full time journalist. From time to time he may send news stories
to the newspaper.
He is paid on the basis of the lines of the news stories published in the
newspaper. He is only a part time journalist whereas he regularly pursues some
other profession.

2. The Stringer:
The stringer is also not a full time journalist. His whole time profession is quite
different which he is doing in addition to writing for some newspapers. But he is
in a little better position than the liner as he is attached to a newspaper through
a string on payment of a small amount to cover his expenses. He is generally paid
some fixed amount to retain him for the newspaper.

3. The Special Correspondent:

There are various categories of correspondents. The most important of them are
special correspondents. They generally cover some specified fields in the capital
of a country. Some of these attend the Parliament sessions.
They keep in touch with the government agencies and other news sources.
Sometimes, they are also assigned to cover other special areas.
Then there are the foreign correspondents. Some people consider the foreign
assignment as the most glamorous part of the job. They are stationed in the
capitals of important countries of the world.
A newspaper may also have its correspondents at important district
headquarters. Generally, they are full-fledged journalists. The correspondents of
a newspaper at the state capitals are called ‘staffers.’
They do full time reporting work and are the regular employees of a newspaper
or an agency.
The correspondents in the different state capitals are in direct contact with the
newspaper office. Generally, messages and reports from them are received on
the teleprinter. Similarly, instructions are also sent to them on the teleprinter.

4. A Newspaper’s News Service

Sometimes, important national newspapers also have their own special news
service. This news service is run by a chief of news service in consultation with
the editor. The chief of the news service keeps in touch with its correspondents
stationed in the country and in other parts of the world.
These correspondents, spread all over the world, sent their reports to the chief
and the sub-editors working under him to shape them into news stories.
Sometimes they also revise or even rewrite them. These sub-editors are
The chief of the news service keeps himself in touch with all the important
happenings in the world through his correspondents.
As a head of his department he also looks after the administration side of the
staff under his control.

Business reporting
Business reporting or enterprise reporting refers to both "the public
reporting of operating and financial data by a business enterprise,and "the
regular provision of information to decision-makers within an organization to
support them in their work.It is a fundamental part of the larger movement
towards improved business intelligence and knowledge management.
Implementation often involves extract, transform, and load (ETL) procedures in
coordination with a data warehouse and then using one or more reporting tools.
Reports can be distributed in print form, via email or accessed via a
corporate intranet.
With the expansion of information technology there has been an increase in the
production of unified reports which join different views of an organization in one
place.[3] This reporting process involves querying data sources with
different logical models to produce a human readable report. For example, a
decision maker may need to query a human resourcesdatabases and a capital
improvements databases to show how efficiently space is being used across an
entire corporation.
Reporting can also be used for verification and cross-checks. Audit teams like
FINRA and SEC adhere to reports for all business firms. Standard Business
Reporting is a group of international programs instigated by a number of
governments with the end of make business the centre when it comes to
managing business-to-government reporting obligation
POLITICAL REPORTING

A political party is an organized group of people who have the same ideology, or
who otherwise have the same political positions, and who field candidates
for elections, in an attempt to get them elected and thereby implement the
party's agenda.

Civic journalism/Reporting (also known as public journalism) is the idea of

integrating journalism into the democratic process. The media not only informs
the public, but it also works towards engaging citizens and creating public
debate. The civic journalism movement is an attempt to abandon the notion that
journalists and their audiences are spectators in political and social processes. In
its place, the civic journalism movement seeks to treat readers and community
members as participants. With a small but committed following, civic journalism
has become as much of a philosophy as it is a practice.

Procedure for writing TV news stories:

Write like you speak: Write in your own voice, in a conversational tone, as if
you’re speaking to only one listener. Keep sentences short. If you have a long
sentence, follow it up with a short one. When you go back and read your
narration aloud, do you truly sound like yourself?

Keep it simple: Allot a sentence to each idea. Be clear and concise, stick to the
story and don't try too hard to be "clever." Too much detail can become
irrelevant and make the story lose focus. Avoid most multiple-syllable words,
words that are tough to pronounce and long, convoluted sentences. "Treasure
small words," Dillon says.

Provide specificity: Although the goal is to write clearly, you must also avoid
being too general. Dillon says reporters should provide context for anything that
may cause confusion or "raise eyebrows." When describing people, don't label
them. Tell exactly what they do as opposed to using their official title.

Tell stories in a logical order: Make sure that your content has a beginning, a
middle and an ending. Don't bury the lead; state the news near the top, without
too much buildup.

Use the present tense and active voice: You're writing for flow and to express
what is going on now. Broadcast strives for immediacy. To convey this to the
listener, use the active voice whenever possible. In English, try to use a subject-
verb-object sentence structure. For example: "Police (subject) have arrested
(verb) 21 activists (object) for staging a protest at Merlion Park on Saturday
afternoon."

Write to the pictures: TV and video audiences will see why something
happened. In television, the phrase “write to tape” is used to describe the way a
story script is built around the visual images you have gathered. Don't write any
longer than the story or pictures warrant.

Use imagery: Radio audiences need to imagine the people, places and things in
your story. With your words, create powerful and straightforward imagery. Use
descriptive verbs instead of adjectives. For example, if you say “he struts or
saunters” you’re giving a picture without using an adjective. But don't let vivid,
imagery-rich writing turn verbose. Use words sparingly.

Let the speaker speak: If you’re hosting a show or an interview, be the host.
Don't overpower the subject of the story. When interviewing, "Don’t 'mm hmm'
them and don't keep talking and talking about yourself," Irani says. "You’re just a
conduit whose job it is to relay a story/experience/emotion from the guest to the
audience."

Ethics of reporting
Journalism ethics and standards comprise principles of ethics and of good
practice as applicable to the specific challenges faced by journalists. This subset
of media ethics is widely known to journalists as their professional "code of
ethics" or the "canons of journalism".[1]The basic codes and canons commonly
appear in statements drafted by both professional journalism associations and
individual print, broadcast, and online news organizations.
The primary themes common to most codes of journalistic standards and ethics
are the following.
Accuracy and standards for factual reporting[edit]
Reporters are expected to be as accurate as possible given the time allotted to
story preparation and the space available and to seek reliable sources.
Events with a single eyewitness are reported with attribution. Events with two
or more independent eyewitnesses may be reported as fact. Controversial facts
are reported with attribution.
Independent fact-checking by another employee of the publisher is desirable.
Corrections are published when errors are discovered.
Defendants at trial are treated only as having "allegedly" committed crimes, until
conviction, when their crimes are generally reported as fact (unless, that is, there
is serious controversy about wrongful conviction).
Opinion surveys and statistical information deserve special treatment to
communicate in precise terms any conclusions, to contextualize the results, and
to specify accuracy, including estimated error and methodological criticism or
flaws.
Slander and libel considerations[edit]
Reporting the truth is almost never libel,[15] which makes accuracy very
important.
Private persons have privacy rights that must be balanced against the public
interest in reporting information about them. Public figures have fewer privacy
rights in U.S. law, where reporters are immune from a civil case if they have
reported without malice. In Canada, there is no such immunity; reports on public
figures must be backed by facts.
Publishers vigorously defend libel lawsuits filed against their reporters, usually
covered by libel insurance.
Harm limitation principle[edit]
During the normal course of an assignment a reporter might go about gathering
facts and details, conducting interviews, doing research and background checks,
taking photos, and recording video and sound. Harm limitation deals with the
questions of whether everything learned should be reported and, if so, how. This
principle of limitation means that some weight needs to be given to the negative
consequences of full disclosure, creating a practical and ethical dilemma. The
Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics offers the following advice,
which is representative of the practical ideas of most professional journalists.
Quoting directly:[4]
Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage.
Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or
subjects.
Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected
by tragedy or grief.
Recognise that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or
discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
Recognise that private people have a greater right to control information about
themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or
attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone's
privacy.
Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes.
Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.
Balance a criminal suspect's fair trial rights with the public's right to be
informed.