What happens to reporter's beats?

From Nieman Reports winter 2010

Beats are the newsroom’s skeletal structure. Assigned to cover specific topics, reporters employ laser-like attention to deliver depth, dimension and context in their stories. Time translates into expertise—and after a while, the reporter is able to offer the level of judgment that an editor needs to rely on.

Now, as newsrooms shrink and blogs multiply, news and information gets absorbed in different ways by a more fragmented audience. For bloggers, the backbone of what they publish resembles the beats of older media with regular digging into a topic or tapping into what makes a locale click—creating a gaggle of expertise within an interactive community.

Economic circumstances and digital opportunities now dictate the demise of some familiar beats: Foreign bureaus have shut down, as have some bureaus in Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities, leaving some reporters who covered federal agencies, statehouses and city halls without a beat; longtime arts critics who see their job descriptions change decide to move on, some to the Web; and as the space for science reporting shrinks in traditional media outlets, digital venues feature subdivided beats.

To read more go to

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102497/Introduction.aspx