STRUCTURE OF NEWS DEPARTMENT:Beat Reporters, Online media

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TV News Reporting and Production MCM 516

LESSON 28

STRUCTURE OF NEWS DEPARTMENT

One of the traditional mass communications is the presence of a large number of gatekeepers. This fact

is seen in gathering and reporting of news for conventional print and broadcast media.

Reporting is a team effort and quite a few members of the team serve as gatekeepers. Online reporting

in contrast may have only one or a few gatekeepers.

There are two main sources of news; staff reports and the wire services. Other less important sources

include feature syndicates as well as handouts and releases from various public and private sources.

The City Editor is the captain of the news reporting team. He or she assigns stories to the reporters and

supervises their work.

There are two types of reporters:

· Beat Reporters

Cover some topics on regular basis, such as crime beat or health beat.

General assignment reporters

Cover what ever assignment is given to them or come up.

A typical day for the general assignment reporter might consist of covering an auto accident, a speech,

by a visiting politician and a rock concert. Stories from the reporters are passed along to the city editor,

where they are approved and sent to the copy desk for further editing.

The Managing Editor and the Assistant Managing Editor are also part of the news team. They are

responsible for the overall daily preparation of news bulletins.

The city editor can decide not to cover a story in the first place or not to run a story even if the event is

covered.

The reporter has wide latitude of judgment over what he or she chooses to include in the story.

The Copy Editor can change the story as needed and the Managing Editor has the power to emphasize

or de-emphasize the story to fit the needs of the day.

Organization of a newspaper news room

Managing editor

City editor

Wire editor

City editor

Photographers

Reporters

Beat reporters

General assignment reporters

The sources of news for the broadcast media are similar to those for the news paper. Special Wire

Services cater to television and radio stations and local reporters are assigned to cover nearby events. In

addition many broadcast and telecast news rooms subscribe to Syndicated News Services or if

affiliated with a network have access to the net's news feed.

The telecast newsroom is organized along different lines from its print counterpart.

At the Local Stations, News Director is in-charge of over all news operation.

In Large Stations, most News Directors spend their time on administrative work, personnel,

budgets, equipment and so on.

TV News Reporting and Production MCM 516

In Smaller Stations most news directors perform other functions such as being anchorperson as

well.

Next in command is Executive Producer who supervises all the producers in the news room. Typically

producers are assigned to the early morning, morning, noon, evening, night, and late-night newscast.

In addition to looking after the producer, executive producer might also produce the evening news,

typically the stations most important programme.

Organization of a TV news room

News director

Executive producer

Assignment editor

Producers

Reporters

Editors

Online media

The structure of an online news organization may take several shapes. In some operations, the online

division may be separated and independent entity, in others, the online segment may be integrated with

the parent print or broadcast news organizations.

The news flow in an online news department is similar to that in the traditional media. Top executives

decide how the site will be structured and how many specialty area e.g. sports, financial, weather,

entertainment it will contain.

Editors decide what content will be used on the website, which stories will have additional audio and

video files, where the stories will be places and how often they will be updated. Staff members skilled in

website design take care of the technical side.

Online news department that are affiliated with the broadcast or cable networks, use the audio and video

appeared on the parent network, but may edit it differently.

Other stories may be rewritten from wire copy or from copy that has appeared in print or on the air. Not

all but some online news however is recycled. Most online news staffs also employ reporters who do

original reporting for the website.

Organization of an online newsroom

Executive editor

Producer

Design managers

Producer

Editors

Reporters

Design managers

Multimedia designers

Web technicians

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