Different practices, similar logic: Comparing news reporting across political, financial, and territorial beats

This article seeks to explore whether political reporters present more meticulous, complex, and active standards of news reporting-justifying their special role as enablers of informed citizenry-and to help resolve the theoretical ambiguity regarding news beats as distinct domains of practice. The sample comprised reporters from three beat clusters-political, financial, and territorial-in nine national Israeli news organizations, who were asked to describe, source by source, how they obtained a sample of their recently published items (N = 840), addressing sourcing patterns, news practices, and communication technologies used. As expected, reporting was found to be distinctive across beat clusters, with political reporters employing significantly and consistently higher standards although financial reporters, in contrast to expectations, were not found to be the weakest link in the reporting chain. Despite the substantial differences, the studied beats embody a united community of practice following a similar media logic.