The Impact of Beat Competition on City Hall Coverage

Abstract

The study used a survey of newspaper city hall beat reporters to explore the impact of newspaper and television news competition on their coverage of city hall. Newspaper competition was much more likely to affect content than TV news competition, but TV can have an impact on some reporters, especially in the absence of newspaper competition. Competition was related to reporters having less time for in-depth stories, reporting unimportant stories and, to a lesser degree, an increase in sensationalism in city hall news. Competition also was related to increases in the number of stories and an increased likelihood that reporters would cover stories they might have missed without competition. Perhaps the most interesting results were the strong relationship between competition and reporter-editor interaction and the impact of this interaction on reporters' perceptions of content changes.