The Beats

As with a traditional newsroom, the student reporter project is set up with nine beats. This should enhance News and Information Services’ efforts to pitch promising stories to major media outlets since most news rooms are organized according to a beat system.

1. Politics: Presidential speeches, voting patterns and trends of past elections are just a few of the topics that are being investigated by the faculty at Texas A&M. In a presidential election year, this beat should offer a wealth of material from which to choose.

2. Health: From the ethics of medicine to communicating with a doctor about breast cancer, there is a wide array of health studies within the liberal arts. This beat also would include wellness and fitness issues.

3. Religion and Culture: All our daily lives are affected by religion and culture, and there are many specific issues being examined by scholars here, including the ways that religious groups use the internet and the barriers that get in the way of effective communication between members of different cultures.

4. The Arts: Performance, in all its forms, has become an integral part of life on the Texas A&M campus. Beyond stage, dance and music, there are other forms of the arts, including creative writing and visual arts that offer abundant sources for stories.

5. Media: From television to books to the internet, the media offer a host of ways to analyze modern society. This beat could include broad-based topics, such as the latest trend in fiction written on campus, to single-issue ones, such as an author profile.

6. Justice:  Covers anything from the politics of Supreme Court appointments to issues involving civil liberties and homeland security.

7. Family: Cuts broadly across departments, from economics to sociology to psychology to communication, with a choice of micro (family members interacting with each other) to macro (families functioning in society) views.

8. Borders: The first and most obvious focus is our neighbor to the south. We have a long and important border with Mexico, which creates a variety of economic, social, cultural and political issues. But with globalization, borders could be defined to address virtually anything -- from goods to people to ideas -- that flows back and forth across national boundaries.

9. General Assignment: Every good newsroom has one or more reporters who stay abreast of national and international events, looking for good stories that play off the news, or that do not fall under another beat. Our newsroom should be no different and should have a reporter with broad-based interests who is willing to broach any topic.