The impact of beat competition on city hall coverage

The study used a survey of newspaper city hall beat reporters to explore th e impact of newspaper and television news competition on their coverage of city hall. Newspaper competition was much more likely to affect content tha n TV news competition, but TV can have an impact on some reporters, especia lly in the absence of newspaper competition. Competition was related to rep orters 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 i ncreased likelihood that reporters would cover stories they might have miss ed without competition. Perhaps the most interesting results were the stron g relationship between competition and reporter-editor interaction and the impact of this interaction on reporters' perceptions of content changes.