Reimagining the epistemology of news: The desired knowledge of military reporters

This paper offers to cut the epistemic problem of journalism into smaller and more concrete pieces, mapping the desired journalistic knowledge in particular beats, according to both beat experts and journalists. Our case study focuses on highly knowledgeable Israeli military journalists, using in-depth interviews with 30 experts and journalists. The interviewees offered a sophisticated, dynamic and adjustable knowledge matrix assigning journalists broad agency how to implement their knowledge and embed their items in broader contexts, using three levels of analysis and four types of knowledge, while maintaining balance between knowledge breadth and depth. If similar matrixes exist in other beats, journalism studies must reimagine its epistemology as more complex, requiring both knowledge and understanding, mastering “adaptive expertise” representing higher levels of proficiency.