What is beat expertise? News sorting as a novel method for studying traits of journalists’ proficiency

This exploratory study develops and tests a new approach to the study of expertise in journalism. It introduces a new method, News Sorting, which takes journalists out of their comfort zone by asking them to rank a sample of their recent publications and reflect on their challenges. This novel method is combined with two theoretical frameworks: Journalistic Content Knowledge, designed to study specialized beat journalists, and Naturalistic Decision Making, which examines the performance of experts in natural settings. These are tested on Israeli military journalists that are considered highly knowledgeable. Findings indicate that a minority of journalists develop not only intrinsic, beat-specific traits of expertise, but also extrinsic expertise that characterize experts in other occupations, such as pattern recognition and fine discrimination. The good news is that journalists can develop extrinsic traits. The bad news is that they only develop among a minority of highly experienced journalists, which might be too late in an era of shortening careers. Hence the need for measures to accelerate their expertise.