About a dozen years ago I tried an experiment at the Register in which reporters changed beats for three months.
The sports editor went to general news. School board went to a reporter who usually covered county affairs. My city reporter took on sports. And a reporter who routinely covered college meetings exchanged that for city commission.
Among the five of us, we all had different roles, including a more shared responsibility in the makeup of each day’s paper.
When you’re a small operation, it’s easier to shake things up.
One reason for the change was that I thought our coverage had become stale. A new set of eyes, perhaps, would see things differently. That turned out to be true.
Our stories about routine meetings took on a new flavor.
Another outcome was a better appreciation of each other’s responsibilities. We each faced a big learning curve as to the particulars of a specific beat.
School boards talk about capital outlay and local options budgets. Cities discuss utility rates, property tax abatements and street repairs. Hospitals are all about inpatient and outpatient numbers and Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. And sports — well that’s a universe unto itself.
Switching up beats also introduced reporters to new segments of the population. Each entity — whether it’s school or hospital board, city council or county commission — comes with its own unique base of participants and rarely, unless you’re Donna Houser, Iola’s volunteer par excellence, do their paths cross.
I also hoped the beat-switch would even go so far as to create a more congenial workspace because at the time there were some significant turf wars and I wanted to break down those walls.
As a woman, I naturally believed the change would ensue.
And while it didn’t, I will say it generated a lot of discussion between reporters as they learned the particulars and personalities that came with their new assignments.
When the experiment ended, we returned to our usual beats with profound relief, happy to have our “babies” back again, but also with a better understanding of the news operation as a whole.
I haven’t tried such an experiment since, partly because it did not occur without some resentment among staff, but also because I’ve had enough new blood come into the newsroom that I haven’t felt the need to shake things up.
GETTING OUT of our comfort zones does us good. It helps us experience the world from a different perspective and, if lucky, even broaden it.
