Just like there are different types of journalists and different journalistic cultures, there are also different categories of news stories. These different categories are numerous, and they help to clarify both what type of structure and goals a journalist is pursuing in a particular story and what type of information and storytelling structure a reader can expect from that story.
One of the most common categories of news is known as ‘straight’ or ‘hard’ news. This category of coverage generally includes several journalistic news values, such as relevance, magnitude, and conflict. It presents information in a clear, quick, and straight-to-the-point summary. News stories cover events, people, and topics of immediate concern to audiences in a way that focuses on facts and presents them plainly.
A subcategory of this is breaking news, or the coverage of information with timeliness as a significant news value. Breaking news stories depict current events, recent developments, and information that is generally just coming to light. Breaking news, for example, might depict a weather emergency or a shooting outside a bar. Breaking news stories are often updated regularly as news develops and as journalists uncover new information about the sometimes ongoing event.
News can also be distinguished by its geographic relevance to its audience under the subcategories of international, national, regional, and local news. For example, for students living in Amherst, a breaking news story about one of the Five Colleges would be considered local news, a story about a crime in the Pioneer Valley would be regional news, a story about the election of the President of the United States would be national news, and a story about a protest movement in Europe would be international news. International news often includes the work of foreign correspondents, journalists who report from and about a country other than their home country.
Enterprise news is another umbrella category of journalism that relies heavily on original reporting driven by journalists. It is called enterprise journalism because the journalists who are successful at it must be enterprising to develop their own story ideas, sources, and means of gaining access to information. The opposite of enterprise news would be news that relies heavily on press releases, story ideas provided by public relations officials, or news that is given in some way to a journalist rather than uncovered by that journalist. Enterprise stories often involve creative and advanced reporting methods, including public records requests, data collection and analysis, access to historical documents, and other methods through which a journalist uses their skills to unearth information.
Investigative journalism is one of the most rigorous forms of reporting and one of the most powerful types of journalism for public knowledge. It is called investigative journalism because the journalists who do it dedicate their work to the sleuth-like pursuit, through a wide variety of investigative techniques, of information about a niche topic that is often difficult to access. The subjects of investigative reporting are frequently topics of deep conflict and vast public importance, such as political or corporate corruption, violence, crime, financial malfeasance, or other cases of wrongdoing and injustice. Investigative journalists dedicate weeks, months, and even years to the dogged pursuit of a specific person, entity, or topic in order to bring their subject to public light. This type of journalism is strongly associated with “watchdog journalism” because of the role it plays in keeping elites and other powerful actors accountable. In this case, investigative journalists are the metaphorical watchdogs who seek to make the actions of the powerful transparent to their audiences.
Investigative stories often take the shape of long-form stories because of the amount of reporting and information they comprise. Long-form stories are much longer than traditional news stories, with word counts totaling in the thousands, rather than the hundreds of a typical straight news story.
A feature story differs from a traditional news story in two key ways: It is written in a more open-ended, less strict structure than straight news stories, and it is often significantly longer than straight news stories. While straight news writers seek to present the most important information quickly and concisely, feature writers take a more creative approach to the information they present. Feature stories often apply creative storytelling techniques, such as playful or poetic language, narrative structures, detailed anecdotes, and multi-part vignettes. You can think of feature writing as a nonfiction version of storytelling, in which the sources are characters and the reported facts establish the foundation for the plot. Because of their more open-ended writing styles and less strict relationship to timeliness, feature stories are often long-form and evergreen. Evergreen stories are not tied to a specific time peg, or timely event. They maintain their relevance to audiences for a much longer period of time than straight news stories.
Entertainment journalism, which is also known as lifestyle journalism or cultural journalism, depicts pop culture and the many aspects of our daily lives with which it overlaps. For example, entertainment journalism includes coverage of music, food, film, TV, dance, fashion, theater, and other arts. One thing that distinguishes entertainment journalism from other types of coverage is that entertainment journalism includes both reported and objective pieces, such as news and features, and more subjective opinion pieces, such as reviews and columns. Both reporters and critics are important to this subfield of journalism. For example, a music critic may provide advice on whether the new Taylor Swift album is worth streaming or purchasing, while a music reporter might cover the streaming revolution in music and Taylor Swift’s relationship to Spotify.
Running through all these types of news is an even larger network of journalistic beats. Beats are niche categories of journalistic coverage in which individual journalists may specialize. A beat can be a topic, a person, or an institution, though they are most commonly niche topics. For example, a political journalist might cover the politics beat, the election beat, or the Kamala Harris beat—or all three. Beat reporters immerse themselves in their beats and gain specialized insights and knowledge of the key stakeholders, actors, trends, and influences within those beats over time. As they do so, they become experts in those beats, and that expertise appears in the stories they identify and cover, which in turn benefits the audiences for those stories.
Common beats include news beats (politics, business, courts and crime, education, international affairs, etc.), entertainment beats (music, film, food, literature, style, etc.) and sports. You might notice that these beats tend to overlap with the subsections of newspapers and magazines, many of which still organize their staffs and their editorial content based on this distinction between specialized beats. Today, journalists might cover a single beat or a variety of beats, depending on their role and their publications.
Straight news stories cover events, people, and topics of immediate concern to audiences in a way that focuses on facts and presents them plainly.
Breaking news is the coverage of information with timeliness as a significant news value. Evergreen stories are not tied to a specific time peg, or to a timely event.
Feature stories take a creative approach to the information they present and often apply creative storytelling techniques, such as playful or poetic language, experimental narrative structures, and detailed anecdotes.
Beats are niche categories of journalistic coverage in which individual journalists may specialize. Journalists covering beats immerse themselves in their beats and gain specialized insights and knowledge of the key stakeholders, actors, trends, and influences within those beats over time.