A beat is a good way to break that all down into small areas. You always want reporters that cover everything, but if you have a lot of reporters like this then having beat reporters would just break it down so that you could get better coverage of all the goes on.

Beat reporting may help out certain areas and such. If there is an area that does not get covered well because reporters are not educated on the subject, beat reporters could help out a lot.

A beat reporter is an expert in his or her field so they can report on the good and bad that go on in a certain field. They would see things more clearly and would be able to give a better report whereas other reporters would not.

For example, say there is a problem in society. Say that there is a problem in a local park where children will come play. It does not seem safe because there are always adults lurking around that have nothing to do with the children.

A normal reporter would see this and maybe write about how odd it is. They may touch on a few things that could be dangerous about it but probably would not effect change because they do not know enough about the subject to know if it is really dangerous or not.

But a beat reporter would go in, find out about the park, find out about the children, find out about the adults lurking around and would find out everything to do with it. Their report would be much different.

They might report that this park is a local park that has been around for hundreds of years. They might have found out that the park has some deep meaning for the local town. The might report that the children go there to play but are not in danger because the adults there are people that have lived in the area for a long time. They come to the park to relax and be with friends.
It is kind of like the park is a community gather point to relax and have fun. It is a place that means a lot to all the people and they all love to gather there. A beat reporter would see all this and be able to report that it is not dangerous for the children to play there. While parents probably do not want to always leave children unattended there, it is a very safe place.

A beat reporter does things like this. They find out all they can about their beat and they are able to give detailed and informative reports that other reporters cannot give because they do not have expert status in the area. They could report on major stories and such, but on other things, it would be a beat reporter that would need to cover it.

For more information about beats and beat reporting you can click on the following links:

http://www.gannett.com/go/newswatch/98/july/nw0702-1.htm
http://www.notrain-nogain.org/Train/Res/Report/cbeat.asp
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=May&x=20060501181829mbzemog0.3735315