Determinants of Newsroom Use of Staff Expertise:
The Case of International News
By
Wilson Lowrey, Lee B. Becker and Aswin Punathambekar
Abstract
Literature on news construction acknowledges that newspapers create specialized content, but there is little speculation as to why specialties arise and why expertise in a particular content area may be greater at one paper than at another. This study is an attempt to explain variability across newspapers in the degree of expertise and specialization in one content area — the coverage of international news. In this study expertise is treated as a sociological construct, shaped by structural characteristics of news organizations and their communities.
