Reporter's small bed on base (6)
I believe the answer is:
scribe
'reporter's' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'small bed on base' is the wordplay.
'small' becomes 's' (abbreviation - e.g. clothes size).
'bed' becomes 'crib' (I've seen this before).
'on' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'base' becomes 'e' (Euler's number - base of natural logarithms).
's'+'crib'+'e'='SCRIBE'
(Other definitions for scribe that I've seen before include "One copied documents before the invention of printing" , "Medieval clerk" , "Document writer" , "Official writer" , "Writer (before printing was developed)" .)