Journal Article: “Buying the News: A Quantitative Study of the Effects of Corporate Acquisition on Local News”

The article linked below was recently published by New Media and Society.

Title

Buying the News: A Quantitative Study of the Effects of Corporate Acquisition on Local News

Authors

Source

New Media and Society
First Published March 24, 2022

DOI: 10.1177/14614448221079030

Abstract

Local newspapers are increasingly subject to predatory corporate acquisition—corporate takeovers in which media conglomerates purchase publications in financially precarious states, drastically cut staff, and in certain cases consolidate newsroom operations. We investigate how this practice alters the information environment of 31 corporate-owned local newspapers across over 130,000 articles. Formalizing local information across three dimensions, we find (a) that corporate acquisition is associated with a reduction in the volume of local content produced, (b) that the coverage of local places following acquisition is significantly more concentrated than prior to acquisition, and (c) that articles produced to be shared across regional hubs of corporate-owned publications are significantly less local—and discursively more national—than articles produced for a single local market. Our findings identify reductions in newsroom resources and regional hubs of publications as detrimental to the information environment of local communities.

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Filed under: News