Content in Publicly, Privately Owned Newspapers more Alike than Different

Abstract

Almost since the first newspaper company went public in 1963,1 questions have been raised about whether public ownership is compatible with good journalism.2 That relationship is at the heart of this article. It examines the link between two forms of ownership-private ownership and public ownership-and the content that a newspaper publishes. Of particular interest is whether one of these two forms of ownership is linked to a stronger commitment to coverage about vital aspects of civic life, such as government, national security and diplomacy.Previous ResearchScholars have looked at public ownership of newspapers from two perspectives, one loosely grounded in economically oriented theories about how firms operate and the other linked more closely to organizational sociology. The main concern of most economics-based studies has been financial performance or profits. Generally speaking, that research has found that the relationship between public ownership and financial performance is not straightforward.3 There's little doubt that publicly owned newspaper companies have a strong profit orientation, but several studies have found that they don't necessarily seek to maximize short-term profits, as is often asserted. It's also not clear that publicly held companies are any more profit-driven than privately held media businesses. Though the economically oriented studies seldom include journalistic quality or content as variables, concerns about quality and content often animate that research. For example, the impact of public ownership on journalistic quality was a key issue in Taking Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Newspaper Company, which is the most comprehensive examination of public newspaper ownership.4The sociological framework takes a broader approach to understanding the relationship between ownership structure and content. Scholars such as Schudson, Demers and Shoemaker and Reese focus on the myriad of influences on content decision-making.5 For them, ownership is but one of many factors that shape content. Those factors range from the social characteristics of the message makers to the ideological systems in which media organizations operate. In The Sociology of News, Schudson addresses profit motive. While he acknowledges that it's at the heart of the commercial news businesses, he argues that market logic doesn't always dictate how a news organization operates.6 He says the desire of journalists to base decisions on their own professional judgments can constrain commercial motives. That point is evident in multiple ways in the research grounded in organizational sociology. Taken as a whole, it suggests that it's simplistic to assume that public ownership is necessarily bad for journalistic quality-or that private ownership is usually good for it.Research QuestionsCritics of public ownership worry that it creates financial pressures that undermine a newspaper's journalistic mission. Yet scholars have rarely compared the journalistic output-the content-of publicly and privately held newspapers to evaluate that thesis. That's what this research does. The independent variable-ownership structure-is defined conventionally: Publicly owned companies trade their stock on public securities markets. Privately owned companies don't trade their stock on securities markets. Because so little research has examined content differences between publicly held and privately held newspapers, it seems prudent to ask research questions rather than pose hypotheses. They are:RQ1:Is the ownership structure of a newspaper's parent company associated with differences in the subjects that the newspaper covers? More specifically, are there differences in the amount of coverage of civic affairs, crime and justice and softer subjects such as sports, personalities or entertainment?Economically oriented theories suggest that publicly owned newspapers face financial pressures that undermine coverage of civic affairs in favor of cheaper or more popular fare, such as crime, celebrities or other insignificant subjects. …