No ordinary press owners: press barons as a Weberian ideal type

Abstract

This article differentiates press barons from `classic' press owners and defines press baronage as a specific type of newspaper ownership. It constructs an ideal-typical figure of the press baron along two axes. From an economic point of view, they were prepared to invest capital in the press, they made profits out of journalism and they built press conglomerates. From a journalistic perspective, they were journalists of great experience and skill and, in some cases, the inventors and developers of discursive strategies and journalistic practices still in use today. The article then goes on, through a comparative historical analysis of the press in the United States, Great Britain and France between 1830 and 1930, to show that the press baron was primarily an Anglo-American phenomenon and it adduces a range of economic, political and cultural factors to explain this.