The Newspaper Industry

Abstract

In the late 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century, the newspaper market was dominated by a number of influential individual proprietors, like Lord Northcliffe in the UK and William Randolph Hearst in the US. These owners used newspapers as vehicles for political opinion and propaganda. No single newspaper was able to dominate the market. In the 1920s, the market concentrated. Fewer titles were published, and advertising developed as the main source of income for newspaper publishers (Hirst and Harrison, 2007). Newspapers started to cater to general interests and broad audiences in order to drive advertising income (Grueskin et al., 2011). Throughout the 20th century, the newspaper market was dominated by media conglomerates owning newspaper chains. In the second half of the 20th century, a process of increased concentration and consolidation in the international newspaper industry took place (Grisold, 1996). The newspaper sector grew into a mature sector, strongly linked to geographical location.