Buying the news: A quantitative study of the effects of corporate acquisition on local news

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.

Why mainstream news media still matter

“…In 2019, the merger of Gannett and GateHouse media groups consolidated ownership of 20% of all US newspapers: the most dramatic manifestation of a wider pattern of corporate acquisition and concentration of control. In this transformative cycle, the strength of the regional newsnet has weakened, alternatively producing ‘news deserts’ devoid of local titles (Abernathy, 2020), or ‘ghost newspapers’, with thin editorial resources and diminished community connectivity (LeBrun et al, 2022).…”