Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

2.2.2 Market 
Structure 
In the late nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, the newspaper market was 
dominated by a number of influential individual proprietors like Lord Northcliffe in the 
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Some authors have shown how content tends to neutralize when newspapers rely to a large extent on 
advertising, as extreme position will reduce the audience (Gabszewicz et al. 2001). 

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The Newspaper Publishing Industry 
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United Kingdom and William Randolph Hearst in the United States (Hirst & Harrison, 2007). 
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 & Harrison, 2007). Newspapers started to cater to general interests and 
broad audiences in order to drive advertising income (Grueskin, Seave, & Graves, 2011). 
Throughout the twentieth century, the newspaper market was dominated by media 
conglomerates owning newspaper chains. In the second half of the twentieth century, a 
process of increased concentration and consolidation in the international newspaper industry 
took place (Grisold, 1996). In the US around 1980, most cities had only one to two 
newspapers (Grueskin, Seave, & Graves, 2011). Because of the monopoly or oligopoly 
position of many newspaper publishers, they were able to charge advertisers high prices.
Concentration also took place in Europe, partly in response to increasing competition from 
broadcasters. When some public service broadcasters were allowed to include advertising into 
their programme schedules (albeit with much more restrictions than commercial 
broadcasters), and especially after the spread of commercial television in the nineteen eighties 
and nineties many newspaper publishers started to diversify their portfolio and some got 
involved in the launch of commercial television channels (Humphreys, 1996). The industry 
witnessed a process of diversification within media companies and a simultaneous growth, 
concentration and globalisation.
Some Scandinavian, German and Austrian publishers took advantage of the liberalisation of 
the media market in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, when most 
State-owned media were privatised, to extend their business in this sector - the Orkla media 
group, based in Norway, and the Egmont group from Denmark for instance, have significant 
publishing interests in Eastern Europe. (KEA, 2006).
Currently some of the largest European newspaper publishers are integrated into media 
groups active in areas other than press and publishing. Table 1 shows the main EU newspaper 
publishing companies, which all have operations in more than one country and do not only 
publish newspapers, but are also active in other media. Appendix D contains a datasheet with 
more detailed information about these companies.