Fewer newspaper owners lead to higher news quality

Consolidation of media ownership in recent years has affected news quality for the better. This is according to a new study conducted at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) at Jönköping University (JU).

“Our results challenge the view that the concentration of the media sector only harms news quality,” says Mart Ots, Associate Professor at JIBS.

Declining advertising revenues, the need for cost savings, efficiency measures and investments in new technological systems have put pressure on the news media. During the 2000s, more and more newspapers have been bought by larger groups, and the number of owners in the media market has decreased. Concerns have been raised both in Sweden and internationally about the impact of developments in the media landscape on the quality of news journalism.

AI analyzed articles

New research now shows that these fears have not been realized. On the contrary, news quality has improved over time.

“I hope that this study can contribute to a more nuanced picture of the development of the media market. That quality is an important dimension to consider,” says Mart Ots.

In a large study funded by the Swedish Competition Authority and conducted at JIBS, AI was used to analyze over two million articles published in 108 Swedish newspapers.

“We trained a language model to understand dimensions of news quality. This involved getting the computer to understand the different subject areas, genres and formats of journalism, as well as being able to identify, for example, objectivity and the use of factual information in the articles. It is impressive how accurate the models can be,” says Marcel Garz, project leader and associate professor at JIBS.

The study, which covers the period 2014-2022, shows that the quality of news in Swedish newspapers has gradually improved over the entire period, despite the industry's economic challenges.

Local coverage suffers

On the one hand, the results confirm the picture that, at an overall level, we are losing some diversity in news reporting as owners become fewer. More articles are co-produced and used in several different newspapers, resulting in greater standardization. Local coverage in particular suffers because of this. On the other hand, each individual reader is exposed to news media that has a higher proportion of journalistic content and news articles that are generally of higher quality.

“Large groups with greater resources simply tend to produce higher quality news, and quality increases almost without exception in news media that have been acquired. We want both diversity and quality in news reporting, but we don't discuss the fact that the two concepts are to some extent mutually exclusive,” says Mart Ots.

The results of the study will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Communication External link, opens in new window..