Local Journalism under Private Equity Ownership

Michael Ewens, Arpit Gupta and Sabrina Howell

No 6ynf4, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Local daily newspapers have historically played an important role in U.S. democracy by providing citizens with information about local policy issues. However, in recent decades local newspapers have struggled to compete with new online platforms for readers’ attention. Private equity investors—who specialize in reorganizing struggling firms in distressed sectors—have entered the industry. How do these new owners affect newspaper content, survival, and local civic engagement? We document nuanced effects, contrasting with the polarized debate on this topic in the media and political discourse. On one hand, we find that private equity ownership leads to higher digital circulation and lower chances of newspaper exit. On the other hand, we document a change in news composition away from information about local governance, and lower employment of reporters and editors. Finally, we find declines in participation in local elections, consistent with local newspaper content being relevant for civic engagement. The results have implications for knowledge about local policy issues and highlight trade-offs surrounding media ownership.

Date: 2021-10-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/6161bd8a42b474013900c588/

Related works:
Working Paper: Local Journalism under Private Equity Ownership (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:6ynf4

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/6ynf4

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().