How Media Ownership Matters has been published! Hardcover, Paperback, and Ebook versions are now available (April 4, 2025).
Advance praise for the book:
Daniel C. Hallin, University of California-San Diego, co-author of Comparing Media Systems: “Ownership has always been assumed, in both scholarship and public discussion, to be a key factor affecting the production of news. But it’s also something extremely hard to study systematically. How Media Ownership Matters is the finest work to date on this subject, rigorous and complex at the same time engaging and accessible. It’s a wonderful contribution to the political economy of news.”
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, University of Copenhagen, former Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford: “Through a comparative analysis of more than 50 news outlets in the US, Sweden, and France, the book shows how four ownership forms—market, private, civil society, and public—each shape the news in civically consequential ways. Interacting with funding models and target audiences, these forms affect the degree to which coverage is oriented toward public service, partisanship, or the promotion of owners’ economic interests.”
Nik Usher, University of San Diego, author of News for the Rich, White, and Blue: “How Media Ownership Matters takes political economy scholarship out of its overdetermined focus on media consolidation. With a cross-national, empirically driven analysis of institutional, political, and cultural logics of the news industry, this book will be foundational to anyone hoping to understand not just how but why media ownership matters.”
For a preview of some of the key findings of the book, see Rodney Benson, “How Media Ownership and Funding Matter for Democracy,” in Novel Directions in Media Innovation and Funding, eds. M.L. Young and A. Hermida, with C. Castaneda, Vancouver: The Global Journalism Innovation Lab, March 2024.
See also these related publications on media ownership and funding:
“Media ownership.” Rodney Benson, 2025 (in press). In A. Nai, M. Grömping, and D. Wirz (eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication, Edward Elgar Publishing.
“News you can use to promote your interests: Media ownership forms and economic instrumentalism.” Timothy Neff and Rodney Benson, Journalism Studies, published online first on October 22, 2021.
“Can Philanthropy Save Public Interest Journalism?” Rodney Benson, Byline Times, article commissioned by UK Media Influence Matrix, June 22, 2021.
“How Media Ownership Matters in the U.S.: Beyond the Concentration Debate.” Rodney Benson interview with Eric Darras, Sociétés Contemporaines (in English), no. 113 (2019): 71-83.
“Rethinking the Sociology of Media Ownership” Rodney Benson, in L. Grindstaff, Ming-Cheng M. Lo, and John R. Hall, eds., Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology, 2019.
“Media Ownership and Public Service News: How Strong are Institutional Logics?” Rodney Benson, Timothy Neff, and Mattias Hessérus, International Journal of Press/Politics, 2018.
“Can Foundations Solve the Journalism Crisis?” Rodney Benson, Journalism, 2018.
Rodney Benson, Matthew Powers, and Timothy Neff, “Public media autonomy and accountability: best and worst policy practices in 12 leading democracies” Rodney Benson, Matthew Powers, and Timothy Neff, in International Journal of Communication 11 (2017), 1-22.
