Political and Economic News in the Age of Multinationals
Heidi J. S. Tworek Political and Economic News in the Age of Multinationals This article compares two media multinationals that supplied different genres of news, political and economic. Most media companies provided both genres, and these categories often overlapped. Still, investigating two firms founded in twenti- eth-century Germany shows how product differentiation affects the organization, geographical orientation, and business models of multinationals. While political news had the greatest impact when it was free and ubiquitous, economic news was most effective when it was expensive and exclusive. ews and information are, in many ways, the lifeblood of globaliza- Ntion. News fosters cross-border trade and can function as a com- modity itself. As a former news agency employee put it in 1910, of all types of commerce and transportation, news “acquired first and most often a global character.”1 But only very specific multinationals—news agencies—collected and disseminated global news from the mid-nine- teenth century. Apart from major publications like the London Times or Vossische Zeitung, most newspapers could not afford foreign corre- spondents or even journalists in their own capital cities. They relied instead upon news agencies for global and national news filtered through the technological conduit of cables and, later, telephones, wire- less, and ticker machines. To express the difference in commercial terms, news agencies were “news wholesalers,” distributing news to their “retail clients” (newspapers).2 Newspapers repackaged the news for their The author is grateful to Walter Friedman, Lilly Evans, Michael Tworek, and the three anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and suggestions. She also wishes to thank the members of the Business, Government, and the International Economy unit at Harvard Business School, where this research was first presented in 2014.
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