UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Outsourcing the news? An empirical assessment of the role of sources and news agencies in the contemporary news landscape Boumans, J.W. Publication date 2016 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Boumans, J. W. (2016). Outsourcing the news? An empirical assessment of the role of sources and news agencies in the contemporary news landscape. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:27 Sep 2021 OUTSOURCING THE NEWS? An empirical assessments of the roler of sources and news agencies inn the contemporary news landscape Jelle W. Boumans Proefschrift Jelle Final Omslag.indd 1 20-04-16 16:37 OUTSOURCING THE NEWS? An empirical assessment of the role of sources and news agencies in the contemporary news landscape Jelle W. Boumans University of Amsterdam Outsourcing the news? An empirical assessment of the role of sources and news agencies in the contemporary news landscape ISBN: 978-94-6328-043-3 The research presented in this dissertation was conducted at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR). The project was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO Graduate Program). Layout by Martijn van der Meer Cover design by Jelle Boumans and Martijn van der Meer Printed by CPI – Koninklijke Wöhrmann Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) Department of Communication, University of Amsterdam PO Box 15793 1001 NG Amsterdam The Netherlands Contact: [email protected] © 2016 Jelle Boumans, Amsterdam. All rights reserved. No part of this dissertation may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the author. Outsourcing the News? An empirical assessment of the role of sources and news agencies in the contemporary news landscape ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het College voor Promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Aula der Universiteit op woensdag 25 mei 2016, te 11.00 uur door Jelle Wiebe Boumans geboren te Amstelveen Promotiecommissie: Promotores: Prof. dr. R. Vliegenthart, University of Amsterdam Prof. dr. H. G. Boomgaarden, University of Vienna Overige leden: Prof. dr. P. van Aelst, University of Antwerp Prof. dr. J. W. J. Beentjes, University of Amsterdam Prof. dr. K. Raeymaeckers, University of Gent Dr. P. Verhoeven, University of Amsterdam Prof. dr. C. H. de Vreese, University of Amsterdam Faculteit der Maatschappij en Gedragswetenschappen TABLE OF CONTENTS OF TABLE INTRODUCTION 9 CHAPTER 1: THE AGENCY MAKES THE (ONLINE) NEWS WORLD GO ROUND 33 CHAPTER 2: SUBSIDIZING THE NEWS? 57 CHAPTER 3: NUCLEAR VOICES IN THE NEWS 85 CHAPTER 4: INTRODUCING COSINE SIMILARITY TO ASSESS FRAME OVERLAP 109 REFERENCES 127 APPENDIX 145 AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS 151 SUMMARY 153 NEDERLANDSE SAMENVATTING (DUTCH SUMMARY) 157 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 163 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 169 PUBLICATIONS 171 INTRODUCTION DISSERTATION OVERVIEW ‘Is the newspaper sector in a crisis?’ Ask cult icon Jeff Lebowski – better known as the Dude – and he would probably ask the question ‘Does the pope shit in the woods?’ in return (Bevan, Coen, & Coen, 1998). Ask a random newspaper journalist or media scholar and they would most likely confirm as well, albeit perhaps more eloquently formulated. To ask the question is almost a platitude: The multiple challenges that the newspaper sector, the “stronghold of journalism” (Bakker, 2008, p. 427), faces have been widely documented for years now. Newspaper circulation rates and readership levels are at an all-time low (Bakker, 2008; Davis, 2000; Witschge, Fenton, & Freedman, 2010). The most recent numbers indicate that the circulation rate of daily print newspapers in Europe has decreased with 21.3% between 2010 and 2015, while the rates in the US (-8.7%) and Australia (-22.3%) also show a clear drop in that same period (World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers [WAN-IFRA], 2015). Meanwhile, ad revenues – the newspaper’s life line – are steadily going downhill: from 47.4 billion in 2005 to 16.4 billion ten years later in the US (Pew Research Center, 2015). Worldwide, newspaper print advertising revenues have gone down with 17.5% between 2010 and 2015; In Europe, revenues have decreased by nearly a quarter in that period (23.1%) (WAN- IFRA, 2015). The steady but modest increase of online advertising revenues over that same period cannot nearly make up for the losses (Pew Research Center, 2015). Meanwhile, competition from other media is rampant (Van der Wurff, 2012), online news aggregators and rivaling organizations repurpose original news content without paying a cent for it (Freedman, 2010), and a successful online survival strategy for the newspapers has not yet been found (Jones & Salter, 2012; Pew Research Center, 2015; Van der Wurff, 2012). The crisis is partly being managed by closing papers or shedding staff. Data in the US show that the journalistic workforce has decreased with 39% between 2005 and 2015 (“Employment in daily newspapers”, 2015). Industry estimations on the workforce in the UK between 2000 and 2010 suggest a similar decrease (Nel, 2010), although it has also been suggested that the percentage of job losses in the UK is considerably lower than in the US (Franklin, 2012). At the same time however, editorial content in the UK has increased substantially in absolute terms. Consequently, a journalist in 2006 was expected to produce three times as much output as his counterpart two decades earlier (Lewis, Williams, & Franklin, 2008a). This dissertation focuses on the developments in the Dutch context, which are largely in line with the global trends sketched above. The figures on circulation rates, advertising revenues, and journalism employment rates over the period 1998-2008 show a similar downward spiral (Tijdelijke Commissie Innovatie en Toekomst Pers [TCITP], 2009). In 1990, newspapers received 56.4 % of the total advertising revenues of the media market: by 2009, that share was marginalized to 5.2 % (Niewold et al., 2010). The economic crisis has further worsened the state of affairs on the advertising market: More than half of the net print media expenditures has vaporized between 2008 and 2013 (“Netto mediabestedingen opnieuw gedaald”, 2014). Data on circulation rates over the most recent years show that the decrease continues (“Papieren oplage daalt verder”, 2015). It is clear that the problems on the newspaper market are more urgent than ever, and future reorganizations and cutbacks seem inevitable if Dutch newspapers are to survive (TCITP, 2009). CONSEQUENCES OF THE NEWSPAPER CRISIS The consequences of journalism’s crisis are not only felt in the professional sector, but have a far wider impact: News media are often viewed as the lifeblood of a democracy (Witschge et al., 2011). In the current mediatized society, the healthy functioning of journalism is of greater significance than ever before (Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999). For democracies to function, it is essential that news media fulfil certain responsibilities. While there is a range of diverse and often conflicting ideas about what these democratic responsibilities of media entail (for a discussion see Berger, 2000), at the bare minimum news media are expected to 1) provide full, fair and relevant information to the public on which citizens can make informed choices, 2) facilitate an arena for public debate in which a wide range of voices are present, and 3) enable the participation of citizens in social and political life (Curran, 1996; McQuail, 2000). Furthermore, most perspectives on the role of the news include the responsibility being a guardian of democracy by holding those in power accountable (Fenton, 2011). This function is sometimes associated with the role conception of participatory journalism, in which journalists actively take sides and become advocates for a certain cause. Yet social grievances and political misconduct can well be reported on from a reasonably neutral and objective perspective – as journalists in fact also do (Hanitzsch, Hanusch, & Lauerer, 2016). 10 Introduction The economic hardship that news organizations face is believed to place considerable constraints on newspapers’ ability to fulfill their democratic duties: expensive editorial commitments like foreign news reporting for instance has been “cut to the bone and beyond” (Davies, 2008, p. 99), with foreign bureaus being closed