Helle Sjøvaag

Digitization has caused disruption in the traditional business model of the news media. Policy implementation in the media sector is therefore increasingly raised as an economic question, involving concern for the ability of legacy media to serve as independent platforms for public deliberation. While media policy traditionally tends to focus on unwanted developments (i.e. local monopolies, ownership concentration, etc.), the side-effect often representing an obstacle to innovation, the question is how future media policy should account for innovation needs. Combining media economics, policy analysis and strategic management theory, this article combines interviews with key stakeholders with policy document analysis to a scenario analysis of possible future policy directions enabling innovation in the news industries in Norway.

This article focuses on the problem of operationalising diversity to measure pluralism adjusted to the digital media market. Media diversity can primarily be considered at five levels, including the structure, organisation, production, output, and reception of media messages. Framework conditions are considered explanatory features on a structural level, while organisational aspects reveal variations in resource management. Production aspects account for diversity in reporting norms, while output diversity indicates the distribution and frequency of topics and sources. Reception concerns the diversity of media messages audiences are actually exposed to. The article argues that the fast-growing power of global superplayers warrants more consideration for the media’s infrastructure, urging researchers to adjust how structures are accounted for in media diversity analyses.

This article presents a quantitative and comparative content analysis of four Norwegian regional newspapers owned by the Schibsted Media Group. The aim of the analysis is to establish levels of localism in the online and printed editions of the newspapers and to discuss the relation between the local, regional, metropolitan and national news levels on two publishing platforms. Results show that the local profile is increasingly becoming the defining feature of these regional newspapers, even more so online than in print. As the analysis shows an increase in the amount of everyday life-related stories in the local news content, this study finds that Norwegian regional newspapers are moving towards a more metropolitan profile.