News from the Central Kitchen? Sustainability and Intra-Group Collaboration in Three Newspaper Chains

Abstract

Drawing from literature on how declining industries adapt to shifting markets, the paper analyzes how three leading newspaper chains in Finland have responded with intra-group collaboration to the decline in revenues. First, based on document analysis, we examine what forms of institutional cooperation the firms have developed to increase their sustainability. Second, we use content analysis to examine to what extent the analyzed press chains utilize content duplication. Third, we interview the editors-in-chief to find out how they legitimize the increased collaboration. Although the practices vary, the editors-in-chief consider content duplication necessary, and the news overlap is found to rise to over 40% of news supply.