Time-based Variability in the Presence of Infotainment, Service, and Civic Roles in Czech Quality Press

Figures & data

Figure 1. Net profits on sales and gross advertising revenues of analysed newspapers across three time periods.

^aAuthors own elaboration based on data from the Czech Audit Bureau of Circulations. Net profit for each month was computed as follows: average circulation per issue * selling price per issue at given time * the number of issues per month—VAT at given time—distributors’ margin (33%). Monthly net profits for given time period were then summarized. ^b Data on gross advertising revenues were provided and aggregated by Czech Publishers´ Association.

Figure 2. Percentage of people over the age of 16 using the internet to read news, newspapers and magazines.

Note. Based on secondary data from Czech Statistical Office (2023, 26).

Table 1. Owner, ownership type and average circulation for analysed newspapers across time periods.

Daily	T1 (2006–2007)	T2 (2011–2012)	T3 (2016–2017)
Hospodářské noviny
Owner	Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt	Zdeněk Bakala	Zdeněk Bakala^b
Ownership type	Corporate	Oligarchic	Oligarchic
Circulation	59,802^a	36,722	30,470
Lidové noviny
Owner	Rheinisch-Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH	Rheinisch-Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH	Agrofert a.s. (Andrej Babiš^c)
Ownership type	Corporate	Corporate	Oligarchic
Circulation	71,301	37,190	35,125
MF Dnes
Owner	Rheinisch-Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH	Rheinisch-Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH	Agrofert a.s. (Andrej Babiš)
Ownership type	Corporate	Corporate	Oligarchic
Circulation	317,187	194,876	135,578
Právo
Owner	Zdeněk Porybný (91.4%)	Zdeněk Porybný (91.4%)	Zdeněk Porybný (59.0%), Seznam a.s. (33.6%)
Ownership type	Private	Private	Corporate^d
Circulation	122,172	77,681	55,593

^a Based on data from the Czech Audit Bureau of Circulations. Data on average daily circulation for January were used to capture circulation during given time period.

^b Zdeněk Bakala is a Czech entrepreneur and investor, and a stakeholder in mining, energy, and financial businesses. He is not directly involved in politics, yet he financially supported right-wing conservative and neoliberal political parties, ODS and TOP 09 (Štětka 2013).

^c Andrej Babiš is a Czech entrepreneur and the owner of Agrofert holding company, which is the largest Czech firm operating in the agriculture, food, chemical, construction, logistics, forestry, and energy industries (Štětka 2013). In 2011, he founded the populist centrist political party ANO. In 2013, he became the Minister of Finance and in 2017 he became the Prime Minister for the first time.

^d In 2013, Czech media company Seznam a.s. bought 33.6% of Borgis a.s. stocks from its majority owner, a former journalist and editor-in-chief, Zdeněk Porybný. In 2014 Zdeněk Porybný stopped to be executive chairman of the company (MediaGuru.cz 2014). Because of the lower level of control by the majoritarian owner and the higher level of profit orientation due to expectations of a new stakeholder, in terms of its organizational goals, newspaper has shifted from a private ownership model towards a corporate ownership model. Therefore, based on this premise, at T3 daily Právo was subsumed under the corporate type of ownership.

Table 2. The presence of infotainment, service and civic role and their individual indicators per time period.

	T1 (2006–2007)		T2 (2011–2012)		T3 (2016–2017)			Cramér's V
	N = 701		N = 693		N = 477		χ^2 (2)
	N	%	N	%	N	%
Infotainment role indicators:
Personalization	52	7.4	64	9.24	57	11.95	6.95*	.06
Private life	25	3.57	13	1.88	12	2.52	3.89	.05
Sensationalism	69	9.84	40	5.77	32	6.71	8.92*	.07
Emotions	19	2.71	20	2.89	16	3.35	0.42	.02
Morbidity	20	2.85	14	2.02	11	2.31	1.06	.02
Infotainment (presence of at least one indicator)	144	20.54^a	120	17.32^a	97	20.34^a	2.77	.04
Service role indicators
Impact on everyday life	67	9.56	92	13.28	58	12.16	4.89	.05
Tips and advice (grievances)	7	1.00	4	0.58	8	1.68	3.40	N/A
Tips and advice (individual risks)	8	1.14	9	1.30	7	1.47	0.24	.01
Information/consumer advice	62	8.85	72	10.39	48	10.06	1.03	.02
Service (presence of at least one indicator)	136	19.40^a	164	23.67^a	107	22.43^a	3.90	.05
Civic role indicators
Citizen reactions	58	8.27	104	15.00	49	10.27	16.44***	.09
Citizen demand	29	4.14	58	8.37	27	5.66	11.11***	.07
Credibility of citizens	22	3.14	36	5.20	17	3.56	4.16	.04
Local impact	36	5.14	46	6.64	26	5.45	1.58	.02
Educating on duties and rights	16	2.28	30	4.33	20	4.19	5.12	.05
Contextual background information	35	4.99	41	5.92	45	9.43	9.81**	.07
Citizen question	1	0.14	2	0.29	0	0.00	1.49	N/A
Information on citizen activities	23	3.28	48	6.92	16	3.35	12.87**	.08
Support of citizen movements	6	0.87	16	2.31	4	0.84	6.79	.06
Civic (presence of at least one indicator)	140	19.97^a	206	29.73^b	130	27.25^b	18.59***	.10

Notes. Cells with different superscript letters are significantly different; cells with the same superscript are not statistically different by chi-square test of association at the p < .05 level, with p-values adjusted by the false discovery rate (FDR) method for multiple comparisons (see Benjamini and Hochberg 1995).

Table 3. Within-newspaper between-time-period breakdown of articles containing at least one indicator of audience-related roles.

Daily	T1 (2006–2007)	T2 (2011–2012)	T3 (2016–2017)	χ2(2)	Cramér's V
	%	%	%
Hospodářské noviny (N = 362)
Infotainment	8.94^a	11.43^ab	21.21^b	7.84*	.15
Service	28.46^a	29.29^a	28.28^a	0.04	.01
Civic	21.95^a	38.57^b	34.34^ab	8.76*	.16
Lidové noviny (N = 326)
Infotainment	27.19^a	14.39^b	27.50^a	7.63*	.15
Service	17.54^b	30.30^a	18.75^ab	6.71	.14
Civic	18.42^a	22.73^a	38.75^b	11.01*	.18
MF Dnes (N = 429)
Infotainment	32.92^a	21.56^b	16.83^b	10.09*	.15
Service	18.01^a	28.74^b	27.72^ab	5.86	.12
Civic	26.71^a	32.34^a	30.69^a	1.29	.05
Právo (N = 754)
Infotainment	16.17^a	19.29^a	18.78^a	1.05	.04
Service	17.16^a	13.78^a	18.27^a	1.91	.05
Civic	16.17^a	26.77^b	17.26^a	10.97*	.12

Notes. Cells with different superscript letters are significantly different; cells with the same superscript are not statistically different by chi-square test of association at the p < .05 level, with p-values adjusted by the false discovery rate (FDR) method for multiple comparisons (see Benjamini and Hochberg 1995).

Table 4. Bivariate relationships between the independent variables and the presence of infotainment, service and civic role in news stories.

	Infotainment role %	Service role %	Civic role %
Presence in news stories	19.3	21.8	25.4
Daily	χ2(3) = 19.11***, V = 0.10	χ2(3) = 25.63***, V = 0.12	χ2(3) = 23.68***, V = 0.11
Hospodářské noviny	13.3^c	28.7^a	31.8^a
Lidové noviny	22.1^ab	23.0^a	25.2^ab
MF Dnes	24.7^a	24.5^a	29.8^a
Právo	17.9^bc	16.3^b	20.0^b
Time period	χ^2(2) = 2.77, V = 0.04	χ^2(2) = 3.90, V = 0.05	χ^2(2) = 18.59***, V = 0.1
T1 (2006–2007)	20.5^a	19.4^a	20.0^a
T2 (2011–2012)	17.3^a	23.7^a	29.7^b
T3 (2016–2017)	20.3^a	22.4^a	27.3^b
Ownership type	χ^2(2) = 2.93, V = 0.04	χ^2(2) = 19.47***, V = 0.10	χ^2(2) = 31.15***, V = 0.13
Private	17.6^a	15.6^b	21.0^a
Corporate	20.9^a	23.3^a	23.4^a
Oligarchic	18.1^a	26.7^a	35.7^b

Notes. V = Cramér's V. Cells with different superscript letters are significantly different; cells with the same superscript are not statistically different by chi-square test ofassociation at the p < .05 level, with p-values adjusted by the false discovery rate (FDR) method for multiple comparisons (see Benjamini and Hochberg 1995).

Table 5. Estimates of regression coefficients of ridge logistic regression model of the presence of infotainment role.

	B	B (scaled)	SE (scaled)	OR
Intercept	−1.20	–	–	0.30
Time period [:T1]
T2	−0.15	−3.08	1.90	0.86
T3	0.01	0.17	1.68	1.01
Ownership type [:Corporate]
Private	−0.08	−1.49	1.66	0.92
Oligarchic	−0.03	−0.50	1.79	0.97
Daily [:MF Dnes]
Hospodářské noviny	−0.44***	−7.56	1.92	0.64
Lidové noviny	0.00	0.07	1.86	1.00
Právo	−0.18*	−3.78	1.60	0.84

Notes. OR = Odds ratio. Model formulation: infotainment role ∼ time period + ownership type + daily [family = binomial]. Lambda = 0.0276. Pseudo R²_McF= 0.011.

Table 6. Estimates of regression coefficients for ridge logistic regression model for the presence of service role the news.

	B	B (scaled)	SE (scaled)	OR
Intercept	−1.26	–	–	0.28
Time period [:T1]
T2	0.08	1.72	1.04	1.08
T3	0.00	0.03	0.93	1.00
Ownership type [:Corporate]
Private	−0.15***	−2.97	0.86	0.86
Oligarchic	0.07	1.29	0.94	1.07
Daily [:MF Dnes]
Hospodářské noviny	0.14*	2.46	0.99	1.15
Lidové noviny	−0.00	−0.03	1.03	1.00
Právo	−0.16***	−3.35	0.83	0.85

Notes. OR = odds ratio. Model formulation: service role ∼ time period + ownership type + daily [family = binomial]. Lambda = 0.106. Pseudo R²_McF= 0.014.

Table 7. Estimates of regression coefficients for ridge logistic regression model of the presence of civic role in news.

	B	B (scaled)	SE (scaled)	OR
Intercept	−1.39	–	–	0.25
Time period
T2	0.29***	5.97	1.72	1.34
T3	0.05	1.01	1.66	1.05
Ownership type [:Private]
Corporate	−0.58	−1.24	1.58	0.56
Oligarchic	0.39***	6.97	1.34	1.48
Daily [:Právo]
Hospodářské noviny	0.20*	3.41	1.54	1.22
Lidové noviny	0.09	1.44	1.84	1.09
MF Dnes	0.29***	5.25	1.59	1.37

Notes. OR = Odds ratio. Model formulation: civic role ∼ time period + ownership type + daily [family = binomial]. Lambda = 0.032. Pseudo R²_McF= 0.022.

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Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the author upon reasonable request.