Commercial pressures in Spanish newsrooms

Abstract

The crisis affecting news organisations, along with their struggle to find a sustainable online business model, have challenged journalists’ professional autonomy, as economic and commercial pressures find their way into journalists’ daily practice. This research explores the perceived influence of commercial pressures on Spanish newsrooms, paying special attention to how journalists resolve and manage those conflicts within the limits of the media organisation. Through 50 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Spanish journalists and editors, the findings emphasise the usual, while normalised prevalence of commercial pressures. The study argues that the newspaper crisis has weakened news organisations’ independence from advertisers, as big corporations that concentrate most of the market share have very significant structural influence. The article identifies the most common typologies of commercial pressures according to the producing source (internal or external), and addresses their main effects for journalism practice, specifically for journalists’ autonomy and newspapers agenda setting. It concludes that in order to decrease advertisers’ bargaining power, a more diverse organisational news media landscape needs to be enhanced and therefore, policymakers should accommodate shifts towards subscription and ensure a viable future for entrepreneurial journalism start-ups.

KEYWORDS:

• advertisers
• commercial pressures
• market-driven journalism
• professional autonomy
• quality
• agenda setting
• journalism practice

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the “Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad”, along with FEDER funds under Grant CSO2015-66543-P; by the International Research Network on Communication Management (XESCOM), funded by the “Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria, Xunta de Galicia” under Grant ED341D R2016/019; and by the “Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte”, under Grant FPU16/05234.