Production in the EU press and publishing industry

What this chapter covers

Introduction: the European media landscape – analysing the market

History and precedents

The 20th century

Dramatic social and political change including war Technology

Changing government: governments and governance

The contemporary era: the 21st century

Globalisation, corporate growth, market concentration

Publishing markets and production

Product development

Editorial strategy

Content creation

Brand identity and management

Marketing

Size

Pagination

Content

Layout, language and formats

Image and photography and the audio-visual crossovers

Editorials

Copyright

The present scene: an indication

Newspapers

Periodicals, magazines and reviews

Book production and market

Comparative work: finding the variables (comparators)

Press and publishing in general

Newspapers in national and regional settings

Books, reviews, magazines, journals, directories, databases

Regulatory framework

Ownership

Technology and the market

Learning objectives

When you have completed this chapter you will be able to:

Outline the growth of EU print and publishing industries in terms of its historical and, in part, technological development

Locate some of the principal primary sources available to researchers that help us understand the changing publishing media scene.

Describe the national, regional and local structure of press and publishing provision.

Identify some of the principal trends over the past 20 years in the publishing and print industry across the EU.

Themes

Below you will find a simple statement or series of statements around the six themes. They should not be read as a given fact. They are more like hypotheses (see Chapter 2) which need to be proved, discussed, debated and then used in your own analysis of the subject. The ideas and approaches in this book are always to be considered with an open mind; this is important in higher education study and is what makes it distinct from pre-university study.

Diversity of media

The press and publishing industry in general reflects the oldest of the mass communication technologies. Its impact on European, let alone EU, history is immense, and it is a crucial part of the European democratic dialogue. It is also diverse in its provision and in the EU, until the very recent past, fragmented, although often nominally nationally based.

Internal/external forces for change

As the markets have become bigger, more open and more competitive, major publishing houses, even newspapers, have taken on a trans-national and even global dynamic. Equally there is in production an internal sub-national press which, depending on the country, is very important at regional and local levels. Within the EU there is also a European economic rationalisation driven by the single market whose impact is now beginning to be felt.

Complexity of the media

Unlike many aspects of audio-visual provision, there is no equal balance between private and public sector provision in the EU publishing industries. The press and publishing industry is administered and managed in the main in the private sector. Historically and today this remains the case. Being in private hands has not resulted in the industry being managed in the same way across Europe. Readerships remain different and dependent upon the different communities of consumers. Production follows this pattern even if national media concentration is the trend.

Multi-levels

Even if the private sector dominates press and publishing in ownership terms, and although similar technology has been used across the frontiers bringing forth wave upon wave of change and productivity, the market remains multi-community based. As long as the EU remains a multi-cultural consuming group of communities, its publishing and press production will remain sensitive to the different types of readership in the market. The degree to which there is consumer convergence is a matter of considerable debate. What is often correctly assumed is the growth of major global players who add to the multilevel state of the industry.

European integrative environment

The degree to which the EU press and publishing industries are being ‘Europeanised’ is another matter of hot debate. There are signs of considerable cross- and transnational corporate production strategies but, at the same time, the evidence still points toward a national, language-based, multi-cultural hold on the market which makes it seem at times very fragmented and ‘local’.

Cultural values

Our understanding of cultural change, and related social movements in society would do well to reflect on the changes happening in the press and in the publishing houses. Culture and the media, and especially the press and the ‘textual’ world, are very important historically. Change is probably slower to take place in the print industry when compared to the audio-visual sector, but change is happening. Measuring its rate is an important question as the digital age pressures the ‘reading’ world to adapt to the ‘electronic’.

Essentials

There are fundamental contemporary assumptions about print production and especially the newspaper industry: it is in decline; journalism and reporting are decreasing in importance; it is focused on entertainment rather than public or community service; it is controlled by limited ownership (concentration); it is politically biased (toward the ‘liberal’ market and the ‘right’); and it is threatened by digitisation.

There is a sort-of-truth in all these beliefs but, taken as a whole, they paint a much-distorted view of what is happening. Only certain countries are marking out a fundamental decline in the newspaper industry (France a perfect example), and the reasons for the decline are not simple but have specific as well as universal contexts.

There is still a West–East divide in Europe; some growth can be seen in the newspaper and print industries in the newly joined EU countries in Central Europe, whereas to the West there is a slight but complicated decline.

In most countries there has been a growth in magazine or even niche markets and the print industry, although restructuring, is valued and profitable. It could even be argued that there has been an increase in journalism relative to the past. ‘Entertainment-value’ has always been a part of the press, but the quality end of the print industry remains in fact robust and important.

Concentration of ownership is significant, but taken as a whole the EU area is still competitive and diverse. The context of political bias is better understood by national contexts in Europe than by ideological universalities. Convergence of delivery platforms is as much an opportunity as a threat, especially when combined with digitisation and translation production costs.