Die Publizistische Einheit als Auslaufmodell: Zur abnehmenden Validität eines pressestatistischen Standardmaßes

Zusammenfassung

In der deutschsprachigen Forschung zur Pressekonzentration galt lange Zeit die Publizistische Einheit (PE) von Walter J. Schütz als „Goldstandard“ zur Erhebung publizistischer Vielfalt auf dem Tageszeitungsmarkt. Digitale Produktionstechniken und verlagsübergreifende Inhaltssyndikation führen jedoch dazu, dass die bisherige Definition und Anwendung des Konstrukts PE nur noch begrenzt valide Aussagen über die publizistische Unabhängigkeit von Tageszeitungen zulässt. Der vorliegende Beitrag schlägt vor diesem Hintergrund eine Revision der Publizistischen Einheit vor. Aus der Analyse struktureller Veränderungen lokaler und regionaler Tageszeitungsmärkte zwischen 2012 und 2016 wird eine Differenzierung redaktioneller Kooperationsformen abgeleitet, um die tatsächliche Struktur publizistischer Vielfalt bzw. Konzentration abzubilden. Daran anschließend werden Anpassung und Fortschreibung der bestehenden Zeitreihenanalysen von Walter J. Schütz auf Ebene der Bundesländer vorgestellt.

Abstract

For a long time, the “Publizistische Einheit” (PE) developed by Walter J. Schütz was considered the “gold standard” for measuring press concentration and structural news diversity in the German newspaper market. The term “Publizistische Einheit” (literally translated: “independent journalistic unit”) is one of the three central measures of structural diversity in news markets next to the (mere) number of publishers as editors and content analysis data on journalistic (content) diversity. According to Walter J. Schütz, “Publizistische Einheit” (PE) defines newspapers and their regional editions which share the same or mostly the same national cover section (mostly the first pages of a newspaper dealing with national news).

The rise of digital production techniques and cross-media content syndication put in question in how far the concept of “PE” in its current form is still a valid measure for editorial independence of daily newspapers. Against this background, this article proposes a revision of the concept “Publizistische Einheit” as a central measure to describe structural press concentration on press markets. Based on the analysis of structural changes in local and regional newspaper markets in Germany between 2012 and 2016, we derive a typology of different forms of editorial cooperation in order to better reflect the actual structure of press concentration and structural news diversity. Seven different forms of cooperation are distinguished (decreasing in strength): (1) Exchange of the newspapers’ head as the strongest degree of “cooperation”, which are identical newspapers that differ only by the newspaper brand; (2) Zombie newspapers as newspapers that are produced without any (own) editorial staff, but through copy-paste with content from other newspapers and sold under their own brand; (3) complete takeover of the cover section; this form of cooperation is characterized by the fact that the “national” cover section of the newspaper is delivered by another newspaper and only the local section is created by the own editorial staff; (4) Brand-specific cover section; in contrast to the complete cover-section takeover, a specific cover is delivered to the newspaper produced by another (central) editorial office; (5) Combination by cover section editor; the cover section is prepared in the newspaper’s own newsroom but based on the content delivery by other editorial offices meaning that the own editorial performance is limited to the selection, weighting and if necessary shortening or completion of articles; (6) News agency principle; here, individual articles are taken over by another (even a competitor) newspaper; (7) Cooperation for investigation purposes; this form is the least form of cooperative effort—several newspapers or even other media (e.g., radio and TV companies) cooperate in non-institutionalized form to realize resource intensive investigations (e.g., in a transnational or international context). We further argue that it no longer makes sense to recur on the dichotomous measure of dependent vs. independent newspapers to describe press concentration but to account for gradual differences. As an extension of the “PE” as a measure of the journalistic autonomy of newspapers, we therefore propose a differentiation of the cooperation intensities, classified along a 1–8 scale. The scale includes the above-described forms of cooperation and ranges from the poles “complete journalistic autonomy” (8) to the “exchange of the newspapers’ head” (1) as the extreme form in the sense of relying entirely on external delivery of content. Based on this, we present a continuation of Schütz’ longitudinal analyses of press concentration in Germany adapting it to the state level. We find that the number of independent newspapers (“PEs”) has actually reduced significantly more compared to the last evaluation by Schütz (2012).