Does it matter who owns and funds the media? As journalists and management consultants set off in search of new business models, there's a pressing need to understand anew the economic underpinnings of journalism and its role in democratic societies. How Media Ownership Matters provides a fresh approach to understanding news media power, moving beyond the typical emphasis on market concentration or media moguls. Through a comparative analysis of the US, Sweden, and France, as well as interviews of news executives and editors and an original collection of industry data, this book maps and analyzes four ownership models: market, private, civil society, and public. Highlighting the effects of organizational logics, funding, and target audiences on the content of news, the authors identify both the strengths and weaknesses various forms of ownership have in facilitating journalism that meets the democratic ideals of reasoned, critical, and inclusive public debate. Ultimately, How Media Ownership Matters provides a roadmap to understanding how variable forms of ownership are shaping the future of journalism and democracy. "Ownership has always been assumed, in both scholarship and public discussion, to be a key factor affecting the production of news. But it's also something extremely hard to study systematically. How Media Ownership Matters is the finest work to date on this subject, rigorous and complex at the same time engaging and accessible. It's a wonderful contribution to the political economy of news." -- Daniel C. Hallin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of the Graduate Division, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego "Everyone seriously interested in the links between media ownership, funding models, and investment in news reporting should read this book. It is a major advance of our understanding of media ownership and how it matters, bringing extensive evidence and analytical clarity to an area all too often either ignored or reduced to polemics." -- Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford " How Media Ownership Matters takes political economy scholarship out of its overdetermined focus on media consolidation. With a cross-national, empirically driven analysis of institutional, political, and cultural logics of the news industry, this book will be foundational to anyone hoping to understand not just how but why media ownership matters." -- Nik Usher, Associate Professor of Communication, University of San Diego "Highly recommended for collections in journalism and mass communication graduate programs." -- R. A. Logan, Choice "Benson, Hessérus, Neff, and Sedel have produced a landmark study that reframes the debate on media ownership for the twenty-first century. ..this volume stands as a significant and enduring contribution to communication scholarship, offering a nuanced framework that will inform and challenge future research on the structural forces shaping contemporary media systems." -- Murat Akser, International Journal of Communication "Benson, Hessérus, Neff, and Sedel have produced a landmark study that reframes the debate on media ownership for the twenty-first century. ..this volume stands as a significant and enduring contribution to communication scholarship, offering a nuanced framework that will inform and challenge future research on the structural forces shaping contemporary media systems." -- Murat Akser, International Journal of Communication Rodney Benson is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication and Affiliated Faculty in Sociology at New York University. He is the author of Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison , co-author of Public Media and Political Independence , and co-editor of Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field . His theorizing and research on news media ownership, funding, and audiences have appeared in NiemanLab , Le Monde Diplomatique , The Conversation , and leading social scientific journals. Mattias Hessérus is Director of the Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy and sits on the steering committee of the Engelsberg Applied History Programme at the University of Cambridge and King's College London. Hessérus holds a PhD in history from Uppsala University. He is the author of Rätten till privatlivet , a history of the press and privacy in Sweden. Timothy Neff is Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Leicester's School of Arts, Media and Communication. He was a 2019-2020 fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a 2020-2021 postdoctoral research fellow at the Media, Inequality and Change Center at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. His research on journalism, democracy, public spheres, and climate change has been published in numerous academic journals. Julie Sedel is Assistant Professor in Sociolog