The History of the Provincial Press in England
- Submitting institution
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Coventry University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 11594901
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Academic
- ISBN
- 9781441156464
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- The History of the Provincial Press in England is an eight-chapter single-authored monograph published by Bloomsbury Academic. It draws on a wide range of primary sources accessed via archival holdings to develop an historical analysis of the political economy of the local newspaper. Matthews uses history to analyse the political economy of the local newspaper through time, offering the first longitudinal study of the local newspaper from its inception in the 18th century to the present.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This work contextualises a discourse of decline that has dominated scholarship of the local newspaper in England since the 1990s, when eminent scholar Bob Franklin began to describe and analyse the political economy of the industry. It debunks the chimeric assertion of a ‘golden age’ for local newspapers, when titles and journalists were well-resourced friends to the communities they sought to serve. Instead, it evidences the primacy of the commercial imperative which has always underwritten this media form.
A nuanced understanding of the role of the regional press in relation to the national press is evidenced through key case studies. A deeper understanding of the social and cultural significance of local newspapers as well as their economic value is promoted. This is particularly timely when social and economic crises are prompting discussions about the long-term future of local newspapers.
The study aims to move beyond the wealth of scholarship on technological determinism to chart the decline in revenues for the local newspaper industry, in order to demonstrate how its structure has contributed to its own decline. This enables a critique of the normative conception of the provincial press as a localised fourth estate that dominates narratives of the role and purpose of the legacy local newspaper in industry, scholarly and policy circles.
Informing scholars in the areas of Media, Cultural and Social History, Media Studies and Business Administration, the research enhances understanding of how and why the local newspaper industry functions as it does, and enables critical engagement with questions about its continued utility and contribution to society. Matthews was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (2017) in recognition of the contribution to knowledge in relation to the role and purpose of the local newspaper in the past, present and future.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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