The Impact of Internal Labor Markets On Newspaper Industry Diversification
By
Lee B. Becker, Tudor Vlad, George L. Daniels and Hugh J. Martin
Abstract
The daily newspaper industry in the United States changed dramatically in the second half of the last century. The number of daily newspapers declined, the number of cities served by only one daily newspaper increased, and the number of newspapers not part of a newspaper group decreased.
The reasons for these changes are complex, as are their consequences (Lacy and Davenport,
1994). One consequence of the consolidation of newspaper titles that has been largely ignored is a
restructuring of the way the newspapers construct and access their labor markets. In fact, it may well be
that a restructuring of the labor market is one of the motivations for such consolidation.
One potential outcome of creation of a newspaper group is expansion of what economists call the Internal Labor Market (Pinfield, 1995). If the newspaper group integrates or even coordinates the hiring of personnel, the Internal Labor Market could be expanded to cover all or major parts of the group.
