Structural transformation of the Czech local and regional press after 1989: Is local press still local?
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2010 |
| Druh | Další prezentace na konferencích |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Popis | The paper deals with changes in Czech local and regional press after 1989. During the past 20 years the Czech Republic has transformed from a communist country to a democratic state, a member of the European Union and NATO. Understandably, significant changes have occurred at the social, political and economic levels, media are no exception to this. Yet, there is very little research that deals with the post-communist transformation of Czech media. This paper addresses a particularly neglected segment of the Czech media market, which is nonetheless important not least as it enables strong identifications at the local/regional level. However, the developments that the paper deals with are not unique to the Czech Republic or indeed post-communist countries. Apart from the specificities of the post-communist transformation, globally prevalent trends also play a significant role. The paper introduces the concept of delocalization to demonstrate that the local/regional characteristics of this particular segment of the Czech print media and of local journalism have disappeared at the level of the media organization (particularly in terms of economic, organizational and production changes). Commercialization proved to have the most important influence in the process and the paper analyzes its consequences at the macro level of the media system, taking into account the constituting elements of (de)regulation, privatization and concentration while at the micro level it concentrates on rationalization, centralization and (de)localization. Apart from the larger and more general context, the paper discusses the case of the Vltava-Labe-Press (VLP) publishing house that has become dominant on the Czech local and regional print media market. The paper relies on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, it introduces the analysis of survey of media system and in-depth interviews with journalists who have worked in local/regional media. At the macro level of the media system I conclude that regulation did not curb the influence of the constitutive elements of commercialization; that privatization in fact contributed to the development of ownership concentration and that the Vltava-Labe-Press publishing house established a monopoly on the Czech local and regional press market. Delocalization has been identified at the micro level of the media organization, with the Vltava-Labe-Press publishing house losing its local organizational and production (including constitutive elements of journalists work practices) characteristics. |