Advertising Pressure on Newspaper Gatekeepers

Abstract

Due to the cost of mounting a global advertising campaign in a crisis environment and the limitation of advertising as a credible source of information, advertising rates especially in newspapershave shirked considerably in recent years. Some researchers have open the discussion if gatekeepers benefit advertisers by accepting more press releases and divulgating them with a better position as a way to maintain a reliable source of income. To prove this hypothesis, the press releases, the news stories and the advertisements of nine companies in six different Spanish newspapers during two months have been studied. Results show, among other things, that as newspapers’ circulation raises, the number of advertisements increases, and so does the number of advertisers’ press releases that are published.