Resources and perspectives from media political economy

This chapter draws links between media management studies and media political economy. It charts the development of the latter up to the digital age and contends that media management approaches are well suited to addressing some of the emergent and prescient questions confronting the political economy tradition. In particular, media management approaches could point the way towards remedies and solutions in response to the problems of market failure and marketisation afflicting news industries. Such an orientation reinforces the distinctive features of media management scholarship as apart from the wider spectrum of management studies. Media management scholarship is also strengthened by attention to some of the broader themes characteristic of media political economy, including its explicitly critical dimension and intimate concern with relations of power. In the final analysis, it is argued that both fields ought to take more account of professional news provision outside of the state-market framework and that studies which synthesise the two approaches are best placed to address critical issues of sustainability in the news media