Chain Growth and Merger Waves: A Macroeconomic Historical Perspective on Press Consolidation

Between the late 1890s and the early 1930s, newspaper chains experienced new growth. The number of newspaper acquisitions and mergers increased and decreased simultaneously with the emergence and decline of the “merger movements.” This study examines the two waves of merger activity affecting all industries around 1900 and the 1920s and compares it to acquisitions and mergers by the largest newspaper chains. This paper suggests that acquisition activity of all business and industry paralleled the acquisition activity in newspapers and fueled the growth of chains through acquisitions; thus newspapers concentrated at an increased rate because of the larger macroeconomic trend and not because of a tendency isolated to the newspaper industry.