Trying to Survive While Eroding News Diversity: Legacy News Media's Catch-22

In this paper, I present the results of an in-depth content analysis of over 12,000 print and online articles of four Flemish newspapers belonging to the same media corporation, Mediahuis, carried out between February 2018 and May 2019. I assess the degree in which articles are being recycled across the four different titles and find that news diversity is significantly lower online than in print. These results are contextualised through findings from an ethnographical observation study within the newsroom of the leading Mediahuis newspaper, which took place simultaneously with the quantitative analysis. I pinpoint five key drivers which facilitate the recycling of news content across titles on a daily basis and find that the attempts of the Mediahuis newspapers to adopt the "digital first"-approach are hampered by the lack of a sustainable business model for online news. I conclude that while there are viable economic arguments to justify the recycling of news content, it is not defendable from a journalistic perspective, as it erodes news diversity with possible negative effects for society and democracy, particularly in small and highly concentrated media markets.