How do conglomerates affect print publishing? Are there positives and negatives associated with conglomerates?

“Beginning the 1960s, a major trend in publishing was the merging of houses, as well as the consolidation of retail sales outlets. One of the first mergers to occur was Random House's purchase of Alfred A. Knopf in 1960. In 1965 RCA acquired Random House for $40 million and added it to RCA's roster of media companies, which included NBC Radio and Television. In 1980, Random House was acquired by Advanced Communications and became part of the New house family's media empire. During this time a number of publishers, including Crown, Fawcett, and Ballatine, were merged with Random House. In 1998 Bertelsmann AG acquired Random House. Simon and Schuster was acquired by Gulf + Western in 1975. From 1984 to 1994, the company acquired more than sixty companies, including Prentice-Hall, Silver Burdett, and Macmillan Publishing Company. With the addition of these educational, professional, and reference imprints, Simon and Schuster's revenue grew from $200 million in 1983 to more than $2 billion in 1997. In 1989, the Gulf + Western corporation restructured and emerged as Paramount Communications. In 1994, shortly after the purchase of Macmillan, Paramount was bought by Viacom Inc., which also owned MTV. In 1998 the company sold its education, professional, and reference units to Pearson PLC, which later merged with Longman” (Greco).

This mass consolidation has made unlikely partners out of former competitors. By bringing down competition, publishers can focus more on the quality of the jobs rather than the quantity they sell and therefore the quality of every piece of information we get will be much higher. But as positive as this is, it has a negative side as well since all of those who do not have the economics or alliances that this massive conglomerates do, will not be able to be a part of this. Also, another negative aspect might be that the houses that are bought by this bigger power will no longer have a say in what they want to produce or how they wish to run things. Freedom of speech might be affected with this.

Greco, Albert N. The Book Publishing Industry. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997.