Researching Media Economics

Media economists often want to know more about a particular company or organization. It's important to determine if the company is publicly owned or privately owned. If publicly owned, the company issues stock (which may be bought or sold by stockholders) on a stock exchange (e.g. New York Stock Exchange). Federal law requires publicly owned companies to issue a number of financial disclosures, including an annual report.

A privately owned company, on the other hand, does not issue stock and so is under no obligation to publish its financial statements. Examples of privately owned media companies are The Associated Press, The Hearst Corporation, and Regal Cinemas.

Company and Industry Information

Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage gives comprehensive information on companies and the industries that they are a part of.It will tell you if a company is publicly or privately owned, how its stock is performing, recent news about the company, what competitors it faces, and industry-wide factors.

Need to know if a media company is owned by some other megacompany? Mergent Online will help you determine if a particular media company is owned by a larger entity. Enter the company's name; then click on Subsidiaries. Mergent also provides those federally required financial disclosures,such as 10-K and annual reports.

The International Directory of Company Histories (DOCS REF HD 2721 .I63) has more than 100 volumes of company histories. Check the back of the latest volume for a cumulative index by company name.

Articles on Companies and Organizations

Need recent articles from trade journals or academic journals? Business Source Complete indexes over 4000 business periodicals and provides the fulltext of 3300 of these.

Lexis-Nexis Academic is another well-known source for company and information from newspapers and trade publications.

Maintained by: Paul Frantz, pfrantz@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 01/27/2011