Hotelling competition and political differentiation with more than two newspapers

We analyse a market where newspaper publishers compete for advertising as well as for readership. Publishers first choose the political position of their newspaper then set cover prices and advertising tariffs. We build on the duopoly model of Gabszewicz et al. (2001, 2002) who show that advertising financing can lead to minimum political differentiation of the newspapers and hence a lack of plurality of political views or pensée unique. We extend their model to more than two newspapers and show that, contrary popular belief in competition policy, concern for such lack of plurality may diminish but does not disappear as the number of firms increases.