Media-industry financial data is locked behind prohibitively expensive corporate data platforms.

Evidence

The second and primary component of my method is research techniques associated with the political economy of media. I draw from the financial and trade press (Bloomberg Businessweek, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Variety, Billboard), consult financial statements (such as company 10-K forms), and gather data from online financial databases. An essential piece of software I use is Refinitiv Workspace (currently being rebranded as LSEG Workspace), which is designed for investment bankers to access financial markets data such as real-time stock prices, market trends, annual reports, and SEC filings. It is owned by the London Stock Exchange Group (which also owns the globally influential stock exchange in its name), and is, according to Sarah Lamdan, a key “data cartel” of financial information along with Bloomberg and LexisNexis. Access to this software is prohibitively expensive and I am fortunate that the UCSD library maintains a subscription, allowing me to gather historical data on mergers, acquisitions, asset managers, hedge funds, stock buybacks, executive compensation, derivatives, and other metrics that have been elusive to many researchers of the media industries. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 42

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Sarah Lamdan’s work on data cartels and the political economy of information access I’ve encountered elsewhere.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does the concentration of financial data access itself shape what media-finance research is possible?