Bad News Sells: The Demand for News Magazines and the Tone of Their Covers

News media are often believed to focus on negative events as a means to increase their audience and profits. This study evaluates whether this conjecture applies in the case of the 3 German news magazines Der Spiegel, Stern, and Focus in the period from 1997 to 2009. Based on detailed content analyses of issues with political and economic cover stories, the results indicate significant, positive correlations between explicitly negative cover pages and the magazines' sales, after controlling for a comprehensive set of other success drivers and influences.