During our first years at the University of Southern Denmark, two of us, Erik Albæk and Claes H. de Vreese, fantasized about creating a large-scale comparative study of political journalism that would show how different conditions can produce different types of news, which in effect will have different implications for citizens’ functioning in democracies. With a grant from the Danish Social Science Research Council (grant number 275–06–0038) and the arrival of Arjen van Dalen and Nael Jebril as PhD students in this project, the fantasy became a reality. From 2008 to 2012 we worked on the project, which led first and foremost to interesting conversations about journalism, media effects, analyses, and writing styles, and also to journal publications, two PhD dissertations, and this book with Cambridge University Press. We believe that the book tells an interesting and important story, and we hope that colleagues, politicians, and journalists will strenuously debate what we have written so that the field of political journalism research is advanced.

We are indebted to several people and institutions. In a non-systematic and non-exhaustive list, these include: The Danish Social Science Research Council and The Educational Fund of the Danish Press (Pressens Uddannelsesfond) supported the project financially with grants of 4.4 million Danish kroner and 900,000 Danish kroner, respectively. We are grateful to TNS Opinion for a very smooth collaboration on the panel surveys.