This study investigates mediatization of campaign coverage of German and Austrian elite newspapers from 1949 to 2009. With a cross-national perspective on a sixty-year time span, it is well suited to examine the long-term development of mediatization. It focuses on news media logic and its components that have not been satisfyingly investigated by empirical research yet. In Step 1, the study empirically identifies three components of media logic: partisanship, personalization, and detachment from policy. In Step 2, it presents evidence that these components are largely invariant between the two countries, seven newspapers, and four time intervals investigated, pointing to the institutional nature of media logic. In Step 3, it shows that the components have developed erratically over time, which contests the idea of mediatization as an incessant, general process. Altogether, the results call for a more nuanced picture of mediatization and a systematic examination of factors interrupting, reverting, or accelerating its long-term development.
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