Abstract

During the postwar period, the Flemish press-scene changed fundamentally. Alongside further commercialization and concentration, a process of structural depoliticization or depillarization took place: links betweenparties and trade unions on the one hand and newspapers on the other disappeared. This article examines the impact ofthese structural transformations on the newspapers' content. We emphasize marks of pillarization in Flemish newspapers during cabinet formations. In 1958, the press took undeniably sides in the battle between the pillars: information about the formation of the new cabinet formed the background for these fights. In 1981 most attention went to the cabinet formation itself. The pillarization ofthe content was however on a more latent level not neglectable. Compared to 1958 and 1981 the old alliances between press and ideological institutions were far less visible in the content of 1995's newspapers. Apparently the depillarization ofthe Flemish press-content is an ongoing, longlasting process.