Leadership in the Newsroom: A Study of Transactional and Transformational Styles in Kerala's Media

This study investigates leadership styles prevalent in Kerala's print and visual media, focusing on the transactional and transformational leadership frameworks. Leadership is essential in media organizations where creativity and content quality determine competitive advantage. As Kerala's media landscape grows rapidly, understanding the impact of leadership on content creation, employee motivation, and organizational performance becomes crucial. This descriptive research examines whether managers in Kerala's media houses predominantly practice transformational or transactional leadership. Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X Short Form), data were collected from 348 employees across 45 randomly selected newspapers and television channels in three major districts of Kerala: Kozhikode, Ernakulam, and Trivandrum. The study assessed perceptions of leadership behaviours across five transformational and three transactional dimensions. Findings reveal that transformational leadership is more prevalent than transactional leadership in Kerala's media organizations. Among the transformational traits, ̎inspirational motivation̎ and ̎individualized consideration̎ scored particularly high, indicating a leadership culture that emphasizes employee empowerment and vision-driven guidance. While both media types—print and visual—reported similar leadership perceptions, a statistically significant difference was noted in the ̎intellectual stimulation̎ dimension, where visual media employees perceived higher engagement. Overall, the findings align with global trends emphasizing the efficacy of transformational leadership in dynamic, creative industries like media. The study highlights the necessity for media leaders in Kerala to adopt transformational behaviours to nurture innovation, enhance job satisfaction, and sustain high performance. These insights contribute to leadership discourse in media management and offer implications for organizational development in Kerala's evolving media ecosystem.