This dissertation deals with a perennial theme in both public and academic debate: how ownership is exercised in the news media. It does so by exploring the main agency through which ownership control is expected to be exerted in the individual media firm: the board of directors. Establishing the board as an intermediary between owners and the executive and editorial management, the study addresses a number of questions pertaining to the role of media boards: who is elected to the boards; which decisions are made in the boardroom, and which are not; who influences them, and who does not. The empirical results come from a historical study of the Swedish newspaper industry. The Swedish press has long been characterized by close ties to the political arena. A more recent characteristic is the growing dominance of not-for-profit foundations as owners of newspapers. It is the consequence of this particular ownership form that is the main focus of the dissertation. The study analyzes the boards of three local, foundation-owned newspapers between 1955 and 2005. The newspapers are Barometern (Kalmar), Borås Tidning (Borås) and Sundsvalls Tidning (Sundsvall). The study builds primarily on two sources: minutes from over twelve-hundred board meetings and meetings of shareholders, and interviews with twenty-three former and current board members. The study shows that the governance processes, including both the role played by the individual board and the relative autonomy of the editorial department, have differed significantly between the three cases.