FEDS TO SET ASIDE $50M FOR LOCAL JOURNALISM.
$ 50M ‘ BAND- AID’
OTTAWA• Ottawa has set aside $ 50 million over the next five years to support local news organizations in “underserved” communities, struggling to cope with industry- wide disruption brought on by internet giants such as Google and Facebook.
“That’s a bit of a BandAid solution,” said John Hinds, the CEO of News Media Canada, who fears it may be too little, too late. “It’s not what we would have hoped for,” Hinds said. “Ten million dollars over five years really isn’t going to address the problem. That’s really the cost of running one newsroom of a mid- size daily newspaper in Canada.”
The government said it will provide the money to “one or more independent non- governmental organizations,” which will have full responsibility to administer the funds, respecting the independence of the press. Hinds said his organization had proposed a $350-million annual journalism fund that would allow the government to subsidize individual journalists at publications providing civic or local news.
T he f und was meant to support news coverage in thousands of communities that aren’ t reached even by the CBC. The budget also says the government will be “exploring new models that enable private giving and philanthropic support” for non- profit journalism and local news. “This could include new ways for Canadian newspapers to innovate and be recognized to receive charitable status for not-for-profit provision of journalism.”
The budget announcement follows a consultation process that saw Heritage Minister Melanie Joly listening to a slew of proposals.
The Public Policy Forum called for a tax on foreign firms selling digital subscriptions in Canada and a $400-million fund to finance journalism. The Commons heritage committee recommended in June that the government establish a five-year tax credit for print outlets making digital investments.
Canadian publishers have also called for a level playing field for online advertising, arguing U.S. tech giants have an unfair advantage. Local advertisers in Ontario, for example, don’t have to pay HST when they advertise with U.S. firms like Google and Facebook, but do when advertising in their own province.
Joly’s office has also floated the idea of “modernizing” t he Canadian Periodical Fund to take into account “original editorial content expenses,” which would include online news.
None of the recommendations was included in Tuesday’s budget, however, and Joly has repeatedly said the government is not interested in sinking money into a model that is “no longer viable.”
In September, the government’s culture strategy included a $ 125- million deal with Facebook to set up a news incubator at Ryerson University and a $ 500- million investment from Netflix to produce content in Canada over the next five years, but didn’t have much to say about Canadian journalism.
Critics of the various rescue plans say the government would only be supporting broken business models, as print journalism continues to grapple with plummeting revenues. As advertisers have moved from print to digital, tech companies such as Google and Facebook have attracted the lion’s share of marketing budgets. In response, newsrooms have shrunk and local newspapers and newscasts have struggled to survive. Hinds says Canada has lost about 16,000 journalism jobs in the past 10 years.
Paul Godfrey, CEO of Postmedia, which publishes the National Post and daily broadsheets in many of Canada’s largest cities, said he supports the News Media Canada plan because the money goes directly to journalists doing quality work.
The government’s plan is “very disappointing,” he said.
“It’s a body blow to journalism in Canada,” said Godfrey. “It will mean the continuing of lost jobs in journalism. It will mean potentially closures of some newspapers.”