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1. On Saturday I participated in a semi-secret workshop where Canada's news orgs got together w other "stakeholders" to figure out how the government should spend the $645M allocated for news subsidies. I'll now share what I can about what I saw there. I'll also share THE ANSWER. 
2. Why can't I share everything? I agreed to "Chatham House Rules". I can't say who was there by name, which org they're from or who said what. I'm strongly against any degree of secrecy in this process and agreeing to those terms made me barf a little. Better to know, I decided
3. I also figured it better to have a voice in the process than not. Of course, the workshop had no official status. Idea was to advise/influence gov't. Of note: some of the largest news orgs were not there, which makes me wonder if the real dealmaking is happening elsewhere.
4. I've been opposed to any kind of government-funding of news from the start (outside of public broadcasting, which I support). but I didn't attend to protest the subsidies. The idea was: accept that this IS happening and try to suggest the best plan for it. Okay.
5. 1st thing I noted was that one major "stakeholder" wasn't represented: the public. Our mission was supposedly to figure out how best to serve the public. Crisis we were ostensibly there to fix was NOT how to bail-out the news biz, but how to get citizens the coverage they need
6. Gov't has been clear abt this from the start: they aren't going to"bail out industry models that are no longer viable" (said the last Heritage Minister). But they will support "public service journalism" to ensure our democratic info needs are met. We were there to help w that
7. That conceit was abandoned almost immediately. Participants quickly started complaining about the "insufficiency" of the $645M. Our moderator did some napkin-math based on a (hilarious!) assumption of $100k avg salary per journalist and 3000 journalists in Canada...
8. So the question we were trying to solve for from the start *was* the Q of a news industry bailout, i.e. 'Is there enough money here to subsidize the salaries of Canada's existing journalists?' Not: 'is there enough money here to adequately cover our democracy at all levels?'
9. First thing thrown around was, we need to go back to government for *more* money. Next was the possibility of taxing Facebook/Google to get more money. People seemed pretty ok with taking money from wherever.
10. We soon moved on to "Terms & Definitions" which was supposed to be about how the government should define who is and who isn't a journalist worthy of subsidy. But which instantly became: ME, I SHOULD GET THE MONEY.
11. A big news org w wide reach said that qualification should be based on audience size. A magazine said it should be based on depth of stories. A startup said it should be based on innovation. A progressive news org said it should be based on "values". Etc.
12. I chimed in to say it don't matter what you control for: all roads lead to Rome (Godfrey). Make it abt "innovation" & tomorrow they will launch Postmedia Innovation Labs. Only way to make this not a bailout is to not DO a bail-out. Put a hard,low cap on what any 1 org can get
13. $500,000 (for example) won't bail out any newspaper, but it's a huge amount of money for small teams of reporters trying to cover underserved communities/beats. Literally hundreds of newsrooms could be sustained with $119M a year towards that.
14. Unsurprisingly, this got immediate pushback from one big org present. They have operations in many cities, so they should get the full amount for each market, they argued...
15. Finally, we moved on to "Public Perception". This was interpreted as: 'how do we sell this thing to Canadians?'. I found this part very revealing.
16. Here, I was lightly upbraided for calling it a newspaper bailout. “Sometimes the way out of these problems is changing the language,” said someone. "Re-branding!" said another...It became a marketing strategy session.
17. I wanted to say that the best way to prevent people from calling it a newspaper bailout would be to not bail out the newspapers. But I had used-up all of my talking tokens.
18. One participant (not from a news org) observed that journalists are bad at selling campaigns to the public. "We can provide cover" he promised of his org.
19. One stray comment I noted: ”we need to train audiences to invest in journalism”. But how much harder will it be to convince people to pay for journalism now that we are *forcing* them to pay for it? A problem left unmentioned and unexplored...
20. I'll close by noting one more missing issue: the *other* crisis in CDN news: the crisis of credibility. Word of a big gov't bailout has already changed how ppl think of media. Trust in us is WAY down. Will it recover? Can we earn it back? Not an issue we even acknowledged...
21. Oh yeah, I promised you THE ANSWER.
22. I left the session with my mind totally changed. I learned of a way that government could subsidize the news biz that would avoid all the stuff I hate.
23. It was briefly championed by our moderator, Ben Scott - formerly of the Obama admin, currently of Pierre Omidyar's Luminate Org, which ran the workshop. (I'm considering that info unprotected by Chatham House Rules, as the fact of the event itself, I was assured, is public.)
24. Ben was bullish on part 1 of the subsidy package, which I hadn't paid much attention to: a tax subsidy for news subscriptions. What if everyone in Canada could pay for the journalism THEY want and the journalism THEY think is journalism, and get 50% of that money back?
25. It would unburden gov't from having to decide who is/isn't a journalist. It would unburden journalists from having to decide if they can stomach taking cheques from gov't. And it would work: we would see a HUGE spike in Patreon support if patrons got 50% or more back. -30-
