Thread by @JesseBrown

Something big happened very quietly last week.

According to the chair of the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canada's dying newspapers just succeeded in DOUBLING the amount of government bailout money they're likely gonna get.

Here's how they did it:

Background: the Trudeau gov't said they were gonna give $600m to news companies, but also said they were NOT gonna bail out dying business models, not gonna decide who is and who isn't a journalist, not gonna pick winner & loser news companies...

Instead, they created an ~Expert Panel~ to make those decisions. Here's who they put on that panel:

4 Newspaper owner groups
2 Newspaper employee groups
2 Journalism associations

The public had no representation.

With 6 out of 8 panel members directly representing the interests of newspapers, the process was stacked by design to ensure that despite what the last Heritage Minister said, the money would ABSOLUTELY go to bail-out dying newspaper businesses. And that's just what happened...

The panel moved to increase the max amount of gov't subsidy per newspaper employee from $13,750 to $29,750. They also widely defined which workers are eligible for the subsidy (within their own orgs) to include managers and other non-reporters

In the case of Postmedia, this would increase their estimated annual take of taxpayer money from $8-10 million to $20-25 million. That means much less money for non-newspapers. Here is who's excluded:

1. ALL news startups. You must be operating for 12 months before you can even apply. So by definition, there is NO stimulus for anybody looking to launch a news org.

2. Podcast journalist orgs and video journalism companies are not "Qualified" journalists to the Canadian government. These are 2 news formats that are actually showing promise as financially viable ways to report news. But they don't qualify.

(but if you do launch a podcast or video company, good luck. For every dollar you spend on staff, your legacy competitors will spend as little as .65 cents. The bailout lets newspapers subsidize THEIR podcasters and video journalists, not yours!)

3. Comic book journalism is out too - sorry future Art Spiegelmans, Joe Saccos and Alison Bechdels. You're not qualified.

4. Hate content disqualifies you too. Which is good, no money for The Rebel! But wait - does this mean The Toronto SUN is out? Several Sue Ann Levy columns are hate content, which no taxpayer should be forced to fund. HOWEVER....

There is no process in the news bailout for the public to challenge a news org's application or status as State-funded news. There's no public disclosure about who gets denied or why. No appeals process for news orgs that get denied. No disclosure on how much $ each news org get

So not only was the process of creating the news bailout held behind closed doors, but the ongoing administration of government-funded news will also happen IN SECRET.

All of this is discussed in today's episode with CAJ chair @ZaneSchwartz , who says that the Trudeau government is about to greenlight all these new rules and ram the bailout through before the writ drops. Episode here: canadalandshow.com/podcast/13772-…