Money has started to flow to Canadian news outlets from the $100 million Google agreed to pay them in exchange for an exemption from the Online News Act, the organization administering the fund said.
The Canadian Journalism Collective announced Thursday that the first portion of cash sent to eligible news businesses amounted to $17.25 million, with additional payments slated to be transferred by the end of April.
The collective first estimated the money would start flowing at the end of January. However, it extended the timeline to give news companies more time to review the agreement they'd need to sign to receive the money.
Early recipients of the money include for-profit and non-profit outlets, large and small organizations, anglophone and francophone media, and publications serving Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities.
Erin Millar, the collective's outgoing interim board chair and CEO of journalism software firm Indiegraf, refused to name which outlets had received money because of the collective's "very strict privacy and data collection policies."
However, she said the organization is committed to fulfilling its obligation to share which companies received money, and how much, within 30 days of the cash's dispersal.
The collective previously told eligible publishers they will likely receive about $13,798 per full-time equivalent journalist employed based on a 2,000-hour year. Broadcasters were estimated to receive about $6,806 per eligible worker. That equates to $6.90 per claimed hour for publishers and $3.40 per hour for broadcasters.
News Media Canada has pegged the amount that could be sent to publishers between $18,000 and $20,000 per journalist. It said its higher figure is because it expects some organizations who seek payments will be found ineligible.
The cash distribution comes after the federal government passed the Online News Act, legislation meant to extract compensation from search engine and social media companies with a total annual global revenue of $1 billion or more and 20 million or more Canadian average monthly unique visitors or average monthly active users.
The legislation was designed to level the playing field for media companies that have lost advertisers to digital platforms and watched subscribers increasingly seek news online rather than from newspapers and traditional broadcasts.
Google secured a five-year exemption from the Online News Act when the tech giant agreed to pay $100 million a year to media organizations.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Meta, is also subject to the law, but decided to block access to Canadian news on its platforms to avoid having to make payments.
The journalism collective said at the start of the year that it had received the Google funding it is tasked with dispersing and expected to deliver the cash by the end of January.
It later extended that timeline, promising news outlets on Jan. 31 that they would find out whether they were eligible for cash between mid-February and mid-March.
The initial transfers amount to 60 per cent of the total sum that news businesses will receive for the year, Millar said.
The next portion of cash is expected to move in the summer, once the organization has verified submissions from outlets detailing the numbers of hours worked by eligible journalists.
The organization has also held back a portion of the money should businesses initially deemed ineligible later be found to qualify for the cash.
It estimates it will start handing out next year's portion of the money in late 2025 and expects that round to be smoother because by then it will have gone through the annual process once already.
Millar said it's been a "long haul" to get to this point, but she was "thrilled" at the progress and is hopeful it will have a lasting impact.
The cash dispersal comes as the collective also announced several new board appointments and its first executive director, Sarah Spring.
Spring, a former executive director of the Documentary Organization of Canada, was involved with advocacy work around the Online Streaming Act, which aims to regulate the streaming industry.
When she takes up the new role on March 24, she said one of her top tasks will be ensuring the Online News Act remains in place, should a federal election be called after Mark Carney officially takes over from Justin Trudeau as prime minister.
"We will be making it a major focus, especially in the first few months of the new government, to really ensure that there is a lot of understanding ... of the important role that this collective is playing in not only a highly functioning democracy, but in disseminating stories that are incredibly important to Canadians," Spring said.
"There's really no more effective tool than independent journalism, so I think that that message will be loud and clear and I think it'll be well received."
