The organization chosen for the redistribution of Google’s 100 million to Canadian media, the Canadian Journalism Collective (CCJ), is closely associated with a private company, Indiegraf, founded in 2020 with financial support from Facebook and Google.
This support is clearly specified by Indiegraf on its website, in a press release posted online on May 27, 2020. We learn that the company has “[benefited] from seed funding from the Google News Initiative and Facebook Journalism Project, who also provided in-kind advertising credits to help publishers grow their audiences.”
These links have notably prompted the Unifor union, which counts 12,600 Canadian media employees among its approximately 315,000 members, to publicly express its concern, first in the pages of the Toronto Star. In a statement sent to La Presse, president Lana Payne notes that 6 of the 12 members of the Collective’s board of directors are Indiegraf clients, believing that “there are risks of conflict of interest.”
“Unifor is concerned that the CCJ does not fairly represent the interests of Canada’s entire news media industry and its tens of thousands of workers,” Payne said.
The Canadian Journalism Collective, founded last month specifically to redistribute Google’s 100 million, is also led by Erin Millar, CEO of Indiegraf. This company offers a series of publishing and advertising tools for small media outlets.
The CCJ was chosen while a collective claiming to represent 95% of Canadian media, led by Canadian News Media and including La Presse, the Globe and Mail and CBC/Radio-Canada, was also in the running. Earlier this week, Canadian News Media CEO Paul Deegan declined to explicitly denounce the Collective’s choice and instead asked the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to ensure “the integrity of the process” for redistributing the $100 million.
On Thursday, Mr. Deegan was more accusatory. “We share Unifor’s concerns,” he said by email. One of the Collective’s administrators, Sadia Zaman, is also CEO of the Inspirit foundation, which financed Indiegraf.
“This means that 8 of the 12 directors are related parties, which is a governance farce [“gong show”],” adds Deegan. Clearly, this organization needs to be rebuilt properly, including a lawyer and an accountant, in order to manage $100 million in a professional manner. »
According to the register of the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, the Canadian Journalism Collective was founded as a non-profit organization on May 20, 2024. Its head office is an apartment on rue Jeanne-Mance, in Mile End in Montreal, also listed as the headquarters of the alternative online media outlet La Brèche, or The Breach. At the time of its registration, it had seven directors, including Erin Millar and two managers domiciled in Quebec, Dru Jay and Gabrielle Brassard-Lecours.
In a response sent by email, the organization argued that its board of directors was “temporary” pending a decision from the CRTC. “The full Board of Directors will subsequently be elected and will represent the entire diversity of the information ecosystem, as required by the Online News Act,” we continue.
On June 7, the CRTC indicates on its site, Google recognized that the Online News Act applied to it and filed an exemption request, in particular to be able to establish its own compensation amount. The CRTC will hold a public consultation on this matter. “The CRTC plays no role in the choice of the collective which represents the press organs,” the organization clarified in an email to La Presse.
In a series of questions and answers that it is preparing to publish on its website and which it sent to La Presse, the Canadian Journalism Collective also claims to be already at work establishing its infrastructure and preparing to open applications for the position of “Executive Director”. A consultation is also planned in order to determine from “all the diversity of the information ecosystem what is important for [each] in the distribution of these 100 million”.