Soooo the newspaper lobby group administering the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) for the Canadian government explicitly barred @sprawlcalgary from eligibility for federal funds. Don't know whether to laugh or cry. THREAD

The LJI is part of the Cdn govt's so-called news bailout. It funds reporter salaries for civic journalism—specifically for underserved communities + "areas of news poverty." Indigenous affairs reporters, climate change reporters, education reporters etc. All good stuff. Needed.

For a small startup like the Sprawl, I can't overstate how huge it would be to have a full-time civic journalism reporter whose salary is covered. Would be a gamechanger, making it possible for us to do so much more. Same is true of many small online news orgs in Canada.

So last yr @sprawlcalgary applied for 2 LJI roles: Calgary civic affairs reporter + provincial affairs reporter. Both were denied. Fair enough. You win some, you lose some. And you could argue that, despite political coverage being gutted, these aren't areas of news poverty.

But when News Media Canada revealed the first round of LJI reporters in Dec, something was off. NMC is to administer the program for print AND online media. But the LJI $ was overwhelmingly going into newspapers (including a few Postmedia ones). https://nmc-mic.ca/lji/news-organizations/2020-news-organizations/

On the prairies, 28 of 29 LJI roles went to newspapers. Other small indies operating outside of the daily/weekly news model were also shut out. Briarpatch mag, for example, applied for a poverty reporter for The Sask Dispatch. They were rejected.

Some of us asked for an appeal. I was told consideration was given to orgs doing "regular, preferably daily, reports" that could be shared with all media. (Under the LJI program, everything is shared under a Creative Commons license.) I was encouraged to apply again. Okay, sure.

But then when we went to check criteria for the latest round of applications, there was this new and weirdly specific line in there. No "pop-up journalism organizations." Of which there was ONE in Canada (correct me if I'm wrong on that). Screenshots of 2019 vs 2020 criteria

Up until last week, this was our tagline: "Calgary pop-up journalism." As I tweeted last week, @sprawlcalgary has evolved beyond the pop-up model. So theoretically we can jump that bizarre barricade now. But that's small comfort. https://twitter.com/klaszus/status/1251572672456089601?s=20

The Local Journalism Initiative (like the federal news bailout writ large) is still crafted by, and mostly for, legacy newspapers—a dying model. Innovation is penalized.

The assumption is that "original civic journalism" is best done rapidly. LJI reporters are expected to crank out at least 5 stories a week. Why? To feed the beast. It's what newspapers have always done. And this is about propping up that model, not investing in the next.

In reality, some of the best civic journalism is done outside the daily/weekly newspaper model. @sprawlcalgary has shown this, as have others. But as small orgs we don't have lobbyists, and so this stuff isn't designed for us—and even actively excludes us, as in this case.

As for the rest of the federal news bailout (salary subsidies, tax credits etc), small orgs are ineligible b/c you need 2 regularly-employed journos. And under the rules I don't count toward that quota. An unreasonably high bar for small startups, but easy for the big players.

A few months back, @saima_desai of Briarpatch said it all much better than I could, in a conversation with @mathewi. https://galley.cjr.org/public/conversations/-LzJRpRRZwxUyfRSy44j

In the end—and this pains me to say, because I did have higher hopes—I have to admit that @JesseBrown was right. The Canadian govt's journalism bailout is a sorry mess. Top to bottom, it's built by and for the news industry of yesteryear.

It's not that newspapers shouldn't get any of these funds. I think they should. Their work is vital, especially now. But it shouldn't be so damn hard for orgs doing new things to get in on it, too. And new barriers certainly shouldn't be put up to keep us out.

Anyway, I can't afford to let myself get distracted by this. Gotta keep my eye on the ball. It's just disappointing. And sort of hilarious. But mostly disappointing.

In sum, you know what to do. Support independent journalism! /end https://www.sprawlcalgary.com/support