How Google Will Distribute $100 Million to Canada's News Companies
In November Google agreed to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million annually "in order to be exempt from the Online News Act, which compels tech companies to enter into agreements with news publishers," writes the Canadian Press. On Friday Google "named the organization it has selected to distribute the $100 million..."The Canadian Journalism Collective will be responsible for ensuring eligible news organizations get their share of the money. The collective is a federally incorporated non-profit organization that was created for this purpose. It was founded in May by a group of independent publishers and broadcasters... "We hope these next steps will be completed as quickly as possible, so Canadian publishers and journalists can soon begin to receive the proceeds of this new contribution model," Google said in a blog entry posted on their website Friday... The money will be distributed proportionately based on how many full time-journalists the companies employ. Small print and digital outlets can expect to receive about $17,000 per journalist that they employ, an official with the Canadian Heritage Department has said. Google's money will go to 1,520 news organizations, according to Google's blog post - which describes the arrangement as "addressing our concerns with the Online News Act" and "a viable path to an exemption at a clear and commercially acceptable commitment level..."As part of this transition, we have advised partners in our Google News Showcase program (our online news experience and licensing program for news organizations) will cease to operate in Canada later this year as we transition to this new contribution model. We will be maintaining some Google News Initiative programming in Canada. This includes a range of collaborative tools and resources that can support the advancement of quality journalism. However, with our monetary contribution in Canada now streamlined into the new single collective model, these investments will be non-monetary in nature.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.