{"Affiliation":[{"label":"Affiliation","value":"Arts, Faculty of","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool","classmap":"vivo:EducationalProcess","property":"vivo:departmentOrSchool"},"iri":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool","explain":"VIVO-ISF Ontology V1.6 Property; The department or school name within institution; Not intended to be an institution name."},{"label":"Affiliation","value":"Journalism, Writing, and Media, School of","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool","classmap":"vivo:EducationalProcess","property":"vivo:departmentOrSchool"},"iri":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool","explain":"VIVO-ISF Ontology V1.6 Property; The department or school name within institution; Not intended to be an institution name."}],"AggregatedSourceRepository":[{"label":"Aggregated Source Repository","value":"DSpace","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/dataProvider","classmap":"ore:Aggregation","property":"edm:dataProvider"},"iri":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/dataProvider","explain":"A Europeana Data Model Property; The name or identifier of the organization who contributes data indirectly to an aggregation service (e.g. Europeana)"}],"Citation":[{"label":"Citation","value":"Novel Directions in Media Innovation and Funding, eds. Mary Lynn Young and Alfred Hermida with Camila Castaneda. (2024) Global Journalism Innovation Lab, University of British Columbia.","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#identifierCitation","classmap":"oc:PublicationDescription","property":"oc:identifierCitation"},"iri":"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#identifierCitation","explain":"UBC Open Collections Metadata Components; Local Field; Indicates a bibliographic reference for the resource if it has been previously published."}],"Contributor":[{"label":"Contributor","value":"Global Journalism Innovation Lab","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/contributor","classmap":"dpla:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:contributor"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/contributor","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource.; Examples of a Contributor include a person, an organization, or a service."}],"Creator":[{"label":"Creator","value":"Young, Mary (Mary Lynn)","attrs":{"lang":"","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator","classmap":"dpla:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:creator"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; An entity primarily responsible for making the resource.; Examples of a Contributor include a person, an organization, or a service."},{"label":"Creator","value":"Hermida, Alfred","attrs":{"lang":"","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator","classmap":"dpla:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:creator"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; An entity primarily responsible for making the resource.; Examples of a Contributor include a person, an organization, or a service."},{"label":"Creator","value":"Castaneda, Camila","attrs":{"lang":"","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator","classmap":"dpla:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:creator"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; An entity primarily responsible for making the resource.; Examples of a Contributor include a person, an organization, or a service."}],"DateAvailable":[{"label":"Date Available","value":"2024-03-28T23:38:21Z","attrs":{"lang":"","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","classmap":"edm:WebResource","property":"dcterms:issued"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource."}],"DateIssued":[{"label":"Date Issued","value":"2024-03","attrs":{"lang":"","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","classmap":"oc:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:issued"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource."}],"Description":[{"label":"Description","value":"A report on the International Communication Association Post Conference : Toronto, Ontario :  May 29-30, 2024","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/description","classmap":"dpla:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:description"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/description","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; An account of the resource.; Description may include but is not limited to: an abstract, a table of contents, a graphical representation, or a free-text account of the resource."}],"DigitalResourceOriginalRecord":[{"label":"Digital Resource Original Record","value":"https:\/\/circle.library.ubc.ca\/rest\/handle\/2429\/87662?expand=metadata","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/aggregatedCHO","classmap":"ore:Aggregation","property":"edm:aggregatedCHO"},"iri":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/aggregatedCHO","explain":"A Europeana Data Model Property; The identifier of the source object, e.g. the Mona Lisa itself. This could be a full linked open date URI or an internal identifier"}],"FullText":[{"label":"Full Text","value":"www.journalisminnovation.caEdited by Mary Lynn Young and Alfred Hermida, with Camila CastanedaNOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDINGThe Global Journalism Innovation Labhttps:\/\/journalisminnovation.ca\/Published byThe Global Journalism Innovation LabSchool of Journalism, Writing, and MediaUniversity of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z2March 2024Co-editors: Mary Lynn Young & Alfred HermidaAssitant Editor, Project Management & Design: Camila CastanedaPhotography: Beth Rochester & Felicia ChiappettaReferences: Megavarshini S. GnanasundariAcknowledgmentsThis report is supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, as well as the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British ColumbiaWe would like to acknowledge that the ICA-Post Conference, Novel Directions in Media Innovation and Funding took place in Toronto on May 29-30 the on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and M\u00e9tis peoples. This report was produced in Vancouver situated on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.CONTENTSIntroductionMary Lynn Young, Alfred Hermida & Camila CastanedaThe University of British Columbia1. Re-think JournalismResilience in the NewsroomVinita Srivastava, The Conversation Canada333+ Podcast Episodes Later, Here\u2019s What I Wish I\u2019d Known UpfrontRick Harp, MEDIA INDIGENADebiasing JournalismHadiya Roderique, University of Toronto ScarboroughPressing questions, paradox dynamics for Egyptian journalismHanan Badr, University of Salzburg in AustriaJournalism that counts or journalism that is counting? Making sense of metrics in digital newsmakingSherine Conyers, University of LeedsDo we still value news-making?Terry Flew, The University of Sydney2. Re-think FundingInnovations in local media (funding) in SwitzerlandJohanna Burger, Matthias K\u00fcnzler and Ulla AutenriethThe Freie Universit\u00e4t BerlinThe University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons6    810   16 21   25 31        37   41 43News startups and buiness model innovationClaire Darling, RMIT UniversityHow Media Ownership and Funding Matter for Democracyby Rodney Benson, New York University3. Re-think PolicyMake it Local: Improving health justice outcomes through community journalismShirley Roburn, Tai Huynh, York University & The LocalShaping the Future of Digital Communications Policies in Canada with the Online News Act (Bill C-18)Dwayne Winseck, Carleton UniversityThe deals before the deals: how platforms are leveraging existing relationships with publishers to avoid regulationDiana Bossio, James Meese and Andrea CarsonSwinburne University, RMIT University & La Trobe UniversityWhat can we learn from the agreements between platforms and news publishers in France?Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam53586365   71 77   846IntroductionMary Lynn YoungAlfred HermidaCamila Castaneda@marylynnyoung@Hermida@camcaslop\/in\/mary-lynn\/young\/in\/alfredhermida\/in\/ccl-studioMary Lynn Young (PhD) is a Professor at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia. She is co-founder of The Conversation Canada and co-lead of the Global Journalism Innovation Lab.Alfred Hermida, (PhD), is a professor at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia. He is co-founder of The Conversation Canada and co-lead of the SSHRC-funded Global Journalism Innovation Lab. Camila Castaneda is a Salvadoran designer and journalist. Her background is in corporate communications, marketing and graphic design. She is currently the Project Manager at the Global Journalism Innovation Lab.7On May 29 and 30, global scholars and leading journalists convened in Toronto for the ICA Post Conference, Novel Directions in Media Innovation and Funding, to deliberate on critical aspects of innovation, repair and transformation in journalism. Digital born journalism organizations, platforms and peripheral actors are reshaping journalism globally amidst a set of conditions that is deeply challenging. The conference presented a unique opportunity to engage in discussions about how journalists, organizations and scholars are responding to the contemporary moment, and to cultivate relationships with a diverse range of scholars, journalists, funders and policy makers.Scholars delved into various topics, including the impact of narratives and language as integral components of Canada\u2019s social system. They questioned the societal valuation of news production and scrutinized the predominant forces undermining local journalism in Egypt. This report encapsulates the research disseminated throughout the conference\u2019s presentations and insights into the contributors\u2019 current work.Furthermore, this report delves into the multifaceted dimensions of media innovation, exploring its intricate relationship with funding structures and responding to the recent demand for adaptation to new platforms and an evolving audience engagement. Scholarly contributions investigate how Swiss local media is adapting to digital transformation, the challenges faced by the digital news industry in securing funding, and the evolving role of \u2018second-generation publishers.\u2019 It also sheds light on how platforms leverage existing relationships with publishers to circumvent regulation and the division of digital newsrooms into two distinct forms: Journalistic Discovery and Metric Confirmation.In addition to scholarly contributions, this report features two articles from industry partners of the Global Journalism Innovation Lab, who were active participants in the conference. From MEDIA INDIGENA, we gain insights into the challenges faced by an Indigenous digital news start-up in establishing a sustainable funding and business model. Additionally, The Conversation Canada\u2019s Don\u2019t Call Me Resilient Podcast addresses the complexities of reporting current affairs with a critical race lens.The report indicates a systemic need for a human-centered journalism industry. Whether it is calling for more, equity, inclusion, and diversity in boardrooms and newsrooms; favoring a diversified media ecosystem over monopolies and authoritative regimes; or calling for ownership and funding models that focus on providing valuable civic information for the sake of a healthy democracy, the authors repeatedly identified the possible perils of maintaining the current status quo in journalism.We trust that this report will provide you with diverse perspectives on the current challenges facing journalism, sparking contemplation on the future of the field.RE-THINKJOURNALISM1Resilience in the Newsroomby Vinita SrivastavaThe Conversation CanadaNOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING10Resilience in the NewsroomVinita Srivastava@writevinita\/in\/writevinitaJournalist Vinita Srivastava is a senior editor at The Conversation Canada and the host and executive producer of Don\u2019t Call Me Resilient, a weekly podcast that looks at the news with a critical race lens. In this personal essay, she reflects on her journey within North American newsrooms and her work to innovate and implement anti-racist agendas within rigid media ecosystems, including the importance of challenging language.For me, journalism is mission-driven work. Generally, one does not become a journalist for the glamour and right now especially, for the pay \u2014 as the journalism sector, globally, is in rapid decline. Though in the 90s, when I was starting my career and there was still a glimmer of promise of getting paid for stories, I landed a media internship with The Village Voice. It was there that I met my first media mentors, including Richard Goldstein, executive editor of The Voice. That newsroom quickly felt like home. I can picture my mornings, stepping off the elevator: the newspaper reading room on my right, the police scanner on the left, the Atex printer spewing out endless paper, the tiny smoking room, where young reporters gathered, and the long hallway lined with editors sitting in grey cubicles. One day, Goldstein and I were sitting in his office working around a clunky beige computer editing my first-ever feature article, \u201cBrown and Out in New York: A reflection on the identity map\u201d (published in The Village Voice, vol. xl, no 26, June 27, 1995). We were having a debate about language \u2014 the words and ideas in my story. Those conversations were pretty much my whole world. I clung to my copy like a raft in open-sea water. And Goldstein, looking somewhat amused but also agreeing he had some things to learn, allowed me to guide the decisions. No, we did not need to italicize \u201cforeign\u201d words and no, I do not need to provide a translation for common words like \u201csari.\u201d Looking back, I realize I was clinging onto my words not just as a young writer in love with what RE-THINK JOURNALISM11she wrote, but also as someone deeply invested in how I represented the voices in my story.Aside from Goldstein, I connected with three immensely talented writers at The Voice: Peter Noel, the late great Greg Tate and gone-too-soon Joe Wood. These three Black American journalists showed me how to navigate the newsroom as a racialized person and taught me how to fight for the right to report with authentic voices.I hadn\u2019t gone to The Voice entirely green. My grandfather was a big-time editor in New Delhi. I grew up in Toronto, hearing stories about him from my mother, including how he and his newspaper protested the British occupation of India and how he landed in jail because of it. It was around this time that I started to understand the power of news media; that it comes with a deep bias and how those holding the power, money and weapons also control the narrative. And based on the actions of my grandfather, I also understood the need for counter stories. And sometimes, these stories have the power to sway the way people think, vote and behave. These ideas have motivated me for decades.Conversations on languageThe early newsroom debates I had with Richard Goldstein helped kick-start my career. The importance of language, and the ways we chose to represent \u201cus,\u201d and each other are crucially important. Six years ago, when I started working at The Conversation Canada, a new type of non-profit media, we created our own styleguide, including mandating the use of capital B for Black people. We did this ahead of the official 2020 change to the Canadian media styleguide during the post-George Floyd \u201cawakening.\u201d Although we did not argue about that style exception, we did argue about other terms, including the axing of \u201cvisible minority\u201d and other language used in Canadian newsrooms without examination. The arguments around the choice of language used to communicate issues in Canada, including truth and reconciliation as well as global issues like the Israel occupation of Gaza, are crucial conversations \u2014 best had in times of peace, but often required during a crisis. Should we use \u201cgenocide\u201d to describe the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women? Could we use that same word to describe the residential school system in Canada? How about identifying the killing of more than 20,000 innocent people in Palestine as a genoicde?  Newsroom debates continueThe premise of The Conversation is to marry academic scholarship with daily journalism whereby the scholars become the reporters and the journalists like myself become the editors. As a veteran multimedia journalist, I was quickly drawn into the excitement of producing The Conversation Canada. My team worked with both a sense of mission and a sense of humour. Most importantly, we had the confidence that we had the integrity and ethics of university scholarship behind us. As a scholar and a journalist, my new role \u2014 as Society and Culture Editor \u2014 felt built for me.Not too long after we launched, Scott White \u2014 the CEO and editor in chief of The Conversation Canada \u2014 and I entered into our own relationship of newsroom debates. Some were like the ones I used to have in my early Voice days. At the heart of our conversations were questions central to the contemporary Canadian NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING12newsroom. How would we build a new type of newsroom that respected plurality and diversity and also recognized a legacy of colonialism and the supporting racism that went with that project. Why should we banish the term \u201cvisible minority?\u201d Why should we carefully consider the type of images we use? Why and when would we consider the identity of the writer? Why was rigorous fact-checking necessary and why did publishing news in Canada require the utmost skepticism in order to not fall back on well-worn tropes. The conversations we were having involved many of the details in a story that get taken for granted: headlines, captions, descriptions and images. This is especially true when working quickly and on daily deadlines, as we do. The pressure to \u201cget the news out\u201d often took precedence to acknowledging the damaging power of stereotypical or unexamined language and images. Metaphorically, I sometimes felt I was laying my body on the tracks of a giant chasm. On one side, was The Conversation and on the other, the marginalized scholars and communities of readers who remain distrustful of legacy media after decades of stereotyping and exploitative abuse. It was in those first crucial years that we made the most significant style changes to our style guide.Innovation does not equal new technology Soon after we launched, I was invited to join the University of British Columbia\u2019s Global Journalism Innovation Lab to look at the ways innovation in journalism can help propel our industry forward. I was at first weary of the term, \u201cinnovation.\u201d When it comes to innovation mandates in newsrooms, shiny and new can mislead. Although I advocate for the exploration and use of new technologies, that exploration needs to be in tandem with other priorities. Sometimes innovation funds get thrown at the latest technology and not at the restructuring of power, and the re-examination and retelling of our histories. With the public\u2019s growing hunger for truth and reconciliation and our changing (and more diverse) demographics, it is this simultaneous looking back and looking forward at new ways of telling the news that will bring us new audiences.Armed with our own definition of \u201cinnovation,\u201d we joined a group of academic researchers to apply for and were awarded a multi-year grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We used some of that funding to create a new podcast, Don\u2019t Call Me Resilient, which takes a sharply-focused anti-racist lens to the news. Each week, we produce episodes that re-centre the storyteller. We examine and challenge well-worn angles of weekly Canadian news stories. We also work towards creating a new type of newsroom culture \u2014 one that centres the need for compassion internally, but also one that asks both journalist and listener: what can we do to help make change? We are so proud of the new audiences we\u2019ve been able to build through our podcast \u2014 and the stories we bring to our listeners. Individually, each episode stands as an intimate exploration of some of the most pressing issues of our time. Collectively, our back catalogue serves as a library of critical conversations around systemic racism that can be revisited as similar issues continue to unfold in the world.RE-THINK JOURNALISM13After being at this for six years, first as an editor and now as the host and executive producer of Don\u2019t Call Me Resilient, I can see our impact. Anecdotally, I have heard that our recruitment of marginalized voices and our careful selection of headlines, language and images have influenced other Canadian media. And we have managed to influence the culture of our own newsroom at The Conversation Canada by training a good number of journalists in this type of journalism (several of whom have now taken that approach other newsrooms). At Don\u2019t Call Me Resilient, we have just wrapped up our 6th season, our most successful yet. With the number of downloads we now get, we are among the world\u2019s top five per cent of podcasts and we even made it to Apple Podcasts\u2019 top ten chart for News Commentary in Canada.The moral case for diversity As journalists, we know we are often asking the people most impacted by the news to speak on the issue. They may need a minute. On those occasions when those of us in the newsroom have closely aligned identities or affiliations or alliances with groups we are reporting on, we may also feel grief and overwhelm. In the service of true journalism innovation, organizations need to recognize and value the contributions of journalists engaged in anti-racist education. Much of their work is crucial to not only create more inclusive newsroom cultures but also to appeal to new audiences. Keynote delivered by Vinita Srivastava, Executive Producer and Host, \u2018Don\u2019t Call Me Resilient\u2019, and Senior Editor, Culture and Society, The Conversation Canada.NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING14They help to create the way forward to broaden the types of stories we chase, and also, how we frame those stories. In this economic climate, every newsroom manager wants to hear that championing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is not only for the moral health of the organization but for the wealth. While this is true, when I went back to listen to a Don\u2019t Call Me Resilient episode we hosted with Sonia Kang, Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Management at the University of Toronto\u2019s Rotman School of Management \u2014 and one of Canada\u2019s leading experts on identity, diversity and inclusion in the workplace I heard something else too. Kang said the business case is only the starting point. She questioned whether saying we need diversity initiatives because \u201cit\u2019s going to help you make money,\u201d is the best argument \u201cbecause what happens if it doesn\u2019t help you [immediately] make money?\u201d Instead she suggests we move to more of a moral case - that \u201dthis is the right thing to do\u201d because she said: \u201cno one should be made to feel like they don\u2019t belong in a space. That\u2019s why the movement towards trying to build inclusive workplace cultures is so important. That\u2019s why we should care.\u201c But building such inclusive workplace cultures in the media comes against a backdrop of relentless demands of daily journalism operations, the competition for increasingly slim revenue returns as well as a relentless fight to dismantle DEI. This means we have an even greater need for research funds to measure the profitability of DEI initiatives in newsrooms than ever before.In the meantime, we continue to do this for both moral and economic reasons. But doing this right means doing it differently. This includes:\u2022 Willingness to hold a story to get the right context or quote\u2022 Placing a story within a long historical lens\u2022 Making critical connections between issues within a story\u2022 Allocating time and money for recruitment \u2022 Sharing of leadership and power\u2022 Making decision-making more collaborativeAnd finally: let\u2019s not forget that all of this \u201crace\u201d work within mainstream North American media institutions is often undertaken by those who are most marginalized, underpaid and in tenuous employment. Their work changing newsroom attitudes and culture when it comes to race is likely unpaid and even if it is paid, probably includes invisible deep labour.Rage and exhaustion often mingle with passion and joy when it comes to this work. My old Village Voice mentor Greg Tate often reflected on writing and race: to revisit his work is to drop down into a rabbit hole of wonder. But I pulled something he said about that rage in his last published piece: \u201con a good day, it is mostly a sublimated form of rage since folks got bills to pay and sanity to keep.\u201d333+ Podcast Episodes Later, Here\u2019s What I Wish I\u2019d Known Upfrontby Rick HarpMEDIA INDIGENANOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING16333+ Podcast Episodes Later, Here\u2019s What I Wish I\u2019d Known UpfrontRick HarpPhoto Credit: APTN National News@theRickHarpin\/rickharpFounder and president of the INDIGENA Creative Group. Also Producer and host of  the MEDIA INDIGENA podcast.With close to 25 years of media experience in journalism and communication, Rick currently works at the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network after a few years away. He has also served as Artistic Director for the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival. Rick is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in Northern Saskatchewan. MEDIA INDIGENA is partner of the Global Journalism Innovation Lab. MEDIA INDIGENA (MI), the Indigenous current affairs podcast I\u2019ve hosted and produced since March 2016, was brought into being for two reasons: one, to address what I then felt was a dearth of in-depth, Indigenous-led analyses of Indigenous issues and events, and two, to explore a personal and professional curiosity about the podcasting space. (I shan\u2019t get into the third, namely, as a way to channel lingering resentment of an unceremonious termination by the public broadcaster: spite is a hell of a drug, friends, enough to launch a foolhardy project like mine.)Involved in broadcasting since the mid-90s, I found podcasting\u2019s financial and technological ease of entry, its intimacy and immediacy, and the theoretically global reach of a RSS feed instantly compelling. I chose a format I knew well: a recurring roster of Indigenous scholars eager to engage in critical commentary about what was (or was not) on the news. Over 330 episodes and a million-plus total downloads later, I still marvel at the medium\u2019s accessibility. As I sometimes quip, practically anyone can start a podcast, for better and for worse.What no-one told me, however, is what it takes to sustain a podcast, how consistent quantity and quality of content are only part of the equation, with its operational back-end a beast all its own. And yet, when I first dove head-long into things over seven (!) years ago, the thrill of taking on the new and unfamiliar, coupled with RE-THINK JOURNALISM17the rush of finding a steadily-growing audience, delivered its own kind of sustenance. As I pursued my on-the-fly education in a then-still-emerging space for entrepreneurially-minded journalists, what risks I\u2019d taken produced immediate rewards.To move beyond MI\u2019s proof-of-concept phase toward a truly sustainable footing, I needed serious resources to at least offset the costs of the considerable \u2018sweat equity\u2019 (i.e., time and labour) I\u2019d invested. Seeing others\u2019 success with Patreon, the platform that enables fans (aka patrons) of your work to directly fund that work, I gave it a go. To this day, it\u2019s that patronage which makes up the bulk of MI\u2019s revenues: we\u2019ve never carried a single ad. Not out of any principled stance, mind you; honestly, it\u2019s because attracting and servicing ad buyers is a tremendous time suck, something I as a largely one-person operation simply can\u2019t afford. Are there not grants, though? Find me the time it takes to apply for them all\u2014is there a grant for grant-writing? You see my dilemma. For a niche-within-a-niche proposition like mine, there\u2019s no quick path to viability, and the bootstrapped burst which got me out the door had only so much propellant. And while MI\u2019s hundreds of patrons have kept me somewhat afloat, it\u2019s nowhere near the level of patronage necessary to make this my full-time occupation. It stubbornly remains a \u2018side hustle,\u2019 a phrase I\u2019ve come to disdain more and more because it sidesteps one inescapable fact\u2014that there\u2019s a lot more to media making than making media. From marketing and branding to administration and accounting, time spent on the other functions of a small business operation is time taken away from why it exists in the first place. Might such needs be filled by trustworthy actors familiar with the space, taking on multiple indie creators as clients? Funders would do well to consider supporting the costs of just such actors as they arguably enable creators to achieve greater growth than going it alone. In my ultimate fantasy, such roles would be nested within a worker-owned co-op created by like-minded folk, something funders could also support and incubate.Recently asked about so-called \u2018passion projects\u2019 on the Other People\u2019s Pockets podcast, Jared A. Ball, PhD, co-founder of the Black-radical independent media project Black Power Media (BPM), laid out their realities: if you really want to build a platform, you have to do certain things business-wise, you have to do certain things organizationally, you have to do certain things in terms of the amount of content, the form of the content, the this, the that. You have to do a lot! And then you have to get the business side together, get your AdSense money together, you gotta get your bank, you have to do\u2014and so then it\u2019s, like, \u201cDamn, my god, I just wanted to read and talk or whatever!\u201dOf all the ancillary functions Ball alludes to, arguably among the most critical to a podcast\u2019s viability is marketing. Because no matter how good your podcast may be, people can\u2019t enjoy (much less support) your work if they don\u2019t know it exists. And the more people who know about you, the proportion likely to support you thus draws from a bigger pool. But, again, that takes resources. So, yes, there\u2019s a market for what MI does but with so much of me going into making the thing, marketing the thing demands bandwidth I don\u2019t have. And where social media once served us reasonably well\u2014Twitter especially\u2014those avenues have since largely deteriorated, and can no longer be counted on to help drive interest or support.And since cloning myself is not an option, plus the fact I can\u2019t afford help beyond a few freelancer hours\u2014something I had to do this NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING18Founder and president of the INDIGENA Creative Group, Rick Harp (centre) during his talk at the reception. Hosted by Camila Castaneda (left) and Alfred Hermida (right) from the University of British Columbia, Canada.RE-THINK JOURNALISM19year lest I implode\u2014it would thus appear I\u2019m stuck between the rock-solid limits of my productive capacities as an individual human and the hard place of not nearly enough revenue. Aspiring podcasters, know what you\u2019re getting into: if your rough plan doesn\u2019t realistically budget time for activities which amplify your hard-won content, you\u2019ll inevitably have to compromise or cannibalize one at the expense of the other. Allocate accordingly.Such an appeal exemplifies yet another of indie podcasting\u2019s special affordances: transparency with audiences. Such openness and directness is simply out of the question where accountability is ultimately owed to third parties like advertisers.I\u2019ll close with a few words on inter-related notions of impact and success. With the reported boom in big, broad podcasting seemingly becoming more of a bust of late, it\u2019s once again re-surfaced questions about scale. Like their academic equivalent PDFs, audio downloads have always made for an imperfect metric, and success for deep-niche programs like MEDIA INDIGENA might best be evaluated on their own terms. Personally, producing this show has changed my life: it has tremendously enriched and expanded my thinking on Indigenous matters, bringing me into contact with people I never would\u2019ve met otherwise. Judging by what many of our supporters have said, they\u2019ve been similarly impacted by our work. Although I cannot prove it, my sense is that our discussions have indeed made helpful contributions to the greater conversations of the day about issues facing Indigenous peoples. And, sure, were we to grow our audience to the point where direct listener support could sustain a decent-sized team of MI producers, thereby permitting me to \u201cHustle less and make more,\u201d I\u2019d undoubtedly regard that as a huge win. But, frankly, even if everyone on the roundtable\u2014Brock Pitawanakwat, Candis Callison, Ken Williams, Kim TallBear and Trina Roache\u2014suddenly decided to call it a day, our body of work plus the personal and professional transformation we\u2019ve each experienced along the way, has already generated its own set of enduring rewards.\u201c[G]rind culture has become inseparable with what we do\u2026 there\u2019s an emotional toll of that grind\u201dChiquita Channel Paschal on Servant of Pod, \u201cWhat Does A Podcast Producer Do?\u201d, LAistAs someone who tried to do too much for too long and ended up with a bad case of burnout (something the pandemic only exacerbated), these insights are hard-earned. Where once I alone pumped out a whopping 52 episodes a year, I eventually settled on a much-more manageable and sustainable thirty-six. Amazingly, it happened with the full blessing of my patrons, following a direct, heart-felt (if somewhat trepidatious) appeal:while I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment [about the] programming we\u2019ve delivered\u2026 I [am] mentally exhausted. Turns out I\u2019m not alone: podcaster burnout is indeed a thing. Now, as \u2018burnouts\u2019 know all too well, some portion of that is on the creator themselves. In my case, a good chunk originates with an imperative drilled into me the day I first stepped into a mainstream newsroom: that of relentless productivity, where you\u2019re only as good as your next story\u2026 A norm I would carry with me into podcasting [as just] the price one had to pay to get a show onto people\u2019s radar. But, over time, what that takes to make happen, increasingly takes a lot out of you.Debiasing Journalismby Hadiya RoderiqueUniversity of Toronto ScarboroughHadiya Roderique, from the University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada, during her panel talk on how quality journalism is debiasing journalism.RE-THINK JOURNALISM21Debiasing MediaHadiya Roderique@hadiyaroderiquein\/hjroderiqueHadiya Roderique is a writer, cultural critic, speaker, researcher, lawyer and consultant. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Vice, Macleans, The Toronto Star, The National Post, and more. She is the winner of the National Magazine Award for Best Short Feature for her piece Black in the Ivory, and is best known for her piece Black on Bay Street, a cover story for the Globe and Mail that outlined her experiences as a young, Black woman working in a large Bay Street law firm. An ex-McKinsey consultant, Hadiya\u2019s consulting work focuses on workplace equity, diversity, and inclusion. Hadiya is currently an assistant professor of journalism in the Department of Arts, Media, and Culture at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She has a J.D., M.A. (Criminology), and Ph.D in Organizational Behaviour from the University of Toronto.hadiyaroderique.com\/hadiya.bsky.socialNOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING22\u201cThe economy of media representation works to privilege some groups over others, define particular groups in specific ways, and construct discrete groups as signifying distinct threats.\u201dThese words of scholar Yasmin Jiwani still ring powerfully true today. While the media often purports to be an objective source of information, open up any Canadian newspaper and you will see the media using images and narratives that carry coded but powerful messages about particular groups in Canadian society that are anything but. Take, for example, the mugshots used for Muslim teenagers who ran a traffic stop, portraying them solely as criminals in comparison to picture of the white man accused of hate crime murders, the latter shown on a fishing trip holding his catch, a life story giving him character. The framing of missing and murdered Indigenous women as \u201chigh-risk\u201d individuals. The dehumanization of racialized immigrants, and the negative framing of refugees. The CBC shutting down online comments on news articles on Indigenous issues in 2015, given the hatred displayed by commenters. Through these framings, narratives, and language, the media acts as a key social system, reinforcing racism, myths, and stereotypes in Canada. Discourses of dominationThe notion of objectivity in the media\u2019s portrayals of minority groups in Canada stands in stark and harmful contrast to the reality shown in research on the news media. In their 2002 book, Discourses of Domination, Frances Henry and Carol Tator identified a set of racist discourses used in Canadian print news media that reinforce white dominance and perpetuate racism. This research gave name and shape to ten distinct ways in which the media engages in this reinforcement \u2013 Denial, Moral Panic, Tolerance, Equal Opportunity, Otherness, Blame the Victim, National Identity, Political Correctness, and Colourblindness. For example, the discourse of Denial described the media\u2019s refusal to accept the reality of racism despite overwhelming evidence, while the discourse of Blame the Victim often emerged in crime coverage, with certain groups assumed to be deviant. These discourses continue to persist. Take for example, this 2019 quote from the Financial Post, demonstrating the discourse of Equal Opportunity, still showing up almost two decades after Henry and Tator\u2019s analysis. \u201cTalk about change. In the past six decades, Canada has added an Ontario\u2019s worth of visible minority people. A country that was fundamentally or systemically racist would not have done that. And a country in which one in four people are visible-minority must have real trouble maintaining the systematically racist structure it so often and so casually is accused of having. If nothing else, we have jet airplanes now. Canadians who consider themselves oppressed have many more alternatives than they did in the 1960s.-William Watson, The Financial Post, September 24, 2019RE-THINK JOURNALISM23The Need for Continued ScholarshipIn the twenty years since Henry and Tator\u2019s critical examination, Canadian media scholarship on the media\u2019s use of racist discourses and their influence on racism in Canada has been wanting, and there have been few, if any, concrete attempts to remove these discourses from our news. But this work, and this removal, is needed now and more than ever. Racism persists, as demonstrated by the rise of white supremacism and recent rises in racism and hate crimes in Canadian society - an 80% rise in the latter just between 2019 and 2020. (Wang & Moreau, 2022) Inequalities persist. Harmful stereotypes persist. In order to figure out real solutions to confronting, addressing, and removing bias and discourses of dominance from Canadian news reporting, we need to have a deeper understanding of the ways in which the media uses this language in the first place. Only then can we create useful interventions to allow journalists and media organizations to fully examine their participation in unequal systems, understand how their viewpoints frame, and change their reporting.What Do We Need to KnowFirst, we need an updated and longitudinal examination of discourses of dominance and racism in Canadian media \u2013 not only print media, but visual media and social media. We need to understand how these discourses may have changed over the past twenty years, and where they stand now. What new discourses have emerged? Which have fallen away? While Henry and Tator\u2019s work identified these discourses, we don\u2019t have much information on the quantitative side of these discourses, or which discourses are most prominent, in order to focus interventional efforts on those discourse that may have a more outsized harmful impact. We need to know more about how these discourses are used. Do different publications, different mediums, or even different topics have different patterns of use? Do white journalists use these discourses in different ways from racialized journalists? Does journalist diversity, or editorial diversity challenge and reduce the prevalence of these discourses? What are the oppositional discourses that seriously challenge and disrupt this hegemony and status quo? Once we have a stronger understanding, Canadian scholarship can also go beyond the media\u2019s use of these discourses, into the perception and interpretation of these discourses, notably, through experimental work which is needed in our field. How do media consumers perceive these discourses? How does the use of these discourses impact trust in the media, and perceptions of accuracy and legitimacy? Unpacking these issues, especially in the face of growing distrust in the media, is crucial. Ultimately, these types of examinations can lay the foundations for future projects that help us to examine journalism practices, notions of journalistic objectivity, popular attitudes, and public policy in an effort to understand media-related drivers of racism and colonial attitudes in Canadian society. They can be mobilized to develop critical awareness in the media and practical strategies for more equitable reporting and communications. Scholarship on discourses of dominance in the media is important to our ability to fully reckon with the legacies of racism and colonialism, and to foster a safe and equitable society. I urge more of my colleagues and fellow researchers to take up that call.Pressing questions, paradox dynamics for Egyptian journalismby Hanan BadrUniversity of Salzburg in AustriaRE-THINK JOURNALISM25Pressing questions, paradox dynamics for Egyptian journalismHanan BadrHer research focuses on public spheres, activism, journalism, media and migration as well as de-westernizing communication research. She recently published \u201cArab Berlin: Dynamics of Transformation\u201d (transcript, 2023). She is Associate Editor on Journal of Communication and Journalism Practice, chair of Activism, Communication and Social Justice Interest Group at International Communication Association (ICA) and Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress. She published in Digital Journalism, International Communication Gazette and Media and Communication. She held positions at Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin, Cairo University, Gulf University in Kuwait, and Orient-Institut Beirut\/Max Weber Foundation.@HananBadrHanan.Badr@hanan.badr5Hanan Badr (Dr. phil, Universit\u00e4t Erfurt) is Full Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Salzburg in Austria. \u201cEgyptian journalism is dead!\u201dthat is what you have been hearing from academics and journalists in Egypt for years. That is a paradox to its rich history of more than 200 years and pioneering position in the Arab region. Today, authoritarian containment, economic precarity, regional uncertainty, and pronounced illiteracy intertwine to cripple the potential for what could be an independent, constructive, and vibrant media scene, if it was allowed to develop freely. Only ten years ago, during the open post-revolutionary phase from 2011 to mid-2013 that immediately followed the January revolution in Tahrir Square, journalism was thriving. Media engagement and sales were soaring. During times of media freedom and high hopes, journalism became closer to the public\u2019s concerns. Meaningful debates were taking place and the public was feeling involved in crucial questions. NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING26Egyptian journalism\u2019s search for societal relevance is not an isolated story. Zooming out, digital transformation has disrupted the media worldwide and forced journalists into an \u201cexistential predicament\u201d (Hermida, 2019), fearing for their survival. Even established (Western) markets are suffering due to multiple vulnerabilities, such as neoliberal commercialization, precarization of labor, rise of anti-democratic forces, anti-press violence and rising threats of press freedom (Waisbord, 2019).While the effects of technology are not to be underestimated in the Arab region, politics still play an outsized role in the weakening of local journalism. In addition to the global digital disruptions and journalism\u2019s growing competition with emerging non-professional actors \u2013 such as influencers entering the scene and competing for public attention \u2013 there are interactions between global universalism and national particularism that hinder free journalism. What is good journalism?The ICA post-conference in Toronto 2023 entitled \u201cNovel Directions in Media Innovation and Funding\u201d posed important questions in an international and intergenerational dialogue amid a diverse group of scholars, journalists and public figures. Discussions about how we can define quality journalism across the world showed that there is no one single answer. Experts agreed on a global shift from the models we have known so far about financial viability or objectivity. There is a broad need for more normative media models like solidarity journalism or solutions journalism, as a move away from detached observatory journalism. Building on this, developing quality journalism for Egypt is simple in theory, but difficult in practice: its utmost bias should be towards the public, representing the people, negotiating different interests with a commitment towards basic values like human rights and justice, the right to know and ensuring accountability among those in power. Exclusion by the legal bookExamining the Egyptian media system through the lens of inequality helps us understand the national political and social reality. It reflects the unequal distribution of resources, restrictive punitive policies, and persecution of independent media as well as cybersurveillance. If 2011 brought hope and a strong determination to transform Egyptian media from malaise to empowerment, a decade later the entire region was marked by destabilization, uncertainty, and fragmentation. The media landscape underwent systematic closures and intimidation, leading to an overall decline in freedom and monopolization of media ownership. In today\u2019s Egypt, a mix of techniques is being used to control the media and exclude unwanted voices. Firstly, the government\u2019s control of state media and the practice of hostile take-overs means content is managed in a top-down fashion through phrase dictations and press releases. Secondly, Egyptian journalism faces structural limitations due to legal authoritarianism (Hamzawy, 2017), media monopolization in military and loyalist tycoons\u2019 hands. (Hamoud, 2023). This issued a series of anti-terrorism and cybercrime laws to legalize harsh persecution and imprisonment of journalists. Legal frameworks exclude young and online journalists from the union\u2019s professional protection, meaning they risk being charged as imposters (Badr, 2020). Thus, the macro picture shows no signs for inclusive journalism that serves the public. Instead, Egyptian journalism shows three patterns: exit, exile or mere existence.RE-THINK JOURNALISM27Hanan Badr, from the University of Salzburg, Austria, on her panel talk on quality journalism and the dilemmas for sustainable independent journalism in Egypt.NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING28Digital and global connectionThe influence of social media remains prominent in Egypt due to its disruptive effects on both media and politics. Emerging from a vibrant blogosphere in the mid-2000s until the 2011 revolution, social media has become a robust contender against established legacy media. Worldwide, technology exposed the limits of journalism and journalists, and gave rise to new social media actors which compete for relevance and audience attention and eventually advertising revenues. Free content on platforms, by professional and non-professional actors, is attracting young Egyptian audiences. Consequently, Egyptian journalists perceive social media as a threat to their profession and competition to their societal relevance. However, they also see social media as a tool for informal media accountability through instances of public criticism campaigns or as a backlash to certain TV shows (El-Shourbagy, 2020). The study of social media in Egypt cannot neglect that the Internet equally helps authoritarian rulers to tighten their grip and colonize the digital public sphere. (Youmans and York, 2015, Tucker et al., 2017) Several scandals involving surveillance technologies, content moderation, and the banning of activists\u2019 accounts show how big tech companies do not prioritize freedom of speech, but profits and market expansion (Eskander, 2019). The regime showed a kind of \u201cautocratic learning\u201d to prevent this from happening again. It adapted the legal and governance structures and invested in cybersecurity technologies to prevent similar mobilization effects (Freedom House, 2023). Pockets of resilient journalismYet, amid the gloomy picture, it would be unfair to dismiss journalistic agency in the Egyptian media. Egypt\u2019s media has been in constant struggle for freedom in the last 200 years with intermittent and short liberal phases which allowed free media and journalism to evolve. Despite the massive political control from the military power, a degree of unpredictable volatility and agency is still possible at the margins and at a high political cost. A cat-and-mouse game is the closest idiom to describe media freedoms in Egypt between silencing and resistance, showing a pattern of ongoing pursuit, near capture and repeated escapes for decades.Egyptian journalism is trying to survive and shows two refreshing trends: Carving out-of-the-box journalistic practices that rely on niche topics and sub-political content, like science journalism or economic news. Here, specialized and careful jargon language in addition to strict professional codes seek to protect the journalists. We know that issues like just distribution or sustainability bear strong political potential, yet disguising them in non-political jargon can help get some messages through.Even externally funded media initiatives like MadaMasr or Al-Manassa bring a fresh breeze, despite the official banning of its website. Egyptians\u2019 use of VPN clients or social media, like Facebook and Instagram, to circumvent the geo-blocking is everyday evidence of their perseverance.It would be unfair to assume that all journalists working for state-owned media are blindly loyal. The journalistic community is not monolithic. They might tiptoe around certain topics RE-THINK JOURNALISM29or practice self-silence for survival. Recent election results for the Head of Syndicate of Journalism, the trade union that represents the interests of the Egyptian print journalists, surprised the professional community when a known, oppositional veteran journalist who was himself detained in recent years won the majority of votes. Since his election in mid-2023 he has repeatedly and consistently engaged in struggles to free detained journalists strongly representing the rights of journalists. No hope? Nothing is overDespite the hard containment, the analysis should not suggest despair. Understanding Egyptian journalism cannot happen in isolation from its politics. The contradictory stagnant paradox holds for now: an old guard controlling the media landscape through stifling media laws and strict political economy on one hand; an inability to fully control the evolving young, fluid and increasingly hybrid and globalized media scene on the other. Current conditions are not sustainable in the long term, as potentials for transformation exist. Every single reason for the January Tahrir Revolution still exists, and in some cases have worsened. Socio-economic inequalities bear an explosive potential: political exclusion and disenfranchised demographics still shape the political and media reality. Micro-dynamics of potential change exist: the system is simply not sustainable. \u201cNothing is over\u201d (Weipert-Fenner, 2021) as seeds of inherent instability and a renewed rupture still exist. The young, disenfranchised journalists excluded from protection and yearning for change, are part of this equation. The refreshing results of the Journalists\u2019 Syndicate elections which brought a notorious oppositional leader early 2023 was a fresh breeze amid stagnant climate. The unpredictable micro dynamics hold potentials for journalism\u2019s resistance and resilience, until structural opportunities arise. Temporary sparks of outrage and solidarity despite the repression do not cease to surprise Egypt experts. The time preceding the presidential elections in December 2023 was a short-lived window for a slight opening, where a disgruntled population and Western powers need to be appeased for a smooth continuation. Even safe exit scenarios and possible transitions were suggested (BBC Arabic, 2023) exposing the weakened legitimacy of government media control. Yet, the current war and massive ongoing human catastrophe just at Egypt\u2019s borders in Gaza, came as total support for the regime. While briefly bore the risk of pro-Palestinian public mobilization, a dormant giant so far. Yet, the conflict also strengthened the regime amid fears of regional destabilization. Ultimately, Egypt\u2019s political and journalistic system is not sustainable: The question is not if change will happen, but rather when, how, at what cost.Journalism that counts or journalism that is counting? Making sense of metrics in digital newsmakingby Sherine ConyersUniversity of LeedsRE-THINK JOURNALISM31Journalism that counts or journalism that is counting? Making sense of metrics in digital newsmakingSherine ConyersIn 2019 Dr Conyers conducted ethnography in digital newsrooms, covering networked organisations across a range of public and commercial media with legacies in broadcast and print. Her work seeks to understand the types and forms of digital metrics engaged by news organisations and the implications of these processes for content outputs. Dr Conyers is also a former journalist, digital editor and newspaper editor with more than a decade of experience in both Australian and UK newsrooms. Her professional experience includes five years with News Corp Australia, where she held roles as Weekend Editor of news.com.au and as the Digital Editor of the Cairns Post. She also served as editor for several Quest newspaper titles in Queensland, Australia. in\/sherineconyers S.P.Conyers@leeds.ac.ukDr Sherine Conyers is a Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Leeds. She holds a PhD from the University of Leeds; an MBA in Entrepreneurship from the University of Technology Sydney, and a Bachelor of Social Science from the University of Queensland. NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING32Making news has moved beyond sharing information about what happened today. In Australia, the wholesale integration of metrics and feedback systems into digital newsrooms has brought about a dramatic reconfiguration of news production amid swathes of job losses (Dawson et al., 2023) and changes to what qualifies as a successful journalism output. As such, networked Australian digital newsrooms have increasingly become a hybrid of humans and computers engaged in processes of calculation and response to feedback systems that interpret metrics about digital behaviour and then feed that data back to editorial desks.My research explored what networked digital newsrooms in Australia were measuring and why, with a specific focus on how metric systems were understood and used by newsmakers. I spent around 200 hours engaged in ethnography across four sites, in three states of Australia, in nationally networked news organisations with legacies in print and broadcast. The research surfaced half a dozen key case studies used to inform my thesis (Conyers, 2022). What the case studies revealed was how content production in digital newsrooms is now divided into two distinct forms. The first type was born out of the process of Journalistic Discovery. This was classic journalism at its best, where investigation and revelations surfaced, and news content was the end-product. This type of work contained quality news markers such as evidence of social justice, the goal of holding powers to account, political engagement and emergency information. Journalistic discovery costs time, labour and money to produce. Editors published this work because they felt it was important to do so, but whether it succeeded in producing web traffic was hit and miss. The second type is what I call Metric Confirmation. This was content produced to pander to measuring tools. It was often flagged by newsroom analytic software as something that should be written about because the topic was already garnering attention online. This type of traffic-pulling content was cheap and fast to produce and was more likely to happen on a \u2018slow\u2019 news day. The issueFor commercial media, overall daily traffic quantities feed into industry-level popularity rankings that are designed to help advertisers determine where they should prioritise their marketing spend. In this way, the greatest competitors to digital newsmakers for advertising revenue are not other news outlets, but rather, major global digital platforms. The less revenue that newsrooms get, the less journalists they can hire. During the pandemic, hundreds of newspapers in Australia ceased to print for good. Competition regulators have introduced a News Media Bargaining Code (ACCC, 2022) to the Australian market, but it does not negate the way platforms have also become suppliers of (and to) the analytics tools that newsrooms use to measure traffic. For commercial media this is a competition issue. For public broadcasters it is an ethical and policy one.The use of traffic metrics also obfuscates other quality markers of news by placing an acute focus on traffic volumes, not news values. This focus has the tendency to steer journalists toward metric wins, resulting in a mismatch between what digital metrics measure and the value of delivering news. It may also mean RE-THINK JOURNALISM33Sherine Conyers from the Universtiy of Leeds, UK (right) leading a Table Talk on metrics in digital newsmaking, talking with Daniel Graesser from Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin, Germany (centre) and Nicole Blanchett from Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada (left).NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING34journalists choose not to pursue or publish stories that they calculate won\u2019t win traffic.Selling and distributing news is not new. What is newer is who is now doing the work of it in the digital space. Journalists must now investigate, produce and publish the news (sometimes to radio, television, print products and online) as well as use metrics to understand the market, tap into it, promote, and generate digital traffic for the stories they write. The power of distribution, however, is not always in their control. Platform algorithms can determine whether digital news becomes visible or not.Numbers, time on page, clocks, volumes and valuesWhen you read the news, are you just a set of eyeballs for sale to advertisers? Does your time on a news story really determine if you are \u2018engaged\u2019 with it? Should journalists avoid topics you are measured as less likely to read according to the metrics? When we don\u2019t challenge the values that underpin metric logics, we neglect how people value their time and space and assume it is the way metrics companies decide to measure it.Back in the 1970s Gaye Tuchman researched TV newsrooms and found that measuring news by the clock resulted in a \u2018glut of occurrences\u2019 to fill in each news program (Tuchman, 1978, p.44-45). There was either a lot to report in the time allocated to news (and some news would be left out) or not enough news to fill the program hole. Compare that to today, with an \u2018always on\u2019 digital space, where every second of every minute of your digital use is measured somewhere, creating an endless glut of space to fill, in order to get your attention. That leaves journalists under pressure to constantly publish news, even though this digital space has largely been optimised by platform algorithms that use news (or any other content type) to keep your attention on their products, not necessarily on news websites. Why does this matter? Metric confirmation poses two key problems. Firstly, promotion and revenue success is increasingly shifted onto journalists, while distribution power is maintained by third-party platforms. Secondly, metric confirmation is problematic for informational health and normative ideals relating to the democratic function of news (Schudson, 2020, p.34), in a landscape where platform distribution processes are largely unregulated. Metrics can influence news choices. It is important that journalism\u2019s integrity, independence and objectivity are maintained and supported to prevent undue external influence over news production and ensure it is fair and balanced. In Australia, digital informational health and balance are important because electoral voting is compulsory. Voters need good information to make informed decisions about the world they live in. Authors in other parts of the world are also looking at the influence of newsroom metrics. Nicole Blanchett has been looking at newsrooms in Norway (Blanchett, 2021a, 2021b; Blanchett and Neheli, 2018); Caitlin Petre has observed metrics in US newsrooms (Petre, 2015, 2021), and Angele Christin in France, to name a few (Christin, 2017, 2018). The hit-and-miss nature of journalistic investment posits it as high-cost and high-risk when pitted against content produced for Metric Confirmation. Metric-confirming content is cheaper, faster to produce and likely to supply expected high-traffic rewards, backed up by a vast quantity of already-invested-in RE-THINK JOURNALISM35technological prediction tools, ready to validate their own volumetric worth. This is where the lines of value and volume become blurred. Metrics can\u2019t tell the difference between what\u2019s in the public interest or what is just interesting to the public. An act of journalistic discovery may or may not inherently contain the magic recipe of traffic driving within it, but so can celebrity photos. The question we need to ask is whether we want journalism that counts, or journalism that is just counting.BibliographyAustralian Competition and Consumer Commission. (2022). News media bargaining code. Digital platforms and services.Blanchett, N. (2021a). Participative Gatekeeping: The Intersection of News, Audience Data, Newsworkers, and Economics. Digital Journalism, 9(6), 773-791.Blanchett, N. (2021b). Quantifying Quality: Negotiating Audience Participation and the Value of a Digital Story at NRK. Journalism Practice, 15(10), 1541-1561.Neheli, N. B. (2018). News by Numbers: The evolution of analytics in journalism. Digital Journalism, 6(8), 1041-1051.Christin, A. (2017). Algorithms in practice: Comparing web journalism and criminal justice. Big Data & Society, 4(2).Christin, A. (2018). Counting Clicks: Quantification and Variation in Web Journalism in the United States and France. American Journal of Sociology, 123(5).Conyers, S.P. (2022). It\u2019s Complicated: The Tangled Web of Digital Metrics, News Timing and Platforms [Doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds].Dawson, N., Molitorisz, S., Rizoiu, M.-A., & Fray, P. (2023). Layoffs, inequity and COVID-19: A longitudinal study of the journalism jobs crisis in Australia from 2012 to 2020. Journalism, 24(3), 531-559.Dickson, G., Costa, J. and Germano, M. (2023). Public Interest Journalism Initiative. Australian News Data Report. Public Interest Journalism Initiative Limited.Mason, M. (2020, May 28). News Corp print closures leave regional media on life support. Australian Financial Review.Meade, A. (2020, May 27). News Corp announces end of more than 100 Australian print newspapers in huge shift to digital. The Guardian.Meade, A. (2020, May 18). More than 150 Australian newsrooms shut since January 2019 as Covid-19 deepens media crisis. The Guardian.Petre, C. (2015, May 7). The Traffic Factories: Metrics at Chartbeat, Gawker Media, and The New York Times. Columbia Journalism Review.Petre, C. (2021). All the News That\u2019s Fit to Click: How Metrics Are Transforming the Work of Journalists. Princeton University Press.Schudson, M. (2020). Journalism: Why It Matters (1st ed.). Polity Press.Tuchman, G. (1978). Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. Social Forces, 59(4).Do we still value news-making?by Terry FlewThe University of SydneyRE-THINK JOURNALISM37Do we still value news-making?Terry FlewTerry Flew is Professor of Digital Communication and Culture and Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney. His books include The Creative Industries, Culture and Policy (SAGE, 2012), Global Creative Industries (Polity, 2013), Media Economics (Palgrave, 2015), Understanding Global Media (Palgrave, 2018), Regulating Platforms (Polity, 2021), and Digital Platform Regulation: Global Perspectives on Internet Governance (Springer, 2022). He was President of the International Communications Association (ICA) from 2019 to 2020, and is an ICA Fellow, elected in 2019. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA). In 2011-12 he chaired a review of the Australian media classification system for the Australian Law Reform Commission. Organisations he has advised include the OECD, Australian Communication and Media Authority, Cisco Systems, Special Broadcasting Service, Meta and Telstra. His ARC Laureate Fellowship is a five-year study (2024-2028) of Mediated Trust: Ideas, Interests, Institutions, Futures.@flewterryin\/terryflewNOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING38Terry Flew from University of Sydney, Australia (right) leading a Table Talk on valuing news, talking with Claire Darling, from Queensland University of Technology, Australia (centre) and Johanna Burger from Fachhochschule Graub\u00fcnden, Switzerland (left). RE-THINK JOURNALISM39One of the great paradoxes of the current era is that we live in an age of news abundance, where digital technologies have made news available instantaneously from multiple sources around the world, yet we speak of there being a \u2018crisis in news\u2019. Whether it be job losses at major news organisations, the closure of smaller newspaper titles, or the sense that we are awash in misinformation and \u2018fake news\u2019 that is eroding the integrity of the public sphere, it is rare to be talking about the future of news in anything other than a negative light. Not surprisingly, given its importance to civic engagement, democratic participation and an informed public, there have been a range of measures initiated to support the production of news. Direct or indirect news subsidy schemes have been developed in multiple jurisdictions, including Canada, UK, France, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, US, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Italy, and The Netherlands. Canada and Australia have also developed legislation which requires major digital platform companies such as Google and Meta to contribute to the production of news, on the basis that they derive financial benefit from carrying the content of news publishers and professional journalists on their sites. One thing that has been missing amidst all this activity has been some attempt to determine what is the value of news. The value of news is not simply the cost of producing it. It refers to the benefits that individuals and societies get from having such information in the public domain. Moreover, not all news is equally valuable. With multiple content sources providing real-time information on everything from share prices to sports results, we do not need to invest in professional news organisations to get such information. But some news has value that goes beyond the purely informational or interesting. Michael Schudson sought to capture this distinction when he observed that \u2018the world will survive without a lot of the journalism we have today, but the absence of some kinds of journalism would be devastating to the prospects for building a good society, notably a good democratic political system\u2019 (Schudson, 2020, p. 9).Public interest journalism\u2018Public interest journalism\u2019 is a term that lacks a clear definition but does go to the heart of the issue raised by Schudson. The Cairncross Review in the UK associated it with two particular types of journalism. First, there was \u2018investigative and campaigning journalism, and especially investigations into abuses of power in both the public and the private sphere\u2019 (Cairncross, 2019, p. 19). Noting that such journalism is both high-cost and high risk, sustainable futures for journalism and the maintenance of such investigative journalism were seen as integrally linked. The second type is what can be termed civic journalism, or \u2018the humdrum task of reporting on the daily activities of public institutions (Ibid., p. 19).\u2019 Policymakers often refer to the importance of supporting public interest journalism, rather than all forms of news and journalism. The Cairncross Review identified public interest journalism and news focused on local activities (local councils, courts etc.) as being the forms of news most under threat in the current environment as they constitute \u2018activities which are important public goods, essential to the preservation of an accountable democracy, with poor market incentives for supply (and limited demand), but NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING40which it would be inappropriate for the state to finance directly\u2019 (Ibid, 2019, p. 6).The fact that cost is not synonymous with value, or that individual and social value may diverge, is not new in economics or policy circles. The need to identify public good aspects of news has strengthened in recent years with the crisis of the advertiser-supported model of commercial news publishing. News publishers have historically operated in two-sided markets, dealing simultaneously with consumers and advertisers. If advertising in various forms (display advertising, classifieds, sponsored content) paid the bills, the need to understand the value that consumers attached to various news stories was attenuated. While direct sales have always been part of the revenue base \u2013 at least for publishing \u2013 they were not the dominant source of revenue. In the broadcasting sphere, the operation of a dual system of commercial and public service media helped to address the social value conundrum. Public service media have a legislated remit to meet Charter obligations, which typically include the provision of quality news and independent journalism, as well as diversity in terms of geography, content, and audiences. In some countries, such as the UK, this has been accompanied by the application of standards to commercial broadcasters.Questions of valueThe policy settings of the 2020s are ones where the sustainability of news businesses and the public good aspects of news have become intertwined in new ways. The downsizing of traditional news media newsrooms because of declining advertising revenues has stretched their ability to provide diverse news and public interest journalism. While one response has been a strong turn to digital subscriptions, this has limitations in terms of the reach of such content. The propensity to pay for online news has been increasing in recent years, but it remains concentrated among middle-class consumers in large urban centres. If there is to be a greater role for third parties in financing journalism to maintain the sustainability of news publishing, questions of value will become increasingly central. Public subsidies to commercial media organisations so that they continue to produce news, whether directly through payments or indirectly through tax incentives, are going to be subject to considerable scrutiny as to the value of what the resulting outputs will be. Working out the criteria through which we measure such public value, and the parameters of what is expected to come from such subsidies, such as public interest journalism, is going to become increasingly important as commercial advertising declines as a principal source of revenue for news publishers. References CitedCairncross, F. (2019). The Cairncross Review: a sustainable future for journalism. Media and creative industries.Schudson, M. (2020). Journalism: Why It Matters (1st ed.). Polity Press.RE-THINKFUNDING2Innovations in local media (funding) in Switzerlandby Johanna Burger, Matthias K\u00fcnzler and Ulla AutenriethThe Freie Universit\u00e4t BerlinThe University of Applied Sciences of the GrisonsRE-THINK FUNDING43Innovations in local media (funding) in SwitzerlandJohanna BurgerJohanna Burger studied Media and Communication Studies at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) from 2013 to 2016, where she completed a Master\u2019s degree in Political Science in 2021. She worked as an academic assistant in the Media & Internet Governance department at the University of Zurich. Since 2021, she has been working at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons (Switzerland) in a project on local communication funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Since 2022 she has been writing her PhD thesis at the Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin (Germany). Her research interests include politics, society, communication, and innovation.In addition to her academic work, she writes as a freelance journalist and author, is president of the program commission and member of the board of SRG Ostschweiz and, as vice president of the Association for Urban Culture of the Grisons, is committed to (urban) cultural diversity in the canton.orcid.org\/0000-0001-8852-5271in\/johanna-burger@jo_bu1NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING44Matthias K\u00fcnzlerDr. Matthias K\u00fcnzler is a communication scientist. He studied and completed his PhD at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). Until 2020, he was head of research at the Institute for Multimedia Production at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons (Switzerland), after which he accepted a professorship for Communication Policy & Media Economics at the Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin (Germany). He has worked intensively on the structure and development of the Swiss media system in a country comparison and has conducted numerous applied and basic research projects, including on the innovative capacity, financing and use of public broadcasting, on science communication by young people and on corporate newsrooms. He is currently leading a multi-year project on local communication, which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.He has not only published his findings in monographs, scientific articles and anthologies. He is also committed to passing on scientific findings to the general public, e.g. as an interview partner for the media.orcid.org\/0000-0002-3270-0648in\/mkuenzler@matkuenzRE-THINK FUNDING45Ulla Autenrieththeir production, distribution and reception, and was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Ulla Autenrieth has taught at various universities and universities of applied sciences in Switzerland and abroad.Until the end of 2020, she headed the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project \u201cProgressive loss of acceptance among the target audience - the future of public service in Switzerland put to the test\u201d (https:\/\/www.zukunftservicepublic.ch\/); since the beginning of 2021, she has been entrusted with the operational management of the research project \u201cLocal journalism and municipal communication under digital transformation\u201d. Her research focuses on visual communication in networked environments, the use of online media and media literacy as well as the effects of mediatization processes and changes in use on media systems.In addition to her academic work, she is a member of the program commission for quality assurance at Telebasel.in\/ulla-autenrieth@laAutDr. Ulla Autenrieth completed an interdisciplinary degree in sociology, political science and economics at the University of Koblenz-Landau (Germany). Until 2020, she worked for eight years as a senior assistant at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Basel (Switzerland). She completed her doctorate in 2013 in the context of a research project that was one of the first Swiss projects at the time to scientifically examine the visual worlds of social network sites, NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING46As Facebook is currently blocking news in Canada when this article is being written, the term news desert resurfaces not only in media science circles, but also among the general public. News deserts are areas that are no longer covered by (local) news which leaves the local public in a sort of news vacuum. Research such as by Penelope Abernathy and colleagues showed that news deserts are a growing hazard and that this missing local media coverage causes several negative effects in terms of democratic theory such as people feeling less part of the community, a drop in voting share and increasing corruption. Although critical voices have recently been raised asking how adequate this research still is in the digitalized world, one is certain: Local communication and local media in particular must become the focus of research in order to examine what effects local media have on the population and in order to understand how local media are adapting to the digital transformation. Hence, an international and interdisciplinary research project funded by the Swiss National Research Foundation (SNSF) is currently conducting research in the field of local communication (municipal and local media communication) in Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany, and Italy \u2013 with a particular focus on the former. As a contribution to the ICA post-conference, we would like to share some insights from our project regarding innovations in local media and local media funding in Switzerland. Switzerland, with its grass-roots democratic structure, is a special case, as it is here that (local) media funding and public service broadcasting funding are repeatedly put to the vote. It is therefore of great importance to understand the changes in the local media in order to be able to make decisions on the basis of sound data. Our research team first compiled a Swiss local media list as there was none for print, radio, tv and websites before. Then, an online survey with all the local media was conducted (response rate: 34.7% = 164 media).The Swiss local media market and its latest developments A first look at the numbers of just printed newspapers shows that there is a drop by -23% in local newspapers in Switzerland:(Burger et al. 2022, S. 17 based on VSW - Verband Schweizerischer Werbegesellschaften 2011)Figure 1: Development of the number of local newspapers 2011 - 2022 RE-THINK FUNDING47Advertising and financing as a challengeWhen taking the development of the Swiss advertising into account, we can see that the money spent on advertising in daily and regional press has strongly declined in the past 15 years:Although, in 2022 print still was the most widespread type of local media:N=489, as of July 2022; (Burger et al. 2023, S.16)Figure 2: Local media by media type (in %)Figure 3: Development of the Swiss advertising market 2005-2021 in CHF millionOwn graph based on Stiftung Werbestatistik Schweiz (2022)NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING48However, as in July 2022, advertising was still the most important financing model of the Swiss local media:1Figure 4: Financing models (in %)Question: \u201cHow important are the following funding sources for your medium?\u201d N=70-151; (Burger et al. 2023, S. 22)RE-THINK FUNDING49How to overcome the challenges \u2013 innovations in contents and financingAs sooner or later local media will have their main form of funding taken away, innovations are needed - at the level of content and at the level of the forms of funding themselves. First, in terms of content, there is a move towards new media types and channels. The top three media types not yet used but planned are: new visual elements, time-shifted video, and live video broadcasts (Figure 5). Hence, there is a clear trend towards visualization.Instruction in the questionnaire: \u201cPlease list the extent to which your medium serves the following media forms.\u201dN= 164; (Burger et al. 2023, S. 23)Figure 5: Media types in use and plannedNOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING50Second, regarding the media channels that are planned to be set up, we can see another top 3: newsletters, Instagram, and YouTube (. At first glance, the newsletter may seem confusing as a \u201cback to the roots\u201d movement - but it is important to note that today\u2019s newsletters can contain much more than just text. Today\u2019s newsletters are a multimedia, partly personalized way to reach users directly.Instruction in the questionnaire: \u201cPlease list the extent to which your medium serves the following channels.\u201dN= 164; (Burger et al. 2023, S. 23)Figure 5: Media types in use and plannedRE-THINK FUNDING51Regarding innovations in local media funding, it seems that the current local media\u2019s strategy is trial and error. There are several ideas that are being tested at the moment. Three examples of those from online local media are crowdfunding, voluntary contribution and the strategic patron: \u2022 Crowdfunding: \u2018Ts\u00fcri.ch\u2019 recently ran a crowdfunding campaign with a specific goal: the money raised should ensure political coverage in the local area, as the money would be used to produce the Zurich City Council Briefing, a newsletter on the \u201cmost important events in the Zurich City Council\u201d, as the website puts it: tsri.ch\/a\/sI9rNwB3iFr4fnpQ\/crowdfunding-gemeinderats-briefing \u2022 Voluntary contribution for participation and content-related co-determination: \u2018Zentralplus\u2019 relies on the willingness of the population to voluntarily support its free content and thus more media diversity in the region. They ask the recipients to become \u201cenablers\u201d. In return, ideas for articles can be submitted and voted on. In addition, only these \u201cenablers\u201d are allowed to comment and rate comments: www.zentralplus.ch\/moeglichmacherin \u2022 The strategic patron: The \u2018Jungfrau Zeitung\u2019 is funded by a variety of sources, including advertising and sponsored content. One of its financial backers is an NGO (\u2018Fondation Franz Weber\u2019) that campaigns for the protection of nature and animals. In return, the online medium has a section on \u201cNature Conservation\u201d in addition to the usual sections such as \u201cPolitics\u201d or \u201cSociety\u201d. Here, at the top of the page, there is always a banner advertising the NGO, and all articles (sponsored content and editorial articles) dealing with nature and animal protection can be found in this section: www.jungfrauzeitung.ch\/news\/naturschutz Our research indicates that Swiss local media are well aware of the need to adapt to digitalization and the changing financial market. Ideas are available for both content and financial innovation. It remains to be seen which of these innovations will prevail in the future. BibliographyBurger, Johanna; K\u00fcnzler, Matthias; Autenrieth, Ulla; Graf, Nina (2022): Lokalmedien in der Schweiz und Liechtenstein: \u00dcbersicht Stand Juli 2022. Vertrieben durch SWISSUbase. Fachhochschule Graub\u00fcnden; Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin. Lausanne.Burger, J., Wellinger, D., Kunzler, M., Autenrieth, U., Fetz, U., Schadler, T., et al. (2023). Lokaljournalismus und Gemeindekommunikation. Bestandesaufnahme der Schweizer Lokalkommunikation auf Ebene der Lokalmedien und der Gemeinde. FHGR Verlag.Stiftung Werbestatistik Schweiz (2022): Werbeaufwand Schweiz. Erhebungsjahr 2021. Z\u00fcrich: Stiftung Werbestatistik Schweiz. VSW - Verband Schweizerischer Werbegesellschaften (2011): Katalog der Schweizer Presse: Tagespresse, Regionale Wochenpresse, Sonntagspresse, Publikums- Finanz- und Wirtschaftspresse. VSW. Lausanne.News startups and buiness model innovationby Claire DarlingRMIT UniversityRE-THINK FUNDING53News startups and business model innovationClaire DarlingClaire Darling is a PhD candidate at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. She researches media startups, non-profit and commercial media business models, and platformisation. Claire is also a researcher at Australia\u2019s most unique media company Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). orcid.org\/0000-0003-4463-4681 in\/claire-darlingclaire.darling@student.rmit.edu.auDigitalisation has meant many things to the journalism and news media industries. However, digitalisation has been most challenging for the business of journalism. The safety net of advertising and classifieds that subsidised the print press for much of the 20th Century has dissipated and transferred to a handful of big private platforms (Anderson, Bell & Shirky 2015; Schiffrin 2021), leaving what we now understand is a digital news industry struggling to find alternative ways to fund and financialise journalism. Some of the biggest and brightest print news publishers have shuttered over the past decade because of this financial struggle\u2014most notably in the local news market. So too have some of the most innovative of those born in the truly digital era\u2014e.g. BuzzFeed News. However, there is a new breed of news startups supported by novel business models that can work as a demonstration of how \u201cgood \u2018ole fashion\u201d (Anderson 2013) journalism can survive and sustain itself. They are founded by journalists and editors who consider themselves \u2018second-generation\u2019 digital publishers, meaning they entered their current ventures with experience and knowledge acquired from their previous career either working at a publication that (perhaps poorly) transitioned from print to NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING54digital formats, or from other digital-born publications that have done well, but they are now going out on their own. A startup, by its nature is rooted in innovation. They are companies most synonymous with \u2018Big Tech\u2019 such as Facebook, Uber, AirBNB that operate just like any other company, however when they enter the market, they propose a unique product or service and aim to correct or right the limitations and shortcomings of existing products in any particular market. Certain journalism startups are developing new and innovative ways to fund and sustain a journalism publication. This is in part by necessity, since display advertising isn\u2019t viable, but also by creation. The internet and internet-based tools and communications technologies are enabling digital journalism startups to find novel and diverse avenues to revenue in lieu of digital advertising being mostly captured by big platforms.There are two broad revenue avenues for a journalism startup\u2014to either be non-profit or commercial (for-profit). Non-profit journalism needs either a consistent philanthropic funding stream or a dedicated membership base prepared to provide ongoing micropayments or donations. It can also be a combination of the two. The non-profit journalism model is best for supporting investigative journalism, the type of journalism that for-profit news publishers struggle to resource. In the USA ProPublica and The Marshall Project are two of the most well-known publishers in the non-profit journalism space. What is unique about them is that they are purpose-driven in their focus. Rather than seeking a general audience as most pre-digital news publishers did, these non-profits focus attention on one or a handful of niche topics that a \u2018particular\u2019 audience appreciates, values, and would therefore potentially contribute to ongoing funding. The non-profit model enables the journalism to remain open and free to access by anyone, therefore playing that important democratic role that journalism has in society. Members or donors are often also rewarded for their readership with other benefits that commercial business models don\u2019t or can\u2019t afford to offer, such as agreeing not to track readers, or sell on their data for financial gain. The commercial business model is far more complicated. Successful companies like Axios in the USA are set up with strategies and structures that support multiple streams of revenue. From advertising, to tiered subscriptions, and even one-off annual sales agreements like their HBO deal for a limited docuseries (2018-2021). Vox media also had a deal with Netflix; Explained, (2018-2020) The Future of\u2026 (2022) and other news publishers have similar podcast docuseries deals too. For example, Coda Story, a small publisher of news with an Eastern European focus, received a lump sum payment in a deal with Audible for their series \u201cUndercurrents: Tech, Tyrants, and us\u201d. Digitalisation has created this setting where publishers can access multiple avenues to revenue and enabling a variety of formats to be published in different digital spaces to either promote or publish their journalism. Take podcasting, for example. Vox media could claim in 2019 that podcasting growth was at 350% (Morrisey 2019), proving a lucrative venture for drawing some advertising money into the company, albeit with the growing popularity of platforms like Spotify. On its own however, podcasting is not a complete business model for Vox, it is one piece of the revenue puzzle only.Subscription is one other piece that is becoming more common with digital news startups. Subscriptions are implemented either as an additional premium product and as a complete business model. The latter is only possible for a small number of niche publications that can RE-THINK FUNDING55charge large sums for annual subscriptions. The Information being one of those, with its focus on the tech industry, an annual membership is currently priced at $US399. A price beyond the average news consumer but of value to many seeking insight and breaking news about the tech industry. Some of the biggest scoops about the tech industry have been first published by The Information and only available to those willing to pay. While being an example of the subscription model working to sustain digital journalism, an example like this also highlights that this at times happens at the cost of plurality in the news media ecosystem. Advertising is no longer the main support for journalism and there is no one main support to replace it. While some digital news publishers aim for audience reach and impact under a non-profit model, others with a more commercial focus are doing so under business models that comprise multiple revenue streams. The most innovative characteristic of digital news startups is that they aim to offer value at a scale that is smaller and more focussed than the mass media that came before it. They do this under novel business models that are nimble and take advantage of the digital conditions before them. BibliographyAnderson, CW 2013a, \u2018What aggregators do: Towards a networked concept of journalistic expertise in the digital age\u2019, Journalism, vol. 14, no. 8, pp. 1008\u20131023.Anderson, CW 2013b, Rebuilding the news: metropolitan journalism in the digital age, Temple University Press, Philadelphia.Anderson, CW, Bell, E & Shirky, C 2015, \u2018Post-Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present\u2019, Geopolitics, History and International Relations; Woodside, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 32\u2013123.Morrisey, B. (2019, December 10). Vox Media\u2019s Melissa Bell: The industry has given Facebook too much emphasis in the conversation. Digiday.Schiffrin, A 2021, Media capture: how money, digital platforms, and governments control the news, Columbia University Press, New York.NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING56Discussion after Research Breakfast presentations with Claire Darling, from RMIT University, Australia (left), Tai Huynh, founding editor-in-chief and publisher of The Local \/ Open Lab, Canada (centre) and Shirley Roburn, York University, Canada (right).How Media Ownership and Funding Matter for Democracyby Rodney BensonNew York UniversityNOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING58How Media Ownership and Funding Matter for DemocracyRodney BensonRodney Benson is Professor of Media, Culture, Communication, and Sociology at New York University. He is the lead author of How Media Ownership Matters (Oxford, forthcoming 2024) and author of Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison (Cambridge, 2013). His articles on media ownership and funding have appeared in The Conversation, Byline Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, Christian Science Monitor, International Journal of Press\/Politics, Journalism, and Journalism Studies. @rodneybensonnyuin\/rodneybensonJournalism, as is often said, is essential to democracy. But journalism is not just one thing: increasingly, it\u2019s supported by many different ownership forms and subforms and funding models, targeted to diverse audiences. How do each of these various ownership complexes differ in the kind of news that they produce and ultimately the contributions they make to democracy? This is the question my colleagues and I set out to answer in a study of 51 news outlets in the U.S., Sweden, and France. We interviewed top news executives and editors across a wide range of media, gathered and analyzed proprietary data on audiences and funding, and closely examined news content along multiple dimensions. In this brief essay, I preview some of the key findings that will appear in the book that resulted from this research, How Media Ownership Matters, to be published later this year by Oxford University Press (Benson, Hess\u00e9rus, Neff, and Sedel 2024).1Amidst the diversity of owners and legal forms, we identify the existence of four broad ownership forms with distinctive institutional 1  In addition to analyzing public service orientation, the focus of this article, the book also examines political and economic instrumentalism.RE-THINK FUNDING59logics: market, private, civil society, and public. Outlets with market ownership, such as stock market traded or hedge fund owned outlets, prioritize profit maximization. Private ownership, residing with an individual, a family, employees, or a founder supported by a small group of investors, faces less pressure to maximize shareholder value and thus can choose to balance or supersede profitability with amenities of prestige, political influence, or civic duty. (Stock market traded outlets with dominant controlling shareholders, such as the New York Times, constitute a hybrid form between market and private ownership). Civil society ownership refers to the associational sector that operates between the market and the state: it encompasses a range of distinct institutional logics: professional (journalistic, legal, academic, etc.), religious, or partisan (whether on behalf of a party or social movement). Civil society outlets prioritize the values of their sponsoring organizations and in so doing may contribute to a more pluralistic public sphere. Public ownership entails a mission to provide accessible, civically-valuable information for the citizenry as a whole: it can be more or less democratically accountable and autonomous, depending on the strength of the funding and administrative firewalls that protect it from political instrumentalization. (The U.S. \u201cpublic\u201d PBS and NPR, majority funded by philanthropy, can be regarded as a hybrid of civil society and public ownership.) Across all these ownership forms \u2014 not only market and private \u2014 executives and editors seek sustainability through adjusting their content to types of funding and target audiences. The links between funding-audience adjustment strategies, ownership forms, and ultimately news content are tendencies, not iron-clad laws: outlets with very similar ownership complexes may still differ due to the contingencies of place and historical legacy. Nevertheless, as I have argued elsewhere, strategies tend to follow structures (Benson 2014). Primary funding models tend to cluster together in particular ownership forms: advertising for market ownership, audience subscription funding with private ownership, a mix of subscription and philanthropic funding for civil society ownership, and taxpayer funding for public media. Although often seen as opposites, both advertising funded market media and taxpayer funded public media are most likely to reach broad omnibus audiences with average or lower than average levels of education and income. In contrast, most private and civil society outlets have more elite audiences.Ownership forms and funding-audience adjustment strategies also tend to be associated with distinct civic outcomes. Our content analysis of the most prominently placed articles in each of the 51 news websites found that outlets with civil society ownership, philanthropy funding, and\/or that receive public press subsidies tended to have the highest proportion of articles providing crucial public service information (including investigative and in-depth reporting). Among the most distinctively public service oriented were U.S. nonprofits ProPublica and Center for Investigative Reporting\/Reveal; religious newspapers Christian Science Monitor, Dagen, and La Croix; and Sweden\u2019s labor union-affiliated Dagens Arena. Somewhat surprisingly, Sweden\u2019s partisan-legacy foundation-owned newspapers, such as Barometern, Norran, and Gefle Dagblad, as well as France\u2019s foundation-owned Ouest-France, were not substantially different from other outlets. At the other end of the spectrum, outlets with stock market ownership, advertising funding, and\/or omnibus audiences tended to have the lowest proportion of articles providing public service information.The research also confirmed the unique civic importance of majority or wholly taxpayer-funded public media, as in Sweden and France. Their main contribution is not necessarily to provide the highest quality public service NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING60information: commercial elite-audience outlets like the New York Times, Le Monde, or Svenska Dagbladet often outperformed them in this regard. However, public media are clearly superior in their public service information content compared to omnibus audience commercial media, especially legacy radio or TV outlets. In short, public media combine quality and accessibility as no other media can do. This is also true compared to civil society nonprofits: even when these nonprofits provide free access to their content, they nevertheless continue to reach mostly elite audiences. We also measured pluralism in news content (mentions of a wide range of governmental, political party, civil society, business, international voices, etc.). Again, we found the highest level of internal pluralism at outlets with civil society ownership. Overall, the outlets that contributed most to external pluralism (because of their unique emphasis on particular actors, increasing the diversity of voices heard across the national field as a whole) tended to have either civil society or private ownership: in the U.S., MinnPost, Christian Science Monitor, and Buzzfeed; in Sweden, Dagens Arena and Dagens ETC; and in France, L\u2019Humanit\u00e9, La Croix, and Vice-France. Our content analyses (including of partisan favorability and economic instrumentalism) were conducted from 2015 to 2019, a period when funding models were radically unsettled by declines in digital advertising revenues, early signs that some elite outlets could successfully shift to subscription funding, uncertainty about the long-term commitment of large philanthropists, and cuts or the threat of cuts to public funding in France and the U.S. More recent content analyses, some drawing on our conceptual framework, have confirmed the general patterns of our findings (Cushion 2022, Neff et al. 2022, and Usher and Kim-Leffingwell 2023.). While the situation for some outlets has changed, we would expect to find very similar tendencies today. Among privately owned outlets, we found that some of the most unique and civically-valuable contributions were made by digital startups that beginning in the mid-2010s were forced to shut down or have barely survived as digital advertising revenues have been increasingly hoarded by Google and Facebook. These outlets included KIT (Sweden), with its analytics-driven focus on in-depth news; Rue89 (France), an early proponent of active audience engagement; Buzzfeed News, successful in reaching younger audiences with hard-hitting investigative reporting; and Vice, an innovator in visually-stunning short news documentaries about urgent topics and world regions ignored by other media. These \u201cfailures\u201d or \u201cnear-failures\u201d in sustainability point to both the promise and the limits of the market. Market incentives induced them to innovate, and at their peak, they provided high quality and accessible news, often for young audiences who have been abandoning traditional news outlets in droves. But when the market fails to provide new investments (as for example, when venture capital pulls back) or continuing financial support for innovative, civically beneficial media, public or philanthropic support can and must fill the void. In the U.S., there are signs that philanthropy is committed to supporting journalism for the long term, but the assistance too often still comes with \u201cstrings attached\u201d and the amount falls far short of the need, especially for local news (Media Impact Funders 2023). Perhaps the most urgent take-away from the book is the gap in the kind of news produced for elites versus everyone else. Public affairs news, investigative reports, and in-depth analyses are provided aplenty by news outlets with elite paying audiences such as Le Monde, Mediapart, and the New York Times, or at smaller niche civil society outlets partially supported by philanthropy or public subsidies such as the Christian Science Monitor, La Croix, and Dagens Arena. With the exception of public RE-THINK FUNDING61Conference Closing Interactive Session with discussant Rodney Benson, New York University, facilitated by organizers Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young, University of British Columbia, Canada.NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING62service broadcasting, especially in Sweden with its well-funded SVT and SR, the mass of non-elite audiences are being fed a news diet much richer in the fast food of celebrities, crimes, and disasters. The biggest challenge, going forward, will be how to sustainably provide high quality, civically valuable, news for everyone. Increased public funding and a redirection of philanthropic funding toward accessibility will be crucial to achieving this goal.References CitedBenson, R. (2014). Strategy follows structure: A media sociology manifesto. In S. Waisbord (Ed.), Media sociology: A reappraisal (pp. 25\u201345). Cambridge: Polity.Benson, R., Hesserus, M., Neff, T., & Sedel, J. (2024). How Media Ownership Matters. Oxford University Press.Cushion, S. (2022). Are public service media distinctive from the market? Interpreting the political information environments of BBC and commercial news in the United Kingdom. European Journal of Communication, 37(1), 3-20.Media Impact Funders. (2023). Journalism and Philanthropy: Growth, Diversity and Potential Conflicts of Interest.Neff, T., Popiel, P., & Pickard, V. (2022). Philadelphia\u2019s news media system: which audiences are underserved? Journal of Communication 72 (4), 476-87.Usher, N., & Kim-Leffingwell, S. (2023). How Loud Does the Watchdog Bark? A Reconsideration of Losing Local Journalism, News Nonprofits, and Political Corruption. The International Journal of Press\/Politics, 0(0).RE-THINKPOLICY3Make it Local: Improving health justice outcomes through community journalismby Shirley Roburn, Tai HuynhYork University & The LocalRE-THINK POLICY65Making it Local: Improving health justice outcomes through community journalismShirley RoburnShirley Roburn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. She researches the public storytelling strategies used by Indigenous communities and their civil society allies in order to reframe controversies over energy infrastructure development in terms of issues of land and water, food, and cultural sovereignty. More recently, her work has focused on low-carbon media and research practices, and on on-line digital journalism startups use of data visualizations in digital storytelling that foregrounds social inequities related to health and environment.The Covid-19 pandemic saw vastly different health outcomes across the world. Canada\u2019s death rate per capita has been about one-third that of the United States, yet three times that of Japan1. Even on a regional scale, impacts 1 This estimate is an approximation based on data from the John Hopkins University and Medicine Coronavirus Resource Cen-ter\u2019s estimate of Deaths per 100 000 popu-lation. Most recent figures have US deaths are 341.11 per 100 000; Canadian deaths 135.23 per 100 000; and Japanese deaths are 57.72. However, in earlier phases of the pandemic, the differences were starker. For example, the same tracker on July 1, 2002 had US deaths at 308.61 per 100 000; Ca-nadian deaths at 109.32 per 100 000 and Japanese deaths at 24.7 per 100 000. of the pandemic varied widely. The Local, an independent online magazine focused on urban health issues, calculated in October of 2021 that in the greater Toronto area (GTA), schools in high risk, underserved communities were three times more likely to have Covid-19 outbreaks than other Toronto schools.This risk calculation was part of a data blog that The Local had started to coincide with the 2021-2 school year. The School Tracker took publicly available information on vaccination rates, Covid-19 rates, and cases in Toronto\u2019s 800 public schools, and made it accessible and legible to Toronto parents with simple charts and graphics. Tens of thousands of people visited the blog \u2013 making it by far The Local\u2019s saroburn@yorku.caNOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING66most popular offering \u2013 and used it in their calculus of whether to send children to school and what precautions to take.The School Tracker was part of a range of data journalism work that The Local undertook during the pandemic, taking publicly available health statistics on the spread of Covid-19 and of the interventions to stop it, and turning this data into freely accessible, easy to understand graphs, charts, and maps2. These made clear the pandemic\u2019s differential impacts across Toronto neighbourhoods. At the same time, The Local produced nuanced, \u2018deep dive\u2019 feature reports3 on the pandemic\u2019s impact in different communities. Decision makers took note of The Local\u2019s coverage, and my research suggests that this influenced how vaccines were distributed within Toronto\u2019s neighbourhoods.Tracking vaccinationsIn the spring of 2021, the largest vaccination campaign in the city\u2019s history was being rolled out across Toronto. In tandem, The Local\u2019s Vaccinating Toronto series began tracking and mapping the availability and uptake of 2 Please see The Local\u2019s school tracker using publicly available health data, and the citizen-reporting initiative that The Local attempted when data on Covid-19 in schools was no longer made publicly available on a large scale.3 Leads to a search of all Local articles tagged as addressing the Covid-19 pan-demic. The Local published many features under the tag line \u201cVaccinating Toronto.\u201d Examples of key front line deep-dive features include Fatima Syed\u2019s \u201cYou Can\u2019t Stop the Spread of the Virus if You Don\u2019t Stop it in Peel,\u201d and \u201cThe Chaotic Race to Vaccinate Peel\u201d, and Tayo Bero\u2019s \u201cVacci-nating Black Toronto\u201d.vaccinations in the GTA. Throughout this crucial time, The Local documented the vaccination campaign\u2019s progress, in real time, from a health justice perspective. Its pharmacy map showed that the five neighbourhoods with the highest Covid-19 rates had no vaccinations available in pharmacies, while wealthy neighbourhoods with one-eighth the rate of Covid-19 positivity had vaccinations available in multiple pharmacies. As a city-wide vaccination campaign was rolling out in April, The Local began a dynamic data blog that plotted vaccination rates in Toronto neighbourhoods against Covid-19 positivity rates, updated as an animation every week. The Local also published photo essays and features from the front lines in \u2018hot spot\u2019 neighbourhoods: a substantive article on the spread of the virus in Peel region, home to warehouses and other essential workplaces with high Covid-19 rates; photo essays from a pop-up clinic in the underserved Jane and Finch neighbourhood; deep dives into vaccinating people in the Peel region and vaccinating Black Toronto. Using social media analysis (much of The Local\u2019s reach came over Twitter), content analysis of newspapers, and interviews with journalists, with local officials involved in the vaccination rollout, and with health justice advocates, my research has attempted to qualify and quantify what difference, if any, The Local\u2019s coverage made to Covid-19 health outcomes.RE-THINK POLICY67Real world impactsThe Local\u2019s coverage had impacts in two major areas. Firstly, it directly influenced decisions made by local officials in their allocation of resources, including vaccinations, as part of Toronto\u2019s vaccination campaign. It did so in three ways. Firstly, The Local\u2019s coverage generated political pressure through its implied critique of existing health inequalities. The pharmacy map was a stark visual depiction of the lack of health justice within facets of the vaccination roll-out. The map was shared across overlapping Twitter networks that connected many prominent public health officials and elected officials involved in the vaccination rollout or with responsibilities for government responses to the pandemic. In my interviews, these officials stated that they and most of their colleagues at that time monitored Twitter not only for scientific information and pandemic updates, but as a gauge of public opinion on government handling of the pandemic. Although the decision about how to roll out vaccines to pharmacies was already made, The Local\u2019s map was a powerful argument that public health needed to do better in terms of equity in subsequent decisions about vaccine rollout. This \u2018negative pressure\u2019 was supplemented by positive pressure from The Local\u2019s in-depth coverage of the effective vaccination strategies tailored specifically towards reaching at-risk communities, whether through teams travelling highrise-by-highrise to deliver vaccines at home to elderly residents and others who had trouble getting to clinics, or through pop-up vaccination clinics organized in conjunction with key community partners, such as evening clinics organized around Eid celebrations. If The Local\u2019s highlighting of equity deficits helped kickstart equity conversations within public health bodies responsible for vaccination, then its ongoing coverage of successes lent broad support for policy changes that centred equity in how vaccinations were distributed, and an additional push for the approval of individual initiatives that actualized this policy direction.Finally, public health officials drew on The Local\u2019s Hot Spot tracker when making decisions about allocating resources for the vaccination campaign. Both in my interviews and in their personal communications with editors at The Local, some of these officials expressed that the tracker had a concrete impact on day-to-day decision making around prioritizing vaccinations getting to certain communities.Although this is harder to confirm definitively as resulting from The Local\u2019s interventions, it appears that The Local\u2019s coverage had an overall impact in shifting dominant narratives in the mainstream press towards a focus on health equity. Multiple interviewees highlighted the influence of The Local\u2019s award-winning feature \u201cYou Can\u2019t Stop the Spread of the Virus if You Don\u2019t Stop it in Peel,\u201d by Fatima Syed, the first of its Vaccinating Toronto series. Prior to its publication, the plight of essential workers in Peel region, the \u2018logistics capital of Canada,\u2019 received comparatively little attention in the news, despite a lack of vaccination, testing, paid sick days, and other supports for workers in a region with some of the highest rates of Covid-19 in the province. In two high circulation Toronto papers I analyzed, the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, the overall length of pieces focused on Peel region increased substantively in the six weeks following publication of Syed\u2019s feature as compared to the six weeks prior. In the Star, the framing of pieces shifted to focus much more significantly on health inequalities, while the Globe and Mail began to frame its reporting more clearly around \u2018hot spots\u2019 of underserved NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING68neighbourhoods with high Covid-19 rates, and around a crisis in health care. Both papers also began to publish more \u2018slice of life\u2019 articles focused on personal stories, which is an effective way to highlight differential experiences of the pandemic that are often due to structural inequalities.Journalists that I interviewed variously described The Local\u2019s coverage as reinforcing for them the importance of using a health justice lens, and as raising the bar on graphical, animation, and feature journalism depictions of health justice issues. Where individual outlets, such as the Toronto Star and the CBC, already had a significant history of global health and health justice reporting, the example of The Local appeared to energize journalists in their pursuit of health justice frames and stories. For example, at the end of the second six-week period I studied, the Toronto Star began collaborating directly with The Local, bringing The Local\u2019s data journalism work to a wider audience.Over the period I studied, The Local\u2019s reporting made a life-saving difference to people in underserved GTA neighbourhoods. Without The Local\u2019s coverage, and the subsequent on-the-ground changes to the vaccination rollout, more lives would have been lost to Covid-19. This is an amazing feat for a small new journalism start-up. But what about the bigger picture? For The Local itself, is its strategy of discovering and presenting compelling health data, and then telling the nuanced stories of the communities behind the statistics, transferable to the opioid crisis, or heat deaths among the elderly, the homeless, and people with schizophrenia? More broadly, how significant a role can good data journalism play in supporting other new journalism start-ups attempting to bring an equity lens to a range of local issues, at a time when local news coverage in general is in precipitous decline? As The Local and other new journalism start-ups continue to evolve and innovate, answers to these questions will become clearer. In the meantime, at the least, the example of The Local shows that even with a fraction of the resources and reach of major media outlets, small on-line journalism start-ups can have a sizeable impact at the local level, and deserve a place in efforts to revitalize community journalism.RE-THINK FUNDING69Shaping the Future of Digital Communications Policies in Canada with the Online News Act (Bill C-18)by Dwayne WinseckCarleton UniversityRE-THINK FUNDING71Shaping the Future of Digital Communications Policies in Canada with the Online News Act (Bill C-18)Dwayne WinseckDwayne R. Winseck is a Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, with a cross-appointment to the Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His research interests include the political economy of communications, communications and media history, theory, policy, and regulation. He is also the Director of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded Global Media and Internet Concentration Project which brings together fifty scholars studying the structure and evolution of the communications, internet and media industries from 1984 until the present. The project started in 2021 and will run until 2028. orcid.org\/0000-0002-8122-9223@mediamorphisgmicp.orgCanada is undergoing a transformative shift, aiming to update communication and media policies for the 21st Century. Just as the origins of regulation were forged for the Canadian infrastructures of the 20th Century, today we stand at a similar crossroad with online platforms and search engines as the targets. The Online News Act (ONA) passed earlier this year, reflects this with its focus on Digital Network Intermediaries (DNI) entities. At present, the act only applies to Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads), on account of the large role they play in the distribution and sharing of news. The Act can be expanded in the future to cover other DNIs that serve similarly as significant pathways to the news for Canadians, such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, X (previously Twitter), and other large news aggregators. The principle upon which the Act and its provisions rest is the idea that along with the DNIs\u2019 role of providing important public goods and services come formal public obligations to match. However, such principles have been often overwhelmed by charges that the ONA is nothing more than a link tax and threat to the free press. It is neither, but the fact media conglomerates see the act as an opportunity NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING72for funneling money from \u2018big tech\u2019 to them, has certainly had a corrosive effect on the ONA itself, and debate over it.Fair carriage and governingA better view of the the Online News Act, commonly known as Bill C-18, is that it aims, first and foremost, to establish a fair carriage framework to govern how a select few very large digital platforms integrate news content into their search, social media, app stores, advertising marketplaces, and other emerging products and services.One of the reasons why news media groups have struck deals with Google and Facebook is because they have become an essential part of their multi-platform distribution strategies. This is not surprising, given that Google and Facebook have worked for over a decade to make their services essential to news distribution in Canada and around the world. For Google and Facebook, an added benefit of these deals is to help hold regulations like C-18 at bay. However, because these deals are private, little to nothing is known about them. The ONA will change this by subjecting them to review by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Levelling the playing field Placing more emphasis on fair carriage would level the playing field between DNIs and news media organizations, while drawing on the rich history of Canadian and US telecoms regulations to do so (Ricks, Sitaraman, Welton & Menard, 2022).The latter consideration swings into view based on the position of DNIs at the crossroads of communication and commerce, giving them power over the terms of carriage involved in news distribution. They also dictate who owns and controls the audience data generated \u2014 the lifeblood of the digital media economy.Combined, Google and Meta had close to $11.9 billion in revenue from Canada in 2022. More specifically, combined, the two digital conglomerates raked in 77% cent of the $14.4 billion in online ad revenue, and 53% percent of all ad spending\u2014a sum that is twice that of the broadcast TV and newspaper sectors combined. Still, Google and Meta claim they would withdraw from carrying news rather than comply with the Act because news content only accounts for a tiny part of their services, although that has obviously changed given Google\u2019s late in the game agreement with Ottawa to provide $100 million per year into a fund to be distributed to eligible news media groups. Meta, however, continues to play hardball by maintaining the news blockade it put in place this past summer in its campaign against the ONA. For a third to one-half of Canadians (depending on province, language, age and other demographic factors), Meta and Alphabet\u2019s suite of services have become vital pathways to the news. Consequently, newsrooms have become more \u201cplatform dependent\u201d.News as semi-public goodsA key problem with the framing of the ONA by both its detractors and supporters alike are interpreting the act as being about money rather than fair carriage. They assume specific monetary value can be pegged to news. However, hundreds of years of news history RE-THINK POLICY73show otherwise (John & Loeb-Silberstein, 2015). This is because news and information are semi-public goods, meaning that it is difficult to assign a price to news. Additionally, very few people will pay for news at a rate that reflects the costs of production and distribution (Reuters Digital News Report, 2023).The EU has dealt with these matters by deeming a few very large platforms to have systems-like characteristics that require a formal regulatory framework, risk mitigation protocols, and public obligations to match their size and influence. These companies derive tremendous benefit from operating in Canada. The ONA sets out what some of those obligations will be for platforms that make news available. Coupled with their systemic character, they have thereby acquired a public obligation to continue to distribute news. Given that the public value of news in a democracy is a core part of where their systemic significance comes from.Reflecting this, one of the best features of the Act, section 51, bans designated platforms from giving any news service unreasonable advantages or, conversely, subjecting them to undue disadvantages. This soft \u201cmust-carry\u201d measure could prevent Google and Meta from pulling the plug on Canadian news media. This anti-discrimination provision in section 51 could be improved by including a statutory limitation on the exercise of editorial control over news distribution, similar to the one found in section 36 of the Telecommunications Act.1 Together, these provisions could be used to prevent online intermediaries from blocking news in Canada.1 Section 36 of the Telecommunications Act reads: \u201cExcept where the Commission approves otherwise, a Canadian carrier shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommuni-cations carried by it for the public.\u201dSection 51 could also be improved by removing language that makes it contingent on companies that make news available. The result has been the too-clever-by-half move from Meta that it can escape the reach of the law by simply barring the distribution and sharing of news through their service, with similar threats coming from Alphabet. An easy way to avoid this is to eliminate the redundant clause in section 51 altogether because the raison d\u2019etre of the Act in the first place rests, in large part, on this function. In other words, the \u201cmust carry\u201d aspect of the ONA is undermined by this superfluous language. Online News Act remains badly flawedFor one, it does nothing to break up Google and Meta\u2019s entrenched monopoly power. Their dominance has caused news providers to get a smaller cut of ad revenue, advertisers to pay higher prices, and people\u2019s privacy to be made worse than would otherwise be the case in a competitive market. Google and Meta\u2019s argument against the act is based on the claim that the value propositions flows the other way because of the traffic they generate for news sites. They do drive significant traffic to news sites yet, the promise that news organizations would gain new lines of revenue, subscribers and better insights into audiences has not come to pass (Nielsen & Ganter, 2022). Moreover, the media have not seen these benefits improve because search and social media generate audience traffic that tends to be brief and superficial thereby blurring the connection between authors, sources, and trustworthy journalism amidst a sea of online information.NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING74Secondly, the attempt of the act to combat disinformation overstates its reach, disregards its asymmetrical political aspect, and overlooks how news compensation focus might exacerbate problems. Third, that Canada\u2019s largest media conglomerates \u2014 some with revenue multiple times higher than what Google and Facebook earn in Canada \u2014 will likely be the biggest beneficiaries of this bill also strikes the wrong note.Fourth, with no mention of data protection and the privacy interests at stake in the online news system, C-18 reinforces ad-driven social media and media and does nothing to curb the logic of surveillance capitalism that have aggravated many of the problems the Act purports to redress. Finally, C-18 lacks robust information disclosure requirements that leave deals between platforms and publishers in the dark. The goal is to align annual filings with the CRTC\u2019s standards for telecom operators and broadcasters, ensuring detailed public reports that at least match the Aggregate Annual Returns, broadcasting sector summaries, and Communications Market Reports. As Canada stands at the cusp of the 21st century, the imperative for mandatory information disclosure and regulation has never been more evident. This move to harmonize regulations across various sectors underscores the significance of shaping a better and more democratic future for Canada\u2019s communication policy and media system. RE-THINK FUNDING75Dwayne Winseck, from Carleton University, Canada (centre right) leading a Table Talk on regulating platform power in Canada and the Online News Act. In conversation with Kathy English, from the Canadian Journalism Foundation (left), conference organizer Mary Lynn Young, from the University of British Columbia (centre left), Manuel Puppis, from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland (right). The deals before the deals: how platforms are leveraging existing relationships with publishers to avoid regulationby Diana Bossio, James Meese and Andrea CarsonSwinburne UniversityRMIT UniversityLa Trobe UniversityRE-THINK FUNDING77The deals before the deals: how platforms are leveraging existing relationships with publishers to avoid regulationDiana BossioAssociate Professor Diana Bossio is Dept Chair, Media and Communication at Swinburne University, and Digital Inclusion Program Lead at Swinburne\u2019s Social Innovation Research Institute. Dr Bossio\u2019s research focusses on journalism on social media, journalists\u2019 professional identity and wellbeing online, and older people\u2019s digital participation and inclusion. She is the author of: The Paradox of Connection: How Digital Media Are Transforming Journalistic Labor (Illinois University Press, 2023), Journalism and Social Media: Practitioners, Organisations, Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and co-editor of Social Media and the Politics of Reportage: The Arab Spring (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).swinburne.edu.au\/research\/our-research\/access-our-research\/find-a-researcher-or-supervisor\/researcher-profile\/?id=dbossio@dianabossioNOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING78James MeeseAndrea CarsonJames Meese is an Associate Professor at RMIT University and an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society. He has been awarded a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council to investigate personalisation and recommendation in the news media sector. He regularly publishes work in leading media and communication journals and his most recent book is Digital Platforms and the Press (Intellect).Andrea Carson is a Professor of Political Communication in the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Her scholarship focuses on, journalism business models, election campaigns, investigative journalism, fake news and media regulation. She holds three Australian Research Council grants with her latest national grant focused on understanding drivers of media and political trust.@andrea_carsonjames.meese@rmit.edu.auRE-THINK POLICY79The introduction of two very different bargaining Codes in Canada and Australia illustrates the different ways digital platforms leverage their power in media markets \u2013 and the impacts of their strategic machinations on the industry, on news provisions and of course, on consumers.As Bill C-18, or the Online News Act, received royal assent after passing the House and Senate, Meta released a statement confirming the platform giant would begin to block news for Canadian users over the following months (Mundie, 2023). Google soon followed suit, releasing a statement saying news links on their site would also be blocked for Canadians (Walker, 2023). However, the Canadian government has since struck a deal with Google, with the tech giant providing $100 million annually to support news media (Hermida, 2023). While Canadians can now access news content on Google, this was a deal far less than the estimated $329 million the Online News Act was meant to reap from Meta and Google towards easing the strain of falling advertising revenues on beleaguered media institutions. Since June, 2023 Canadians have not been able to access news on Facebook. This is a scenario that Australians know all too well. Barely two years earlier, Meta pulled Australian news and information from Facebook in response to the Australian government\u2019s announcement that the proposed news media bargaining legislation would have designation provisions, effectively forcing both Meta and Google to pay registered Australian news organisations for their content (Bossio et al, 2022).Unlike the Canadian experience however, Meta pulled the plug on the ban a week later; once they had secured reassurance from the Australian government that designation would be a mechanism of last resort by the Treasurer, and they would not be forced into payments.Canada\u2019s Bill C-18 and Australia\u2019s News Bargaining Code were both attempts to take a regulatory approach to the market power of digital platforms, by compelling both Meta and Google to pay traditional news media organisations for third party content as a way of ensuring the long-term sustainability of journalism.Platform support for news before and after the Code our research team wanted to understand how Google and Meta were able to have such different strategic responses to regulation, focussing specifically on support for journalism before and after the introduction of the Australian Code. We examined government submissions to the Treasury review of the NMBC and policy documents and conducted interviews with News Media Executives about their experience of negotiating with the platforms.Our findings showed the unique strategic engagement Google had with the news media sector following the implementation of the Australian Code, which stands in stark contrast to Meta\u2019s relative disinterest. We argue that these differing approaches to the Code were enacted for the same aim; to assert control of the negotiation process and avoid further regulatory imposition in their business practices by the Australian government, or any other jurisdiction. The content analysis showed Google and Meta were providing both support and monetary contributions prior to the NMBC\u2019s introduction. Meta primarily set a philanthropic agenda by handing over millions of dollars across various schemes to support business development and regional journalism. Google has provided funds, but showed more explicit focus on training, such as Google News Academy, evidently to ensure NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING80use of Google tools is embedded into media organisations\u2019 practices. But we found that framing for these strategic forms of support changed after the introduction of the NMBC.The Australian Federal Treasury (2022) completed the first review of the NMBC and heralded its success; 34 deals were made valued at approximately $AUD 200 million and with 61 per cent of the market being covered by at least one deal (MacDonald, 2022). There was however a significant difference between Google and Meta in terms of deals made. Meta only made deals with 13 media organizations, whereas Google secured about 23 deals. Without designation provisions enacted, Meta was able to simply refuse to negotiate with some news organisations, including Australia\u2019s largest multicultural broadcaster, SBS.Impacts of the platform power on the CodeAnalysis of both public submissions to the Australian Treasury Review of the Codes and our interviews with news media executives about Google and Meta\u2019s response to the NMBC suggested that Google was more willing to negotiate deals quickly and with fairer consideration of which organisations produced journalism in the public interest.Google engaged more broadly with the news sector, but complicating factors emerged due, in part, to both platforms\u2019 manipulation of some of the features of the Code. Interviews with media executives also revealed some of the ways Google used negotiations to push for deals that served their business interests, namely in producing content for Google News Showcase and avoiding deals with smaller media organisations, aided by the lack of designation provision under the Code.  The differing levels of engagement show that platforms were largely successful in their aims: platforms chose who to fund, and how much they received, without any real opportunities for recourse under the Code. Platforms could refuse to negotiate with organizations they deemed ineligible as public interest journalism. Or alternatively, to remunerate organizations they had a business interest in supporting - both scenarios our interview participants suggested had occurred. We found that both platforms were able to manage designation and transparency provisions for their own benefit, often to the detriment of smaller news organisations. Nearly three quarters of public submissions to the Review argued the current legislation exacerbated an unfair playing field in the Australian news media market. This competition power imbalance was attributed to two key issues with the NMBC: the lack of both designation mechanisms and transparency around the outcomes of negotiations. Interviews with news media executives confirmed that lack of transparency around the type and amount of funding effectively meant smaller, independent organizations competing for market share in a highly concentrated Australian media ecosystem were losing talent and investment to the larger media groups who were likely to have been given more funding under the Code. While the Canadian government was adamant it would \u201cimprove\u201d (Turvill, 2022) on the Australian experience by ensuring designation provisions RE-THINK POLICY81Discussion after the \u2018What Is Quality Journalism?\u2019 panel presentations, moderated by Ori Tenenboim, University of British Columbia, Canada (left). Participants Daniel Graesser, Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin, Germany;Hanan Badr, Universit\u00e4t Salzburg, Austria; Hadiya Roderique, University of Toronto, Canada, Diana Bossio, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia; and Aske Kammer, Roskilde University, Denmark (left to right).NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING82remained in the Code, this has resulted in a hardline approach from both platforms to ensure this form of regulatory intervention proves unpalatable in other jurisdictions. Our research shows that digital platforms have been able to leverage their different business and reputational priorities in quite different ways \u2013 and it was is these divergent strategic positions that have contributed to the impact of the Code in different jurisdictions. ReferencesBossio, D., Flew, T., Meese, J., Leaver, T., & Barnet, B. (2022). Australia\u2019s News Media Bargaining Code and the global turn towards platform regulation. Policy & Internet, 14(1), 136-150. Hermida, H. (2023, December 1). Google\u2019s $100 million to Canada\u2019s news industry is a small price to pay to avoid regulation. The Conversation Canada.MacDonald, Anna. (2022, March 2). ACCC estimates deals under News Media Bargaining Code total over $200m. Mumbrella.Mundie, J (2023, June 22) Canadians will no longer have access to news content on Facebook and Instagram, Meta says. CBC. The Australian Federal Treasury (2022). Review of the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code. Australian Government.Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill 2020. Explanatory Memoranda, Australian Government.Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill. (2020). Explanatory Memoranda, Australian Government. Turvill, W. (2022, February 25). How Canada\u2019s Online News Act will differ from Australia\u2019s news media bargaining code. Press Gazette.Walker, K (2023, June 29). An update on Canada\u2019s Bill C-18 and our Search and News products. Google Canada Blog.What can we learn from the agreements between platforms and news publishers in France?by Charis PapaevangelouInstitute for Information Law, University of AmsterdamNOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING84What can we learn from the agreements between platforms and news publishers in France?Charis PapaevangelouCharis Papaevangelou is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam\u2019s Institute for Information Law, where he is examining the implications of the novel EU platform regulatory framework for the relationship between news media organisations and platforms. He earned a Ph.D. in the political economy of online platform governance from the University of Toulouse. His work is situated at the nexus of media, political, cultural, and social sciences.in\/charis-papaevangelou@charispapaev\/charisp.bsky.socialThe platformisation of newsNowadays, cultural production is subject to incessant algorithmic processing, circulated via digital platforms owned by a handful of large tech companies that are increasingly resembling fundamental utilities. According to the 2023 Digital News Report of the Reuters Institute, only 22% of people across all markets surveyed go directly to a media site or application to get their news, while the vast majority access it through search engines and social media platforms. This way, digital platforms owned by Google or Meta condition the ways in which a large part of the population accesses news, impose the most popular formats and control the distribution channels that are indispensable to publishers.At the same time, in the previous years, we saw a great number of commercial agreements between media and platform companies that included partnerships on fact-checking, agreeing on the use of news content for training AI language models and other types of opaque arrangements. While we are now observing the gradual disentanglement of platforms from the news industry or at least a reconsideration of their committment to it, the previous situation led news media organisations to develop RE-THINK POLICY85strong editorial, infrastructural and financial dependencies on Big Tech companies. Against this backdrop, many jurisdictions took regulatory initiatives to level the playing field between news outlets, including smaller ones, and platforms. Many countries decided to follow the competition-based model of Australia\u2019s trendsetting News Media Bargaining Code to make \u2018platforms pay\u2019. Likewise, but from a different perspective, the EU pursued similar legislation based on the bloc\u2019s copyright legal framework. The attempt, however, to rein in platform power has not been without challenges, as seen in Canada. Yet, another telling example, that has not received much attention, is that of France.The French dispatchFrance was the first EU Member State to implement the revamped Directive on Copyright, which was released in 2019 and introduced the possibility for press publishers to seek remuneration for the use and indexing of their content in the form of a so-called neighbouring right. While the Directive targeted short extracts (called snippets) or audio-visual material taken from news companies, its primary objective was to open the space for negotiations to take place between news organisations and platforms. France\u2019s implementation, though, resulted in a sufficiently flawed law that gave plenty of leeway to Big Tech companies to set the rules of the negotiations. Last year, we conducted a study that specifically looked at the deals that, following a year-long spat, were agreed in 2021 and 2022 between Google, Facebook and a coalition of French publishers. It is worth noting that those deals concerned only press titles that were part of the publishers\u2019 associations participating in those negotiations and belonged to the French news industry category of political and general information. Thus, for example, independent online publishers or major sport titles like L\u2019\u00c9quipe were excluded. What we found was that platform companies are extremely well positioned to take advantage of systemic and structural issues that exist in local markets. For instance, the French news ecosystem is significantly fragmented in terms of political orientation, thematic scope, ownership structures, geographical regions, etc. Indeed, larger media titles or publishers, like Le Monde and AFP, secured more lucrative and privileged deals with platforms. As such, the novel regulatory framework that enabled agreements to be pursued between publishers and platforms heavily favours the latter companies, which are united in defending their private, corporate interests.The French parliament commissioned a report in 2022 to assess the impact of the new copyright legal framework for publishers and found that \u201ctwo years after the adoption of the directive and the promulgation of the law, the number of agreements on remuneration for neighbouring rights is quite marginal,\u201d attributing this to the platforms\u2019 operational opacity and lack of willingness to cooperate with policymakers and publishers. The report also lamented that most of the agreements were equally opaque, fuelling information asymmetries among news media and hampering publishers from negotiating their remuneration freely and in an informed manner.This can be further aggravated if the legislation gives ample freedom to the stronger side of the table to set the rules, as happened in the first years of the negotiations. For example, when the law was introduced in 2019, Google responded almost immediately by ceasing to display short text excerpts and thumbnails in its news results, as an effort to avoid being NOVEL DIRECTIONS IN MEDIA INNOVATION AND FUNDING86covered by the law\u2019s scope. When public outcry made them revert that decision sometime later, Google effectively tried to force publishers to accept the bundling of two licences into one, by combining both the Google News Showcase and the neighbouring rights\u2019 licences, which would decisively reduce the money they would have to pay. Another telling example was the fact that the amount of remuneration for each news organisation was, to a large degree, decided by platforms. For instance, for Facebook agreements, this was based on metrics like number of Facebook followers and interactions and, last, website traffic.However, what we also learned was that the role of strong and independent regulators is central to serving the public interest. In particular, the French Competition Authority, following several complaints lodged by the French negotiating publishers, sanctioned Google in 2021 for negotiating in bad faith (as shown by some of the examples mentioned earlier) and issued a penalty of US$592 million along with a series of obligations that the company had to comply with. The final framework agreements signed by Google and Meta were practically the result of this regulatory intervention, which greatly helped correct some of the law\u2019s fallacies. For instance, Meta avoided bundling the Facebook News licence with the neighbouring rights, in contrast with Google\u2019s earlier attempts, but presented the service as the icing on the cake for French publishers to make the proposed deals more attractive. Facebook News, though, launched in France in 2022, with Meta announcing it is pulling the plug on it in 2023. Where do we go from here?France\u2019s example goes to show that despite any well-meant attempt to make platforms pay for the news content they use to populate their digital spaces with quality information, and in spite of strong regulators, the truth of the matter remains that these companies still hold the upper hand in an increasingly platformised world, with news organisations still exposed to the whims of their profit-driven strategies. Therefore, we ought to be wary of the limitations of laws focusing simply on forcing the platforms\u2019 hands to share some money with the news industry, as, even inadvertently, they might in fact reinforce the dependency of journalists on platforms. Hence the need for stronger regulation that impacts the structural and market power amassed by those tech conglomerates, alongside other policies that support public-interest media and institutions like libraries. At the same time, policymakers and news industry stakeholders should also ramp up their efforts to foster cooperation among journalists and publishers to reduce inequalities and fragmentation, especially when dealing with Big Tech platform firms. There is not one silver bullet solution to addressing risks and harms connected to platform power. Instead, we should think of all the above as part of a larger puzzle, as is currently happening in the EU, to come up with holistic responses for more democratic digital spaces.","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2009\/08\/skos-reference\/skos.html#note","classmap":"oc:AnnotationContainer"},"iri":"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2009\/08\/skos-reference\/skos.html#note","explain":"Simple Knowledge Organisation System; Notes are used to provide information relating to SKOS concepts. 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