Paid To Play: Canadian Publishers Receive Google’s First Exemption Payment

Where Canada/United States relations go after next week is anybody’s guess, but those recent posturing headlines have obscured other Canadian-partnership news that loom large in the publishing world.

Of course, I’m referring to the safe arrival of the massive check Google had dropped in the post, allowing the company to stay in north-of-the-border business.

It’s been a while since the Magazine Manager blog checked in on the response to Canada’s Online News Act, the passing of which prompted Google to agree to pay Canadian publishers an annual exemption fee in order to allow news content to be kept in Google’s search results.

Now, Google has sent the agreed-upon CA$100 million to the Canadian Journalism Collective, a non-profit of independent publishers and broadcasters that is working on the redistribution efforts to Canadian media businesses for later this month.

“Some of the organizations include Pivot, The Resolve, IndigiNews, Village Media and the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations,” writes the CBC. “It estimated eligible publishers will receive about $13,798 per full-time equivalent journalist it employs based on a 2,000-hour year. Broadcasters will receive about $6,806 per eligible worker. Small print and digital outlets can expect to receive about $17,000 per journalist that they employ, an official with the Canadian Heritage Department has said.”

While Google has paid the exemption fee, Meta continues to hold out, blocking access to Canadian news. For Google, the exemption keeps “valuable traffic” going to Canadian publishers as well as providing them with “opportunities to use Google tools and products that can help grow and engage their audiences, and drive revenue through advertising and subscriptions.”

As Jaffer Zaidi, VP of Google’s Global News Partnerships, wrote in June: “This … marks a significant evolution in how we support journalism and the news industry in Canada.”