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We’re expanding our support of news in Canada

Jun 24, 2021

[[read-time]] min read

Sabrina Geremia Photo.jpg
Sabrina Geremia
Vice President and Country Managing Director, Google Canada
An illustration showing a woman engaging with News Showcase panels to understand the news

Access to trustworthy information is important to all of us, and it’s vital for society to continue supporting the reporters who work tirelessly to deliver us news. That’s why today we are announcing new investments to continue our support of Canadian newsrooms and journalists across the country. 

Support for Canadian journalism through News Showcase

We have signed agreements with a number of Canadian publishers for Google News Showcase, a product and licensing program that provides a space for newsrooms to curate their content for readers across Google News and Discover. These deals will help support Canadian newsrooms that provide comprehensive general-interest news to the communities they serve. This long-term investment will support news organizations in producing, distributing and explaining essential information to readers. The first Canadian partners for News Showcase are Black Press Media, Glacier Media, The Globe and Mail, Métro Média, Narcity Media, SaltWire Network, Village Media and Winnipeg Free Press.

Together, these eight publishers represent national, regional and local news that touches communities in both official languages from coast-to-coast-to-coast in Canada. Today’s announcement builds on News Showcase deals signed by nearly 800 news publications around the world. More than 90% of these publications represent local or regional news. 

This image shows the logos of Google’s current partners for News Showcase in Canada: Black Press Media, Glacier Media, The Globe and Mail, Métro Média, Narcity Media, SaltWire Network, Village Media and Winnipeg Free Press

Our current News Showcase news partners in Canada

As part of our licensing deals, we’re also paying news organizations for access to select paywalled content, giving Canadians access to a wide range of news content. We work closely with news outlets to determine the right amount of content to share to help drive subscriptions as users experience the benefits of subscribing to authoritative news outlets.

There will be more partnerships to come as we continue to engage in active negotiations with publishers across Canada. We look forward to launching News Showcase here soon. 

What publishers are saying about News Showcase

  • “We are pleased that Google has stepped up to the plate and signed an important partnership with Black Press Media and others,” says Rick O’Connor, CEO and President, Black Press Media, home to some of the most established newspapers in B.C. and Alberta. “There are many other benefits as part of the agreement where Google will assist us in further developing our digital properties. I am pleased to see that Google will also be assisting the small, independent newspapers and websites adapt to an increasing digital world."
  • “Google News Showcase will help support news in communities across Canada large and small, and increase accessibility to daily content. In addition, Glacier Media and our partners have benefited directly from the Google News Initiative,” says Alvin Brouwer, President Glacier Media Digital, which owns more than 60 community media outlets throughout Western Canada. “Their new initiatives to train more than 5,000 journalists in Canada over the next three years to enhance their digital skills, and to provide business-oriented workshops to small and mid-sized news organizations will also help in communities across the country.”
  • “Google News Showcase will introduce even more readers to our award-winning journalism and we're pleased to count Google as a global strategic partner,” says Phillip Crawley, CEO & Publisher of The Globe and Mail. “Reaching new audiences and showing them how The Globe can add value to their daily lives is a necessary step in continuing to grow our digital subscriber base, which is the largest in Canada. This long-term, comprehensive partnership will not only support the extraordinary work of our journalists, but it will also help to accelerate our continued investment in technological innovation and improving the reader experience.”
  • “Our partnership will help enhance our effort to create original local journalistic content and strengthen our mission to give a voice to citizens of Montreal and Quebec City,” says Andrew Mule, president of Métro Média, which owns Journal Métro and local community publications in the Montréal area and in Quebec City. “The GNI training has been a source of inspiration for our teams.”
  • “An investment like this not only benefits us financially as a publisher to help us recruit talented journalists across the country but also widens our audience distribution by attracting readers that might not have considered Narcity as a daily local news source before,” says Chuck Lapointe, CEO of Narcity Media, one of the fastest-growing digital media publishers for millennials in North America.
  • "Google News Showcase will highlight our best local content and help put it in front of more people,” says Steve Bartlett, senior managing editor at SaltWire Network, an Atlantic Canadian-based media organization with more than 100 journalists.
  • “We’re excited to participate in this new project by Google to present fact-based, independent journalism to readers and connect them to trusted sources of news,” says Bob Cox, publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press, a leading news publisher in Western Canada. “It will be a substantial boost to our business, exposing our work to a wider audience and providing a more sustainable, long-term model for local news.”
  • “We are thrilled to now be working with the Google team as a part of News Showcase, a project we strongly believe will have a positive impact on the future of our local news ecosystem here in Canada,” says Jeff Elgie, CEO, Village Media, a fully-digital news service serving communities across Ontario.


Expanded support through Google News Initiative 

News Showcase is just one part of our longstanding, overall commitment to the Canadian news industry. Today we are also announcing additional investments through our Google News Initiative, a global effort to help journalism thrive in the digital age: 

Training journalists in digital skills: Over the next three years we’ll train 5,000 Canadian journalists and journalism students on strengthening digital skills in newsrooms – a five-times increase from the 1,000 journalists we’ve already trained to date. 

Supporting business sustainability: We’ll expand our business-oriented workshops for small and mid-sized news organizations on topics including audience development, reader revenue and advertising revenue. The 10 sessions will be delivered in French and English and build upon our award winning News Consumer Insights tools.

We are introducing our first custom designed GNI Startups Boot Camp dedicated exclusively to aspiring Canadian news entrepreneurs starting a business or non-profit journalism project in Canada.  Applications open in the fall. 

Promoting news innovation: We are announcing our third North American Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge to fund selected projects focused on helping local publishers think about new ways to understand, enhance and serve the needs of their communities. Applications are now open.

“When the Halifax Examiner joined GNI Startup Labs, I was cautiously optimistic that it would be of value. But the actual experience has been beyond anything I could have dreamed of,” says Tim Bousquet, editor and publisher of the Halifax Examiner. “Thanks to speaking with other media operators struggling to make sense of our industry, and especially thanks to working hand-in-hand with a coach who walked us through our challenges, the Examiner now has a deeper and more fruitful understanding of our business model, the approach to revenue, and how to prepare for the future and grow.”

These new and expanded programs build on our long-term support for Canadian news organizations of all sizes. In 2019 alone, Google sent five billion clicks to Canadian news sites, for free (an estimated half billion dollars in value, according to Deloitte). During the COVID-19 pandemic, our Journalism Emergency Relief Fund directly supported more than 200 different newsrooms across Canada to keep journalists working and Canadians informed. 

Today's news represents a shared goal that Google and news publishers in Canada are focused on – long-term success for journalism in Canada. That’s why Google is committed to playing a constructive role alongside publishers to enable a sustainable future for news that Canadians can depend on for years to come. 

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