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July 21, 2022 - 6:00 AM
A $23.5 million federal fund created for the nation's news media sent more than $600,000 sent to Thompson-Okanagan news outlets.
The top earner is Castanet, which got $149,793 from the Special Measures for Journalism fund for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
That amount doesn't specify whether it's spread across the Glacier Media outlet's four newsrooms from Penticton to Kamloops, but it's followed closely by the single-market newspaper Kamloops This Week at $148,851.
The federal government announced the temporary grant in 2021, which was its second short-term fund for news media to aid publications struggling due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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A document listing all publications that received the funding was published on July 19 by the media criticism publication, Canadaland.
The list includes 764 publications across the country that got funding. The amounts ranged from $1,500 to as much as $171,335.
iNFOnews.ca does not receive funding through this fund.
Eight Okanagan publications got $426,560 from the Special Measures fund and six of those are owned by Black Press, which has dozens of community newspapers in B.C.
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When including the Merritt Herald, Kamloops This Week and Sun Peaks Independent News, Thompson-Okanagan area funding totals $656,226, according to the document.
There are seven other publications that got $149,793, like Castanet. One includes its Glacier Media counterpart, Vancouver Is Awesome.
While a large portion of the list includes daily publications, either online or print, the highest earner was the business magazine Better Farming Ontario at $171,335. Another magazine under the same company, named simply as Better Farming, got $160,739.
The fund was meant to subsidize the news media industry to ensure "Canadians have access to diverse Canadian editorial content in printed magazines, printed community newspapers and digital periodicals," according to the federal government website.
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In order to apply, publishers were required to be majority owned by Canadians. They were also required to publish a majority of original, editorial content, as opposed to sponsored content.
Each publication was also required to be a magazine or non-daily newspaper, either in print or digital.
Go here to read the Canadaland story and the full list of publications.
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