At a three-day symposium in Charlottetown, the overarching takeaway was the urgency and scale of the challenges for independent journalism, and the indisputable through line was the resilience and determination of those fighting to keep their publications afloat.
When journalists, funders and public policy experts gathered on Prince Edward Island for the second consecutive year of discussions over the fate of independent media in this country, a lot of the Charlottetown talk centred on the metaphorical need to get off the island.
There were calls for embattled local media to pivot in their messaging – to stress their value to community and country rather than focusing on the crisis at hand. There was a recognition that philanthropic funding is more effective as a short-term catalyst rather than a long-term revenue stream, and there was an acknowledgement as well that too much reliance on government funding is dangerous. Governments change, priorities and policies evolve, and austerity bites.
This is not to diminish the power of the partnerships between philanthropy and independent media. However, it was agreed there is a need for those seeking grants to become a bit savvier and show more urgency in approaching foundations that are constantly being asked for grants from all walks of Canadian society.
Over the three days that challenges were dissected by 85 participants in the provincial capital, however, the indisputable through line was the resilience and determination of those fighting to keep their publications afloat in challenging times.
“We always remember what keeps us up at night. I’d like to see us focus a bit more on what gets us up in the morning. Sleeplessness is useless. Doing something about it is helpful,” said Jamison Steeve, president and CEO of the Metcalf Foundation.
We always remember what keeps us up at night. I’d like to see us focus a bit more on what gets us up in the morning.
Jamison Steeve, Metcalf Foundation
Lorne Johnson, vice-president of the Ivey Foundation, told the conference that foundations, their boards, and their directors are “terrified” at what they see south of the border and worry about protecting democracy and this country’s social fabric. But they don’t have local media as a conduit to stronger democracy on their radar, he said. “To translate concern into funding and action, you need to show solutions,” he said. “There are solutions on the democracy side to this thing. You have to show urgency. There is a nihilistic sense out there among funders who feel there is very little they can do about social media or the erosion of the social fabric.”
The value of local media must be sold to funders by emphasizing that it is a way to foster a sense of community and reduce the risk of radicalization and polarization, Johnson said. Any funding request requires careful study and must be meticulously laid out and delivered by the best spokespeople you have, he said.
Others advocated using a collective voice, urging collaboration over competition among independent media, which is essentially “all in this together.” This strategy has been used by The Independent Newspaper Group, a collaboration of 23 small family-owned newspapers in the United States, that has been confidentially sharing revenue streams and tactics for four decades.
We are not a bunch of islands in the river. We are in the same damn river.
Alex Freedman, Community Radio Fund of Canada
A pitch for collaboration of outlets of different sizes came from Ethan Cox, co-founder of Ricochet Media, with the acknowledgement that it would take a changed mindset. “We come from a background in media that is competitive, not collaborative,” he said.
“We are not a bunch of islands in the river,” added Alex Freedman, executive director of the Community Radio Fund of Canada. “We are in the same damn river.”
So, if philanthropy cannot be a long-term solution to independent journalism’s ill health, what is its role? It can provide life to a worthy start-up, can keep it breathing in the early years, and can move quickly to provide funding in the short term to allow depth and breadth in reporting by an independent outlet that lacks the funds to do the type of journalism to which it aspires.
Where [philanthropy] is best deployed is where it can be used strategically, quickly, more nimbly than other sources of funding to pilot new ideas, to infuse funding to try something new.
Teresa Marques, Rideau Hall Foundation
“I don’t think philanthropy can ever be considered as a permanent fix,” says Teresa Marques, president and CEO of the Rideau Hall Foundation, which, with the Michener Awards Foundation, sponsored the symposium. “Where it is best deployed is where it can be used strategically, quickly, more nimbly than other sources of funding to pilot new ideas, to infuse funding to try something new. We recognize we’re not a government body.”
It was that nimbleness that allowed the sector to move quickly on the successful Covering Canada grants, a $525,000 collaboration of RHF, the Michener Awards Foundation, and the Public Policy Forum (PPF) that provided from $2,000 to $35,000 for independent news outlets to more effectively cover the 2025 federal election. It came together so quickly, Marques received a call from PPF at 9:30 on a Friday night while she was at a hockey rink with her children to say the fund was a go. It was launched Monday morning. At Charlottetown, there was a lineup at the microphones of recipients wishing to sing its praises.
“We also learned that it didn’t take a huge amount of money to make a big difference,” Marques says.
Ollie Williams told the conference how $20,000 allowed reporters from his Cabin Radio of Yellowknife to go places and cover meetings they had never before been able to travel to in the vast Northwest Territories coverage area.
Sophie Gaulin, the editor-in-chief of Manitoba’s French-language La Liberté newspaper, used the Covering Canada grant to send a reporter to the northern port of Churchill to report on Indigenous issues for the first time. Sending a reporter to Churchill was twice as expensive as sending a reporter to Paris, she said. Barry Rooke, the executive director of the National Campus and Community Radio Association, was able to use grant money to have 25 non-profit stations contribute to a six-hour pre-election show that was fed to 31 communities in eight provinces.
Anita Li of Toronto’s Green Line recalled how $15,000 of start-up money from Inspirit Foundation (she also has been funded by the Rideau Hall Foundation and the Toronto Foundation) allowed her to create her website and start paying an initial team of fellows to help her get started. Li had worked at traditional media but also worked for digital start-ups in the United States and Canada and had some knowledge of what a start-up would look like in Canada before committing $30,000 of her own money to start The Green Line during the pandemic. It is well known for its “Action Journeys” that identify a problem, then take readers on a ride to potential solutions.
You cannot rely on philanthropy for the long term. It’s not a good business model . . . I see it as seed money.
Anita Li, The Green Line
“I’m confident we are on the path to sustainability,” Li says. “You cannot rely on philanthropy for the long term. It’s not a good business model, plus there is less money available from philanthropy these days. I see it as seed money. I’ve been here three and a half years and I have proven I can work with partnerships, there is traction, and there is a market for this.”
“So I am looking for a big injection – hopefully from philanthropy,” Li says, “that will be transformative so I can have a team to work on The Green Line, pay myself properly, and then reinvest in different revenue streams.
Jennifer Hollett is the executive director of The Walrus, which she describes as a “media organization” that produces a magazine (also called The Walrus) and sponsored events, publishes games, hosts leadership dinners, and creates custom content with The Walrus Lab. “The local story is the national story,” she said. “It is a polarization killer.”
While there was discussion of removing the training wheels and not becoming overly reliant on philanthropy, there were also warnings against independent media becoming too reliant on government funding.
Tai Huynh, founder and editor-in-chief of the Toronto-based The Local, told his colleagues to be wary of depending on government programs for more than 15% of their revenue streams. Last year, he said, government programs were responsible for about 12% of the budget of his non-profit outlet. This year, because the government increased the percentage of the labour tax credit, his numbers automatically went up and he expects that 15% to 16% of his revenues will be government dollars.
The largest of the government’s support measures for local journalism, the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) that pays the salary of reporters, will provide $128.8 million since its inception in 2019 to the end of 2027, the latest government commitment. The most recent commitment from 2024 to 2027 is $58.8 million. Another $10 million over the same time frame is from the Changing Narratives Fund, money dedicated to emerging journalists from marginal communities.
The Special Measures for Journalism (SMJ) program provides $38.4 million in funding to small, community-based print and magazine publishers under the Canadian Periodical Fund. There are also tax credits and funding from a Google fund of $100 million ($63 million of which will go to print and digital media), compensation the company agreed to pay to gain an exemption from the Online News Act. Overall, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s November budget extended – but did not increase – funding for local media.
“I don’t know if 15% is a magic number that would work for everybody,” Huynh said. But he pointed to outlets where all the reporters are funded by LJI, calling that a “big risk.” He knows the risks: a government budget move to remove online publications from the SMJ cost him $45,000 in funding.
He was originally funded by five foundations, but over the years the philanthropic mix has changed somewhat with more contributions of smaller amounts, and when he got “registered journalism organization” status, readers could donate, adding further to his revenue mix. He now combines foundation dollars, reader contributions, and a sprinkling of donor-advised funds (money that can be contributed by individual donors from a fund administered by a third party, usually a public or private foundation). Foundation funding makes up about 70% of The Local’srevenue, with no one contribution topping $50,000 – but his reader revenue now makes up 12% to 14% of his revenues.
Marques says her foundation has never been under more granting pressure. There is a precarity, an increase in need in all the sectors she supports, brought on by uncertainty in the community and declining public support of organizations. But she sees granting organizations paying more attention to local media, giving independent outlets an opportunity they may not have had a couple of years ago. Media has a better chance of leveraging philanthropic partners, and there is more of an appetite from those foundations to have recipient media organizations experiment a bit in their journalism. “It’s not just about keeping the lights on,” she says. “You can demonstrate some innovation, and that can lead to increased support from across the sector.”
There were other practical measures discussed in Charlottetown that can help the relationship between philanthropy and journalism. Ana Sofía Hibon of Inspirit has produced guides for philanthropists and journalists because, she said, there is some bridge-building to be done there. Journalists need to know how to apply for a grant, what to look for in a contract, and how to make the greatest impact with the money.
Hibon says that since 2019, at least 50 foundations have contributed to journalism, but the conference was told there is a need for a master list of donors and a map showing the location and scale of potential journalism recipients. There were also calls for a joint defence fund for independent journalism, a move that could bring down costs and embolden some outlets to push their journalistic envelope a bit.
We can be the catalyst that can get you to sustainability, but I don’t think we can be the sole funder or the foundation of that sustainable model.
Jamison Steeve
But if there was an overarching takeaway, it was the urgency and scale of the challenges for independent journalism, tempered with an understanding that Canadian foundations have a tiny fraction of the funds that have been made available to local news by the US philanthropic community. “We can be the catalyst that can get you to sustainability,” Steeve said, “but I don’t think we can be the sole funder or the foundation of that sustainable model.”
Keep that sense of urgency from Charlottetown when you go home, Steeve said. “The most Canadian thing in the world is to have one of these conferences and when you ask on a scale of one to 10 – 10 being your house on fire, and one is everything is fine – what is your level of concern? Everyone says it’s eight or nine or 10, and then the level of action when you leave is one, two, or three. How do you as a group move your actions to eight or nine and convince foundations than an eight, nine, or 10 response is required?”
Editor’s note: This article was corrected on December 11, 2025, to more accurately describe the work of The Walrus.
