Canadian Media Ownership Index

Our goal is to provide a better understanding of the Canadian Mainstream Media in a time of great digital proliferation where radical transparency may help rebuild trust. Some outlets on this index may not be deeemed journalism by many. We list those media orgs with over 12,000 monthly uniques and regular sources of news in the national conversation. If viewing by mobile, turn your phone sideways (or fund us for better data viz help).

 

 

The Canadian federal government passed Bill C-30 enacted in June 2021 created the labour tax credit (LTC). The LTC was announced in Budget 2019 and received royal assent in June 2019 to offer payroll subsidies and tax break incentives for digital news subscriptions. The government created an independent board to review applications by media orgs to designate those elligible for the tax credits as Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO). We urge the Canadian government to make this list of QCJOs and its process for qualification transparent given many of these outlets receive significant payroll subsidies. We would also welcome Google and Facebook to provide us with a list of which Canadian media outlets receive funding from these platforms and the amount they receeive. All media highlighted in purple have received QCJO designation, according to Revenue Canada here.

We hope this sheds light and opens a more thoughtful discussion. 

We have time-stamped this index – Feb 12, 2022. Please email heidi_legg@iq.harvard.edu for any corrections or additions.

canadian_mainstream_media_ownership_index_by_iqss_harvard.pdf562 KB

Canadian Media Infographs

  Mainstream Media
(ranked by audience size)
               
Top Investors/Donors/Owners
                              
Tax Status
        

Monthly digital uniques (each unique person counts as one visit)

Source Medium 
1 CBC/Radio Canada
(All CBC digital reach)
CBC Canadian Broadcast Corporation: CBC News, CBC.ca, CBC Sports, Radio-Canada

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is Canada’s public broadcaster. Created by an Act of Parliament in 1936, the government-owned company provides services in both of Canada’s official languages, English and French. All told, the CBC operates two television networks, four radio networks, a cable television service, an international shortwave radio service and a commercial-free audio service. CBC operates approximately 100 radio and television stations across Canada. Torstar reported, CBC budget funding from the federal government is around $33/capita. This report (page 240 shows the federal appropriations for thee CBC over the past decade has hovered around $1 billion.

According to Press Gazette: CBC/Radio Canada is number 48 of 50 Biggest Global media companies
Total revenues: $1.3bn (CAD$1.7bn)
News/information/media revenues: $1.3bn (CAD$1.7bn)
Source: Full-year 2019/20 results

Canada’s equivalent of the BBC, the bulk of CBC/Radio Canada’s income is from government funding.
Public 25,273,000

Comscore Dec. 2021

Radio, TV, Digital
2 CTV
(all CTV digital reach)
BCE. Bell Media Inc. is a Canadian media conglomerate that is the mass media subsidiary of BCE Inc.

Its operations include television broadcasting and production, radio broadcasting, digital media and Internet properties. Bell Media owns 35 local television stations led by CTV, Canada’s most-watched television network, and the French-language Noovo network in Québec; and 27 specialty channels, including leading specialty services TSN and RDS. See 2020 annual report on Bell Media.

According to Press Gazette: Bell Canada is number 36 out of 50 Biggest Global media companies.
Top news/information brands: CTV, BNN Bloomberg, 30 local TV stations, 109 radio stations
Total revenues: $18.3bn (CAD$24bn)
News/information/media revenues: $2.5bn (CAD$3.2bn)
Source: Full-year 2019 results

Primarily a telecommunications business, Bell Canada’s media division – Bell Media – has owned 100% of Canadian media giant CTV for nearly a decade.
Publicly traded 21,009,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Radio, TV, Digital
3 The Weather Network and MétéoMédia Owned by Canadian Pelmorex, Pelmorex is founded by Pierre L. Morrissette, Chairman, President and CEO, and controlling shareholder.

Founded in 1989, "Pelmorex" is a portmanteau derived from the name of the company's chairman and controlling shareholder, Pierre L. Morrissette. In 1991, Morrisette acquired The Weather Network, an Canadian English-language weather information specialty channel and MétéoMédia, a French-language weather channel. Both deliver weather information on television, digital platforms and TV apps. Currently, The Weather Network is available in Canada, the U.S. and the UK. Pelmorex is a market leader in operating multi-platform TV, Web and Mobile services in weather-related information categories under the leading brands The Weather Network, MétéoMédia, eltiempo.es and Clima. It also operates Canada's National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System, part of Alert Ready. 
Privately owned 16,525,000

 

 

Comscore Nov. 2021.

The company reaches over 60 million users internationally with a focus on North America, Europe and LATAM.

Digital and Cable
4 Global News Corus Entertainment owns Global News and the billion-dollar media company is majority owned (80%) by the family of JR Shaw. The same family also owns about 80% of the voting rights in Shaw Communications which funds $13 million for local news provided by Corus television stations so the two companies are deeply intertwined.

The Television segment is comprised of 33 specialty television networks (34 services prior to December 31,
2020), 15 conventional television stations, digital assets, a social media digital agency, a social media creator
network, technology and media services, and the Corus content business. The Radio segment comprises 39 radio stations, situated primarily in urban centres in English Canada, with a concentration in the densely populated area of Southern Ontario," as noted in its 2021 Q1 report.

Founded in 1999 by JR Shaw, the company was built from media assets originally owned by Shaw Communications. News Brands include Global News, various Canadian radio stations, Curiouscast. Curiouscast is Canada’s fastest growing podcast network from Corus Entertainment. Curiouscast is home to award winning podcasts like Crime Beat and 13 Hours, as well as Global News’ What Happened To…?, Ongoing History of New Music, Nighttime, Dark Poutine, History of the 90’s and much more. Most recently launched: Marshall, ARTchitects, China Rising, and Escaping Denver.

Canadian media empire Rogers Communications Inc is currently in play to purchase Shaw Communications Inc for about C$26 billion ($16.02 billion) in a deal that would create Canada's second-largest cellular and cable operator. By acquiring fourth-ranked Shaw, Rogers would leapfrog Telus Corp (T.TO) and take on market leader BCE Inc (BCE.TO) in the highly competitive Canadian telecommunications industry. Rogers, the owner of Citytv and CityNews, has said it will cancel the funding to Corus and use it to boost its own news programming, specifically in Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver, according to ipolitics.ca. The estimated $26-billion deal is currently under review by the CRTC and the Competition Bureau. Corus Media Annual Report is here.

Press Gazette: Corus Entertainment is number 50 out of 50 Biggest Global media companies.
Top news/information brands: Global News, various Canadian radio stations, Curiouscast
Total revenues: $1.2bn (CAD$1.5bn)
News/information/media revenues: $1.2bn (CAD$1.5bn)
Source: Full-year results to August 2020
Publicly Traded 16,045,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Radio, TV, Digital
5 PostMedia Network
(all PostMedia digital reach with individual sites broken out below)
Postmedia Network Inc. is majority owned (66%) by Chatham Asset Management, a US Private Equity Firm that also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy.

Postmedia Network Canada Corp. (TSX:PNC.A, PNC.B) is the holding company that owns Postmedia Network Inc and a network of 120+ brands including iconic newspaper titles including The National Post, The Financial Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald and Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, canada.com and canoe.com, and more.

Leon Cooperman, an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager and chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors owns 14 percent, a New York-based investment advisory firm managing over $3.3 billion in assets under management, the majority consisting of his personal wealth, and Allianz, the German Insurance Company owns 19 per cent. Mr. Cooperman and Chatham are also co-investors in American Media Inc., parent of the National Enquirer. "Chatham is led by Anthony Melchiorre, a Chicago-area native who has earned a reputation on Wall Street as a tough negotiator. After several stints at elite firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, he was let go from Morgan Stanley in 2002 as part of a sweeping round of layoffs. Soon after, he crossed the Hudson River to set up his own hedge fund in Chatham, N.J. Mr. Melchiorre manages over $4 billion in assets for clients through various funds, including some listed under a Cayman Islands address, where more favorable tax rates apply," reports NYT. Andrew MacLeod is President and Chief Executive Officer, Postmedia. Paul V. Godfrey, CM is Chair, Postmedia.

As the NYT reported, "Chatham Asset Management, acquired two-thirds of Postmedia, the publisher of The National Post, The Vancouver Sun and several other major Canadian papers, by trading a portion of the money it was owed for the majority ownership stake. The deal happened so quietly that Postmedia’s own financial news site described it as a debt restructuring in a report that included a single mention of Chatham as “one of the investors.” Before the restructuring was completed, Postmedia owed approximately $648 million to its debt holders. "The restructuring also sees that Postmedia’s 12.5 per cent second lien notes, originally due in July 2018 and amounting to U.S. 268.6 million, have been exchanged for 98 per cent of the company’s voting and non-voting shares," reports Financial Post.

In the report, the American majority-owned company with the 4th largest audience reach in the country, predicted over $10 million in Canadian federal government which all qualifying media in Canada can now apply to receive. The total amount is calculated by size and reach of newsrooms. This funding was made possible by the new Trudeau Bill C-97, announced in the 2019 federal budget that passed three income tax measures to provide support to Canadian journalism organizations producing original news content. "During the three months and year ended August 31, 2021, we recognized a recovery of compensation expense of $2.1 million and $6.9 million, respectively, related to the journalism tax credits (2020 – $0.5 million expense and $4.5 million recovery, respectively). As at August 31, 2021, the aggregate journalism tax credit receivable of $5.5 million is included in trade and other receivables on the condensed consolidated statement of financial position (August 31, 2020 - $10.8 million). Based on our current staffing levels and no other forms of assistance being received we expect the per annum gross federal journalism tax credit to be between $8 million and $10 million and the Quebec journalism tax credit to be approximately $1 million." They report print circulation revenue was $171.8 million in 2021 and Digital revenue was $102.9 million, per 2021 annual report.

Post empire once owned by Conrad Black. Chatham also own US-based McClatchy newspapers, The National Enquirer and A360 Media that publish celebrity and health magazines like US Weekly. Two key board US board members were added with Chatham took over. "Mary Junck, executive chairman of Lee Enterprises, an American newspaper publisher that owns some 54 daily papers and in 2013 went through its own recapitalization following a bankruptcy and subsequent bailout by billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway; American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker, whose company owns and publishes celebrity and lifestyle publications including the National Enquirer" which is also owned by Chatham Asset Management, according to the Financial Post.
Publicly traded 15,190,000 Comscore Nov. 2021 Print and Digital
6 Rogers Media Inc.
(all Rogers digital reach)
 
Rogers Communications. Rogers Communications Inc. owns 100% of Rogers Media Inc. This is a useful map by CRTC on Rogers holdings. The Rogers family trust owns 97 per cent of the class A voting shares and 9.89 per cent of class B shares, which pay dividends but do not have voting rights. Family members also take up a disproportionate share of board seats. Rogers owns City TV and is a licensee of 13 local TV stations, sports channels, network and satellite-to-cable programming and 55 radio stations across the country.

Rogers is currently trying to purchase Shaw Communications "for C$26 billion ($16.02 billion) in a deal that would create Canada's second-largest cellular and cable operator. By acquiring fourth-ranked Shaw, Rogers would leapfrog Telus Corp (T.TO) and take on market leader BCE Inc (BCE.TO) in the highly competitive Canadian telecommunications industry," according to Reuters.

From Press Gazette: Rogers Communications is is number 45 of 50 Biggest Global media companies.
Top news/information brands: CityTV, local TV stations, sports channel
Total revenues: $11.5bn (CAD$15.1bn)
News/information/media revenues: $1.6bn (CAD$2.1bn)
Source: Full-year 2019 results

As well as owning Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays, Rogers’ media division runs CityTV and several local news and sports channels across Canada.
Publicly Traded 13,000,000 Self-reported by Rogers Brightcove: "Under the Rogers Media umbrella are over one hundred brands delivering news, sports, and lifestyle entertainment to over 13 million digital visitors." Radio, TV, Digital
7 Québecor (all digital reach)
TVA
Le Journal de Montreal
Le Journal de Quebec
24 heures
Videotron
Québecor. Québecor Media Group has a significant hold on French Québec media. It owns TVA, Le Journal de Montreal, Le Journal de Quebec, 24 hrs, Videotron. In 2015, Québecor Inc. sold its English-language Sun papers and digital assets to Postmedia Network Canada Corp for $316-million. Since then, Québecor has doubled down on its role as the largest owner of French-language media in the country. Quebecor also owns Canadian Living. In 2019, a marketing firm took a survey of 17,000 Canadian shoppers, and Canadian Living was voted as the "most trusted" magazine in Canada. (wiki)

Le Journal de Montreal alone has 4,092,000 monthly uniques and Journal de Quebec has over 2,911,000 monthly uniques and Videotron has 2,323,000 monthly uniquese and 24heures.ca has 874,000 per Comscore Dec. 2021. We also noticed that digital consumers of French-language titles in Canada spend 3-4x more pageviews per visit. Le Journal de Montréal is the largest-circulating newspaper in Quebec, and the highest-circulating French-language daily newspaper in North America.

Québecor's multi platform business segment includes the operations of TVA Group (television channels, magazines, film and television production services) – a leader in news media, book publishing, music recording, distribution of cultural products and advertising sales. Together, its media platforms reach 99% of Quebecers every week. Here is their annual report from 2020 where they say government support is counted as revenue. We could not find a line item that described the payroll subsidy for QCJOs.

In 1954, even before Le Journal de Montréal was created, when he owned Le Journal de Rosemont and four other neighbourhood weeklies, Pierre Péladeau decided to print his papers himself in order to be more independent … and stay one step ahead of a competitor. That move also led to the creation of more publications and his own distribution network. A wonderful history of Pierre Péladeau publishing empire beginnings is here.
Publicly Traded 10,200,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print, TV and Digital
8 Globe and Mail

 
Thomson Family of Canada, Woodbridge Co. Ltd, is Canada's richest family and they also own Thomson Reuters. In 2015, they bought the remaining stake of the Globe and Mail newspaper from BCE. Woodbridge Co. Ltd. is the private holding company of the Thomson family. Financial terms of the sale were not disclosed.

"David Thomson and his family control a media and publishing empire founded by his grandfather Roy Thomson," writes Forbes in their profile of the family. "The family's biggest holding: more than 350 million shares of Thomson Reuters, where Thomson serves as chairman."

According to Press Gazette: Thomson Reuters is Number 23 out of top 50 Global media brands
Total revenues: $5.9bn
News/information/media revenues: $5.9bn
Source: Full-year 2019 results

Thomson Reuters is best known globally for the global news and financial coverage of consumer-facing Reuters. But, like Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters is also a B2B giant, providing legal professionals, corporate customers, tax and accounting professionals and others with important business information. According to Reuters, Refinitiv was part of Thomson Reuters until private equity firm Blackstone Group Inc (BX.N) acquired a majority stake in it in 2018. Blackstone and Thomson Reuters subsequently sold Refinitiv to the LSE, closing the deal in January 2021. As part of its initial separation, Refinitiv struck a 30-year news agreement with Reuters. Under the agreement, Reuters is guaranteed annual payments of at least $336 million to provide news and editorial content to Refinitiv until 2048."

The Globe and Mail does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with TorStar, Le Devoir, Les Coops de l'information, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported TorStar, October 2021.
Privately owned 9,369,000 Comscore Dec. 2021

 

Print and Digital
9 Toronto Star Owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million.

In addition to the iconic newspaper the company is named after, NordStar also got a slew of other under-the-radar assets. One of them was a digital publishing company called VerticalScope valued at 3 times Torstar itself." NordStar Capital is controlled by Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, and owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families. Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC." The Torstar company was delisted on the Toronto Stock Exchange once the deal closed.

Jordan Bitove is the Publisher of the Toronto Star, Co-Proprietor of Torstar Corporation, and founding partner of NordStar Capital. He is also the Managing Director of Bitove Capital which has diverse interests in real estate, hospitality, natural resources and distribution.

Norstar Capital also owns through Torstar: The Star Business, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard,The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record and last year, according to CBC, "Torstar partnered with retailer Golf Town to purchase the SCOREGolf brand, and in March, it bought the rights to Cineplex Magazine, which movie-goers thumb through while waiting for their movie to start."

TorStar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Les Coops de l'information, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported TorStar, October 2021.
Privately owned for profit 8,175,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
10 National Post Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy, The National Enquirer and A360 Media that publish celebrity and health magazines like US Weekly. Postmedia's 120+ brands include iconic newspaper titles including The National Post, The Financial Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald and Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, canada.com and canoe.com, and more.

Other owners include American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman who owns 14%, and Allianz, the German Insurance company owns 19%. Post empire was once owned by Conrad Black.
Publicly Traded 7,202,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
11 Narcity Media Narcity Media Inc., founded by Charles Lapointe and Joshua McRae, is a Canadian online media company that owns and operates Narcity Canada, Narcity Toronto, Narcity USA and MTL Blog. Lapointe is the majority owner. The remaining shares are allocated to employees and their is a one Canadian investor who owns a small percentage, per call with Charles.

The company was founded in Montreal, Quebec in 2013 as MTL Blog Inc., and converted into Narcity in 2016 when it expanded into the rest of Canada. It is one of the fastest-growing digital media publishers for millennials covering everything from up-to-the-minute breaking news stories to original travel bucket lists, and "creator content" from coast to coast.

Privately owned for profitalong with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 7,065,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital
12 Epoch Times Vancouver and Toronto Unclear funding. Founded in 2000 by John Tang, an Atlanta-based follower of the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, Epoch Times is funded by Falun Gong, a religious group that has been called a doomsday cult.

The Epoch Times in the US is a pro-Trump, nonprofit news outlet owned by members of Falun Gong, a religious group started by a fervently anti-communist Chinese, now American, Li Hongzhi who is its spiritual leader that “believes in a coming judgment day that will send communists to hell and says Trump is helping accelerate that timeline,” a recent NBC News investigation found. Epoch Times spent around $11 million on pro-Trump Facebook ads before being banned from buying Facebook ads that spread conspiracy theories is barred by Facebook after trying to conceal its tracks. Epoch Media Group and Falun Gong's outreach work are done together with Shen Yun, a dance group known for its ubiquitous advertising and unusual performances. Its leaders opposed homosexuality, feminism and popular music, and claimed to be a god who can float and walk on the wall, reported NYT in How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine. Epoch strategy to go direct to Facebook with polarizing stories and deliver paper copies to rural areas in Canada and US, reported The Atlantic.
Nonprofit 5,700,000

CBC reported they reach 5.7m readers in Canada a month.

Comscore Dec. 2021 shows 369,000 almost as many uniques as the Ottawa Sun or
Le Droit.

13 BlogTO
(recently acquired by lifestyle content media company ZoomerMedia)

ZoomerMedia Limited owns BlogTo. In January 2022, ZoomerMedia acquired all of the shares of Freshdaily Inc., owner and publisher Blogto.com from founder Tim Shore who launched the digital outlet in 2004. Longtime media mogul in Canada, Moses Znaimer (who founded Citytv, CP24, MuchMusic, Bravo! and more over the past 25 years), saw digital growth in blogTO, the leading digital source for local Toronto news, culture, restaurant reviews, event listings, and all the best the city has to offer and access to the millennial market.

The acquisition provides ZoomerMedia a local audience that is unrivaled in terms of online and social media reach and engagement has established itself as a leading digital media brand in Canada around things to do in Toronto. Zoomer swings on the other end of the pendulum, having focused on the Boomer digital market since its founding in 2008, per press release from GlobeNewswire, on behalf of ZoomerMedia and as seen on YahooFinance who publish GlobeNewswire releases. To add to the confusion online today, GlobalNewswire is a content provider whose releases are automatically published to the Yahoo network, and it doesn't constitute reporting by Yahoo Finance, per email with Yahoo Finance.

ZoomerMedia is Canada's leading diversified multimedia company devoted to creating content, services and experiences for Canada's largest demographic - "Zoomers" or the 17.2 million Canadians aged 45 plus - on all platforms: television, radio, print, digital, and live events. Zoomer Media television properties include VisionTV, Canada’s only multi-faith specialty television service available in 8 million homes; ONETV: The Exercise and Entertainment Channel with fitness programs to work out and dramas, soaps and popular movies to wind down; JoyTV in Vancouver, Victoria, Surrey and the Fraser Valley; and FAITHTV, the Nation's Faith Station. ZoomerMedia also operates TVL Channel 5, a linear television channel guide available to Rogers subscribers in Ontario and New Brunswick.

ZoomerMedia radio properties include The New Classical FM (96.3 FM in the Greater Toronto Area/103.1FM in Eastern Ontario/102.9FM in Southern Georgian Bay), English Canada’s only commercial all-classical music radio service; and Zoomer Radio (AM740 and 96.7FM in Downtown Toronto), playing The Original Greatest Hits. ZoomerMedia also publishes ZOOMER Magazine, the largest paid circulation magazine in Canada for the mature market, everythingzoomer.com - Canada’s leading provider of online content targeting the 45plus demographic, On The Bay Magazine, a regional lifestyle magazine published quarterly for the 20 towns and villages of Southern Georgian Bay, Ontario, and TONIC magazine, a freely-distributed Toronto health and wellness magazine published six times a year. ZoomerMedia's tradeshow and conference division operates the Toronto and Vancouver ZoomerShow, Canada's largest annual lifestyle expos and consumer shows for the 45plus, and produces Moses Znaimer's 3-day ideaCity conference. Both ZoomerMedia and CARP are located in The ZoomerPlex, a 2.6-acre state-of-the-art production and live event complex in Toronto's Liberty Village.

“Thus far we have been edging our analog radio, TV, and magazine products and audiences into the digital domain,” says ZoomerMedia Founder and CEO Moses Znaimer. “In aggregate our digital properties today deliver over 50 million page views a year. This acquisition will add 350 million+ such views (and growing rapidly) and is also intended to kickstart a suite of new, mobile-friendly, digital offerings that we will soon announce.”

Publicly Traded 5,466,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital
14 La Presse La Presse became a nonprofit in 2018. Desmarais family, the publication's longtime owners, donated $50M before severing ties enabling the French-language publication to accept private donations as well as government support. Nonprofits are a common model in the U.S., where wealthy foundations and donors help bankroll investigative and public interest journalism however, it does leave newsroom reliant on political interests of donors vs. an independent revenue model driven by ads and subscriptions.

The Canadian Liberal government under Justin Trudeau, "proposed $50 million over five years to support independent, non-governmental organizations that will spur on local journalism in underserved communities.

Levasseur said that a non-profit model makes it easier for the Liberals to justify using taxpayer dollars to bail out struggling media organizations," reported CBC.
Non Profit 5,226,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
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  Mainstream Media
(ranked by audience size)
               
Top Investors/Donors/Owners
                              
Tax Status
        

Monthly digital uniques    (each device a person owns counts as one visit)

Source
         
Medium 
15 CityTV

Rogers Communications. Rogers Communications Inc. owns 100% of Rogers Media Inc. This is a useful map by CRTC on Rogers holdings. The Rogers family trust owns 97 per cent of the class A voting shares and 9.89 per cent of class B shares, which pay dividends but do not have voting rights. Family members also take up a disproportionate share of board seats. Rogers owns City TV and is a licensee of 13 local TV stations, sports channels, network and satellite-to-cable programming and 55 radio stations across the country. Rogers is currently trying to purchase Shaw Communications "for C$26 billion ($16.02 billion) in a deal that would create Canada's second-largest cellular and cable operator. By acquiring fourth-ranked Shaw, Rogers would leapfrog Telus Corp (T.TO) and take on market leader BCE Inc (BCE.TO) in the highly competitive Canadian telecommunications industry," according to Reuters.

Top news/information brands: CityTV, local TV stations, sports channels
Total revenues: $11.5bn (CAD$15.1bn)
News/information/media revenues: $1.6bn (CAD$2.1bn)
Source: Full-year 2019 results
As well as owning Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays, Rogers’ media division runs CityTV and several local news and sports channels across Canada.

Publicly Traded 4,976,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 TV
16 Daily Hive (Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary) Daily Hive was founded by Farhan Mohamed, Manny Bahia, and Karm Sumal under the name Vancity Buzz. The name was changed to Daily Hive in 2016 when the company expanded nationally. It focused on hyper local content around lifestyle and news using unique thematic channels, such as Dished, Mapped, and Urbanized. It has local audience and advertisers in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, Edmonton, Seattle, and Portland. With a dominant and growing social media following, Daily Hive is supported by an in-house Influencer Agency, ID, and a Digital Marketing Agency, Colony.

In 2019, Daily Hive Toronto acquired Torontoist, a digital startup from St. Joseph Media that publishes Toronto Life and McLean's, to name a few.

We were unable to confirm if the founders are majority ownership or other investors involved.
Privately owned for profit 4,571,000 Comscore Dec 2021 Digital
17 Toronto Sun Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy, The National Enquirer and A360 Media that publish celebrity and health magazines like US Weekly. Postmedia's 120+ brands include iconic newspaper titles including The National Post, The Financial Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald and Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, canada.com and canoe.com, and more.

Other owners include American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman who owns 14%, and Allianz, the German Insurance company owns 19%. Post empire was once owned by Conrad Black.
Publicly Traded 3,109,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
18 Vancouver Sun

Also  Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. The National Enquirer and A360 Media that publish celebrity and health magazines like US Weekly. Postmedia's 120+ brands include iconic newspaper titles including The National Post, The Financial Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald and Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, canada.com and canoe.com, and more.

Other owners include American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman who owns 14%, and Allianz, the German Insurance company owns 19%. Post empire was once owned by Conrad Black.

Publicly Traded 2,434,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
19 Ottawa Citizen Also Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy, The National Enquirer and A360 Media that publish celebrity and health magazines like US Weekly. Postmedia's 120+ brands include iconic newspaper titles including The National Post, The Financial Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald and Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, canada.com and canoe.com, and more.

Other owners include American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman who owns 14%, and Allianz, the German Insurance company owns 19%. Post empire was once owned by Conrad Black.
Publicly Traded 2,367,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
20 Montreal Gazette

Also  Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy, The National Enquirer and A360 Media that publish celebrity and health magazines like US Weekly. Postmedia's 120+ brands include iconic newspaper titles including The National Post, The Financial Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald and Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, canada.com and canoe.com, and more.

Other owners include American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman who owns 14%, and Allianz, the German Insurance company owns 19%. Post empire was once owned by Conrad Black.

Publicly Traded 2,205,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
21 Financial Post Also Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy, The National Enquirer and A360 Media that publish celebrity and health magazines like US Weekly. Postmedia's 120+ brands include iconic newspaper titles including The National Post, The Financial Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald and Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, canada.com and canoe.com, and more.

Other owners include American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman who owns 14%, and Allianz, the German Insurance company owns 19%. Post empire was once owned by Conrad Black.
Publicly Traded 2,068,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
22 Report on Business by Globe and Mail  Thomson Family of Canada, Woodbridge Co. Ltd, also own Thomson Reuters. In 2015, they bought the remaining stake of the newspaper from BCE. Woodbridge Co. Ltd. is the private holding company of the Thomson family. Financial terms of the sale were not disclosed.

According to Press Gazette: Thomson Reuters is Number 23 out of top 50 Global media brands
Total revenues: $5.9bn
News/information/media revenues: $5.9bn
Source: Full-year 2019 results

Thomson Reuters is best known globally for the global news and financial coverage of consumer-facing Reuters. But, like Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters is also a B2B giant, providing legal professionals, corporate customers, tax and accounting professionals and others with important business information. According to Reuters, Refinitiv was part of Thomson Reuters until private equity firm Blackstone Group Inc (BX.N) acquired a majority stake in it in 2018. Blackstone and Thomson Reuters subsequently sold Refinitiv to the LSE, closing the deal in January 2021. As part of its initial separation, Refinitiv struck a 30-year news agreement with Reuters. Under the agreement, Reuters is guaranteed annual payments of at least $336 million to provide news and editorial content to Refinitiv until 2048."

ROB does receive undisclosed payments payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 1,997,000 Comscore Nov 2021 Print and Digital
23 Post Millennial Co-Founded in 2017 by Matthew Azrieli and Ali S. Taghva, The Post Millennial is an alternative news and opinion website based in Montreal, Canada. On its site it says, "The Post Millennial has become one of Canada’s fastest growing news organizations and one of the largest conservative news outlets in the world." It is owned and operated by the Après le Millénaire / The Post Millennial Corporation, located at 5369 Queen Marie, Montreal, H3X 1V1. It is backed by private investors, but their identities have not been made public. Other funding sources remain unclear, with proceeds from advertising or subscriptions undefined. Azrieli is the grandson of billionaire Canadian-Israeli developer, architect and philanthropist David Azrieli. We were unable to confirm if the founders are majority ownership or other investors involved.

Four of its five editors live in the US. Editor in Chief, Libby Emmons is a Brooklyn-based editor and writer who covers culture and news. She is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She has an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Libby has appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Ingraham Angle, and other shows and podcasts.

According to the CBC, In May 2019, the site brought on Jeff Ballingall, a former political staffer to Ontario Premier Doug Ford in the 2018 election thanks to his third-party advertising group, Ontario Proud. "Ballingall runs a network of Proud pages (including a national version called Canada Proud), all of which are registered as third-party advertisers. Post Millennial stories are frequently shared on the Proud network of Facebook pages," reported CBC.

It publishes national and local news and has a large amount of opinion content. It has a journalism integrity mission and says it is funded by advertisement and link revenue. It has been criticized for releasing misleading articles as well as for opaque funding and political connections. "We take on corrupt politicians, the far-left, and the corrupt corporate media" is its slogan. Seyed Ali Taghva, editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Post Millennial, said the site is unabashedly a "centre-right news organization, the same way the Toronto Star is a liberal news organization." True that the Toronto Star sale to the private Nordstar owners was pendent on the new owners promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC. However, one may argue the Toronto Star has a much higher rate of paid journalists and original news over opinion pieces. 

CBC/Radio-Canada investigation found poor transparency around its political ties — for one thing, many of its writers have openly campaigned for conservative politicians — and unanswered questions about its journalistic standards and funding model.
Privately owned for profit 1,968,000 SimilarWeb Pro average monthly uniques Jan to March 2021.

Uniques N/A from Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Digital Only

 
24 Village Media

VillageMedia Village is privately owned with the exception of a small minority interest from Glacier Media (public company in Canada). Jeff Elgie, Village Media’s CEO, and his family are the majority owners. Elgie started out his venture as a single news site in an Ontario city.

Village Media is a digital only news and information business that operates eight of its own local websites in Ontario, and operates websites for other media companies. It also licenses its own proprietary community website platform software. Everyone is Canadian including the other shareholders, per email with Elgie. Village Media is a collective of 60 local news sites listed here across three continents. They report five million readers across them all.

Villagemedia.ca own and operate a network of community news websites and empower other local news publishers around the globe with the technology, programs and support they need to be successful. Brands included in the collective include Glacier Media, Embarcadero Media, Great West Media (also 50% owned by Glacier), O'Rourke Media, Rogers Sports & Media, Dougall Media, as well as McClatchy in the United States and Archant Media in the United Kingdom. Villager, its community engine, is a purpose-built community news, information and advertising platform.

Village Media does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Privately owned for profit 1,783,000 Comscore Dec 2021.

Direct email with CEO reported unique much higher at 4,500,000.
Digital Only
25 Calgary Herald Also  Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy, The National Enquirer and A360 Media that publish celebrity and health magazines like US Weekly.

Postmedia's 120+ brands include iconic newspaper titles including The National Post, The Financial Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald and Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, canada.com and canoe.com, and more. Other owners include American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman who owns 14%, and Allianz, the German Insurance company owns 19%. Post empire was once owned by Conrad Black.
Publicly Traded 1,701,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
26 VancouverisAwesome.com

Owned by Glacier Media. Founded in 2008, Bob Kronbauer, founder and editor of popular website Vancouver Is Awesome, which shares office space and owners with the Vancouver Courier. Ironically, Kronbauer moved out of the city he has passionately repped for more than a decade due to costs joining an exodus of young families feeling Vancouver’s financial pinch. Kronbauer now makes the commute into the city four days a week.

Glacier Media CEO, Jon Kennedy confirmed by phone that Glacier owns VancouverIsAwesome, Castanet, The Times Colonist and a portion of VillageMedia, as well as 59% of ALTA Newspaper Group that includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. Glacier also own 28% of Continental Newspapers with former Hollinger owner David Radler and Radler is the majority owner of Continental divided under many corporate names that include The Kelowna Courier, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Penticton Herald, to name a few. Glacier also owns 48% of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers (RISN Operations Inc.), a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. RISN papers are part of VillageMedia. Sam Grippo, Glacier's chairman of the board, was a group publisher at Hollinger with Radler.

GlacierMedia Digital (GMD) is a Canadian business information and media products company and provides news, market information and sector-specific data within North America and internationally, based in Vancouver. Run by Jonathon J.L. Kennedy, President and CEO who oversees all aspects of Glacier’s business information and community media assets and a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. The Company’s strategy is to build a standalone digital local media business with leading market positions in British Columbia and other Western Canadian markets. The company (TSE:GVC) received CAD $4.28 million of development capital from Madison Venture on January 27, 2021 through a private placement, according to Pitchbook. Madison Ventures owns 51% of Glacier Media and is a private corporation owned by a number of investors. We were unable to confirm the majority owner.

Glacier Media does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Publicly Traded 1,654,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital Only

 
27 Edmonton Journal Also  Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy, The National Enquirer and A360 Media that publish celebrity and health magazines like US Weekly. Postmedia's 120+ brands include iconic newspaper titles including The National Post, The Financial Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald and Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, canada.com and canoe.com, and more.

Other owners include American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman who owns 14%, and Allianz, the German Insurance company owns 19%. Post empire was once owned by Conrad Black.
Publicly Traded 1,639,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
28 Le Devoir The newspaper is run out of a trust. The structure of Le Devoir was changed in January 1993 by creating a new publisher, “Le Devoir inc. ". The Imprimerie populaire ltée is the majority shareholder, which ensures the independence of the director, as Henri Bourassa wanted. The arrival of new shareholders, including the Quebec Workers' Solidarity Fund, the Desjardins Group, readers and employees, allowed the injection of capital essential to relaunch the newspaper.

Brian Myles, Le Devoir general manager, says the foundation for the publication’s success has come down to strategic choices made over the last several decades. Le Devoir was ahead of the curve in terms of paywalls – it put up its first paywall 25 years ago, long before the likes of The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star made it a standard. Content was free except for a few top stories that were locked. If you wanted to unlock the stories, you had to pay for the content and subscribe.

In 1908, Henri Bourassa founded "La Publicité Limitée", the company behind Le Devoir . The first number appeared on January 10, 1910. Henri Bourassa, who ran the newspaper until his departure on August 3, 1932, surrounded himself from the start with brilliant journalists, including Olivar Asselin, Jules Fournier, Omer Héroux and Georges Pelletier among others. The successive departments of Le Devoir have always favored the primary vocation of the institution: an independent opinion journal. This independence has often had an economic price: loss of advertising revenue, of subscribers.

In 1913, a significant deficit led to the creation of a new company: the L'imprimerie Populaire Limitée. She succeeds the publishing company La Publicité Limitée. The newspaper survives on fundraising.

In order to preserve the independence of the newspaper and avoid its takeover by sale or inheritance, Henri Bourassa creates a structure that is unique by its originality. On December 31, 1928, before a notary, the shareholders of the Imprimerie Populaire Limite (IPL) signed a deed of agreement and trust. This results in two trusts.

The first trust consists of three members and controls 2,501 IPL voting shares, which is half plus one. This trust and the IPL board of directors jointly appoint the director. Consequently, the director is entrusted with this block of actions for the duration of his mandate. He cannot be placed in a minority on the board of directors. A second trust is entrusted with 951 voting shares of IPL. To make certain legal acts concerning the company, the director will need the support of this trust. This is another bulwark ensuring the independence of the newspaper.

Le Devoir does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Independent nonprofit trust 1,528,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
29 Toronto Life Magazine St. Joseph's Communications a privately, longtime owned printing business by the Gagliano family. Tony Gagliano is executive chairman and chief executive officer of the company. Other executives at the corporation include Frank Gagliano, vice chairman; John Gagliano, president of the print group; Kin-Man Lee, CFO; Doug Templeton, president of the content group; and Doug Knight, president of the media group. They also own MacLean's Magazine, Toronto Life, Canadian Business, Money Sense, and Chatelaine.

Tony Gagliano joined the family business, St. Joseph Printing, in 1979, as its 10th full-time employee. As the company grew, he quickly rose through the ranks, and was named Ernst & Young’s Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003. For the past 12 years, he has served as executive chairman and CEO of St. Joseph Communications, where he continues to uphold his father’s vision of building a print and communications company like no other. Now with 2,000 employees across the country, St. Joseph Communications has been recognized as one of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies. Active in the community and a passionate proponent of the arts, Mr. Gagliano sits on the board of St.Michael’s Hospital and the AGO and is co-founder of Luminato, Toronto’s annual arts festival. At Ryerson, he has served as co-chair of the Graphic Communications Management campaign committee and Cabinet member for the University’s Invest in Futures campaign," Ryerson alumni review.
Privately owned for profit 1,425,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital

 

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  Mainstream Media
(ranked by audience size)
               
Top Investors/Donors/Owners
                                  
Tax Status
        
Monthly digital uniques    (each device a person owns counts as one visit) Source
             
Medium        
30 Castanet.net

Glacier Media owns Castanet. Since launching in November 2000, Castanet has become one of the most visited media websites in Western Canada for news, classifieds, weather and entertainment. Castanet head office is located in downtown Kelowna, British Columbia.

Glacier Media CEO, Jon Kennedy confirmed by phone that Glacier owns VancouverIsAwesome, Castanet, The Times Colonist and a portion of VillageMedia, as well as 59% of ALTA Newspaper Group that includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. Glacier also own 28% of Continental Newspapers with former Hollinger owner David Radler and Radler is the majority owner of Continental divided under many corporate names that include The Kelowna Courier, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Penticton Herald, to name a few. Glacier also owns 48% of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers (RISN Operations Inc.), a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. RISN papers are part of VillageMedia. Sam Grippo, Glacier's chairman of the board, was a group publisher at Hollinger with Radler.

GlacierMedia Digital (GMD) is a Canadian business information and media products company and provides news, market information and sector-specific data within North America and internationally, based in Vancouver. Run by Jonathon J.L. Kennedy, President and CEO who oversees all aspects of Glacier’s business information and community media assets and a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. The Company’s strategy is to build a standalone digital local media business with leading market positions in British Columbia and other Western Canadian markets.  Madison Ventures owns 51% of Glacier Media and is a private corporation owned by a number of investors. We were unable to confirm the majority owner.

Glacier Media does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Privately owned for profit 1,346,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital
31 BNN Bloomberg (.ca) Bell Canada
BNN Bloomberg is a Canadian English language specialty channel owned by Bell Media. It broadcasts programming related to business and financial news and analysis. Bell Fibe TV: Channel 504 (SD); Channel 1504 (HD)
Former names: Report on Business Television (1999–2007); Business News Network (2007–2018)
Sister channels: CTV News Channel; CP24; CFTE
 
Publicly Traded 1,315,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital and TV
32 CanadaLand Canadaland is a news site and podcast network funded by its audience. Founded by Jesse Brown, the site is reader and listener supported. Brown has done the most thorough job of anyone not public for documenting his funding. He is the majority owner and his transparency reports here.

Funding comes from subscribers, sponsors and he has now taken $1 million from Tiny Foundation, owned by Andrew Wilkinson. The loan is in the form of a convertible loan and will be distributed over three years and eventually result in a 10-16% ownership stake.

Tiny Foundation is funded significantly tech investor Andrew Wilkinson "who dropped out of Ryerson Journalism and immediately launched into his first venture, MetaLab, a company that designs and builds some of the most widely used web and mobile apps around. The company experienced rapid growth: flushed with success, Wilkinson and his business partner Chris Sparling decided to plow the money into creating a portfolio of businesses that today, form the holding company Tiny Capital. In 2013, Wilkinson and Sparling shifted the focus of their activities from starting businesses to buying them – a move that proved remarkably successful," reports MoneyInc. His Twitter handle says, "We own @Dribbble, @AeroPress, @WeCommerce_co, and 35+ other wonderful companies. Funding science and journalism on the side."

As of Dec. 31. 2020, ownership of Canadaland Inc. was divided into 10,248 shares. Of those, 8000 (78.1%) were held by Brown. Another 4.9% belongs to the developer of the original Canadaland site. Past and present employees hold 17% with more yet to be issued through Employee Stock Option Plan. Brown controls the voting shares. This is a master class in transparency for a startup.

"Canadaland is a news site and podcast network funded by its audience. Our primary focus is on Canadian media, news, current affairs, and politics. Our podcasts get over 150,000 downloads per week. Canadaland Inc. is registered as a limited liability corporation with the Province of Ontario." In its 2020 transparency report (which we REALLY appreciated from a private company), Brown wrote, "podcasts had a total of 9,038,160 downloads in 2020 — a 43% increase from the 6,328,191 of the year before. Our regular series (CANADALAND, Commons, OPPO, and Wag the Doug) accounted for about 85% of that, with our limited series (Cool Mules, Thunder Bay, and Return to Thunder Bay) representing nearly all the rest, with a tiny portion also coming from the discontinued shows in our back catalogue."
Privately owned for profit  1,304,708 Jesse Brown, CEO, sent us a screenshot of his uniques from Google analytics.

 
Digital and podcasts
33 MacLean's St. Joseph's Communications a privately, longtime owned printing business by the Gagliano family. Tony Gagliano is executive chairman and chief executive officer of the company. Other executives at the corporation include Frank Gagliano, vice chairman; John Gagliano, president of the print group; Kin-Man Lee, CFO; Doug Templeton, president of the content group; and Doug Knight, president of the media group. They also own MacLean's Magazine, Toronto Life, Canadian Business, Money Sense, and Chatelaine.

Tony Gagliano joined the family business, St. Joseph Printing, in 1979, as its 10th full-time employee. As the company grew, he quickly rose through the ranks, and was named Ernst & Young’s Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003. For the past 12 years, he has served as executive chairman and CEO of St. Joseph Communications, where he continues to uphold his father’s vision of building a print and communications company like no other. Now with 2,000 employees across the country, St. Joseph Communications has been recognized as one of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies. Active in the community and a passionate proponent of the arts, Mr. Gagliano sits on the board of St.Michael’s Hospital and the AGO and is co-founder of Luminato, Toronto’s annual arts festival. At Ryerson, he has served as co-chair of the Graphic Communications Management campaign committee and Cabinet member for the University’s Invest in Futures campaign," Ryerson alumni review.
Privately owned for profit 1,144,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
34 Le Soleil, Quebec Formerly known as Le Groupe Capitales Médias (GCM), Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) was founded in 2019 when GCM went bankrupt. The Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) is the union of the six solidarity cooperatives that publish regional medias Le Soleil (Quebec), Le Droit (Gatineau-Ottawa) Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières), Le Quotidien (Saguenay-Lac -Saint-Jean), La Tribune (Sherbrooke), and La Voix de l'Est (Granby). The newspapers were formerly owned by Groupe Capitale Médias, that filed for bankruptcy protection last August.

According to CBC, workers within the corporation banded together to form a co-operative, that was authorized in Quebec Superior Court last December. Justice Daniel Dumais also authorized a 30 per cent cut in pensions for retirees. CN2i was granted a $12-million fund by public and institutional sources in March 2020 to help jump start business. The newspaper chain was founded by former federal Liberal cabinet minister Martin Cauchon. In 2019, the Quebec government infused $5M into the company, reports CBC. The Coopérative employs 300 people.https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-newspapers-stop-print-edi... 2019, the Quebec government infused $5M into the company, reports CBC.

CN2i does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Cooperative 1,041,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
35 Modern Farmer Frank Giustra, the Canadian mining billionaire and former chairman of Lionsgate Entertainment, owns Modern Farmer Media Inc. CEO of the Fiore Group, a private firm managing a broad portfolio of private equity investments and companies, specializing in natural resources, entertainment, art, food and lifestyle. The Executive Director is Scott Gilmore who is married to Catherine McKenna, former Trudeau Government Minister of Environment and Climate Change from 2015 to 2019 and Minister of Infrastructure and Communities from 2019 to 2021.

Giustra's blog reads, "Mr. Giustra brings an entrepreneurial approach to philanthropy to catalyze new ideas and innovations that can be scaled and shared. In 2007, he co-founded Acceso, a social business builder that brings entrepreneurial solutions to global poverty. Acceso manages agribusinesses in Colombia, El Salvador, and Haiti.

For over two decades the Giustra Foundation has supported innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing humanitarian and economic challenges -- focussing on women and children, health and education, homelessness and refugee resettlement. The Giustra Foundation is actively involved in the global refugee crisis by providing humanitarian aid, along with being the founding partner in the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative.

In 2020, Mr. Giustra become co-chair of the International Crisis Group, a widely recognized independent, non-partisan source of analysis and advice to policymakers on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict. He has been a trustee and supporter of the Crisis Group since 2005."

In a profile on Gardner in the New Yorker, in Spring 2012, Anne Marie Gardner, who previously worked for The New York Times and Tatler magazine, started to pitch an idea to investors for Modern Farmer. Giustra took an interest in Ms. Gardner’s project. By November, he gave her enough money (she would not divulge figures) to start a website, and a print magazine. Gardner owns a small portion of Modern Farmer. The majority belongs to Giustra. 

Giustra’s wealth was made mostly in mining. He is perhaps better known, however, for being friends with Bill Clinton and receiving Dalai Lama Humanitarian Award. Several years ago, Giustra gave Clinton’s foundation thirty-one million dollars, and he later pledged at least a hundred million dollars and half of his future earnings from natural-resource ventures, per a profile on Gardner in the New Yorker.
Privately owned for profit 1,024,000 SimilarWeb Pro average monthly uniques from Oct. to Dec. 2021

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Digital only
  The Western Standard

 The Western Standard is owned by Western Standard New Media Corp. A majority of the private corporatiion is owned by Publisher, President & CEO Derek Fildebrandt. Minority stakes in the company include Vice President: News Editor Dave Naylor, and investors Jeff Callaway, Dean Leask, and David Parker. All shareholders live in Alberta.

Fildebrandt is not without controversy in Canadian politics. On July 20, 2018, he formed the Freedom Conservative Party of Alberta. "We in the FCP are conservatives, libertarians and Alberta patriots," said Fildebrandt. The Western Standard is unabashedly anti-Trudeau government and pro energy.

Its mission states: The Western Standard is an independent source of news and commentary fighting for a strong and free Western Canada, committed to the truth even when it hurts, 
and forever pledged to refuse government funding. 

 

Revenue comees from memberships (subscriptions) and advertising. It refuses, per its owner, to accept federal subsidies for the media industry delivered to QCJOs in the form of payroll subsidie. The Western Standard is a recognized news source on Google News, but not Google News Showcase. More about them here.  

The Western Standard was founded in 2004 as an unofficial successor to the Alberta Report under the motto “The independent voice of the New West”.  The original Western Standard ceased operations in 2007.

The Western Standard returned to publication as an online news and opinion platform in October 2019 under the ownership of the Western Standard New Media Corporation under Fildebrandt. Since that time, the Western Standard has become one of the most-read news platforms in Western Canada and has become the largest independent media platforms in Canada based on publicly available data.

In 2021 the Western Standard underwent a significant expansion opening bureaus in Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg. An average of 2.5 million Western Standard articles are read per month by 850,000 individuals.

Privately owned forproft corporation

 

1,123,991 Comscore does not rank them so these numbers are self-reported by publisher, Derek Fildebrandt. Digital Only
36 Chatelaine (English and French) Also St. Joseph's Communications a privately, longtime owned printing business by the Gagliano family. Tony Gagliano is executive chairman and chief executive officer of the company. Other executives at the corporation include Frank Gagliano, vice chairman; John Gagliano, president of the print group; Kin-Man Lee, CFO; Doug Templeton, president of the content group; and Doug Knight, president of the media group. They also own MacLean's Magazine, Toronto Life, Canadian Business, Money Sense, and Chatelaine. Privately owned for profit 900,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
37 MTLBLOG Narcity Media Inc., founded by Charles Lapointe and Joshua McRae, is a Canadian online media company that owns and operates Narcity Canada, Narcity Toronto, Narcity USA and MTL Blog. Lapointe is the majority owner. The remaining shares are allocated to employees and their is a one Canadian investor who owns a small percentage, per call with Charles.

The company was founded in Montreal, Quebec in 2013 as MTL Blog Inc., and converted into Narcity in 2016 when it expanded into the rest of Canada. It is one of the fastest-growing digital media publishers for millennials covering everything from up-to-the-minute breaking news stories to original travel bucket lists, and "creator content" from coast to coast.

Narcity does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately-owned for profit 867,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital
38 The Rebel News Network Rebel News was founded in February of 2015 by CEO and owner, Ezra Levant. In an email with Levant he confirmed, "It’s a Canadian corporation. We have no debt or other shareholders. We operate mainly on crowdfunding and subscriptions. Our average donation is $53."

Coined by some as a far-right commentator and provocateur. His claim on his site, "mainstream media pretends to be impartial, but they increasingly behave like political parties."

In fall 2021, Levant won a major Supreme Court case: A judge in the Federal Court of Canada has ruled the Leaders’ Debates Commission incorrectly denied Rebel News Network accreditation to French-language and English-language competition between the major party leaders. Levantt. His network is funded by donations.

A key argument in Canada's media emerged during the Supreme Court case. Former governor general, President of Waterloo University and debates commissioner David Johnston, in a letter filed in court, cites Rebel News’s fundraising campaigns to raise money to oppose policies, including COVID-19 vaccine passports, a federal bill to amend the Broadcasting Act, the federal government’s quarantine hotel requirements and to constitutionally challenge Saskatchewan’s lockdown law. “Based on the review of the above, Rebel News is actively involved in campaigns about stories it covers. It becomes an actor in these stories. This conduct is a conflict of interest,” Johnston concluded in a letter to the organization denying them access. “In particular, the Commission has interpreted high journalistic standards to mean that journalists should not have a conflict of interest in the story that they are covering,” the commission said in a court filing.

As we did the research on these media companies in Canada, there are others whose funding mechanisms and mission driven focus may challenge such an interpretation Johnston offers above, but we leave you the readers to decide.
Privately owned for profit 831,000 In an affidavit for its filing for the supreme court, Rebel News attested that it averaged 831,000 users per month and 3.3
million pageviews per month in that same time period in Sept 2021. Rebel News has 1.48 million subscribers on its YouTube channel
Digital Only
39 Toronto Star Business Toronto Star business section owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million. NordStar Capital is controlled owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families. Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC."

Jordan Bitove is the Publisher of the Toronto Star, Co-Proprietor of Torstar Corporation, and founding partner of NordStar Capital. He is also the Managing Director of Bitove Capital which has diverse interests in real estate, hospitality, natural resources and distribution.

Norstar Capital also owns through Torstar: The Star Business, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard,The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record.

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 802,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
40 The Tyee The Tyee independent, online news magazine from B.C. founded in 2003 by David Beers devoted to fact-driven stories, reporting and analysis that informs and enlivens our democratic conversation.

As of January 1, 2022 it is now owned and operated by a non-profit organization called Tyee Independent Media Society. The society has a founding board of 4 directors that are volunteers and don't have any funding or employment relationship to The Tyee and they are hoping to receive Registered Journalism Organization status (RJO) which allows news orgs to be exempt from paying income tax, eligible to claim the Canadian journalism refundable labour tax credit and digital subscribers may be eligible to claim the digital news subscription tax credit. From 2018-2021 The Tyee was owned and operated by a private company owned by Eric Peterson. He's donated the assets of this company to the new nonprofit society and is remaining involved as a major donor, but he is not on the board.

With a progressive bent, the Tyee does not make a profit and every dollar they invest in journalism. A third of its funding in 2021 was from reader donors (43%) and 37% from core stewars such as Eric Peterson and Christina Munck, who live in British Columbia and who also fund, through their charity the Tula Foundation, the Hakai Institute and Hakai Magazine in B.C. Their demands of The Tyee are journalistic excellence and independence. They exert zero influence on editorial decision-making. The Tyee received 9% from government funding, 5% from advertising and 2% from grants and contracts. Reader subscription is growing as in 2019, their budget was 29% reader contributions and 56% core steward contributions. This was all per emails with Jeanette Ageson and David Beers.

The Tyee transparently notes on its web site that it had accepted money in the past from major US environmental foundation, Tides Canada. It published public interest journalism that was produced by other parties who received support from charitable organizations in two ways:

Fellowships: The Tyee promoted to its readers the Tyee Investigative and Solutions Fellowships. The money was contributed by donors directly to Tides Canada and an advisory board of experts, arms-length from The Tyee, recommended bursaries to individual journalists who applied for these fellowships. The journalism produced by these fellowship recipients was published by the Tyee.

Fee-for-service: The Tyee Solutions Society, a separate non-charitable non-profit was formed in 2009 to produce solutions-focused journalism in the public interest. Its reporting was published on The Tyee and made available free of charge for publication elsewhere. The Tyee Solutions Society secured funding to produce these projects from a variety of Canadian foundations including the Vancouver Foundation, the Real Estate Foundation, Tides Canada, The Catherine Donnelly Foundation, and the McConnell Foundation. The Tyee Solutions Society ceased to exist in 2018.

The Tyee produced a media backgrounder that includes some info on media funding:
In 2020, The Tyee received funding from Heritage Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative to support two local reporting beats. In addition, we accessed support through the Canada Periodical Fund — Special Measures for Journalism fund for general editorial operations.
For profit but looking at becoming a nonprofit 705,336 Self-reported per an email for unique visits in Dec. 2021.

Uniques N/A from Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Digital Only
41 Hamilton Spectator Founded in 1846, part of Torstar, owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million. NordStar Capital is controlled owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families.

Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC."

Jordan Bitove is the Publisher of the Toronto Star, Co-Proprietor of Torstar Corporation, and founding partner of NordStar Capital. He is also the Managing Director of Bitove Capital which has diverse interests in real estate, hospitality, natural resources and distribution.

Norstar Capital also owns through Torstar: The Star Business, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard,The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record.

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 687,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
42 The London Free Press Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 664,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
43 The Province (Vancouver) Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 532,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
44 Winnipeg Free Press FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership, a company founded by Ronald Stern and Bob Silver, two businessmen with strong Winnipeg roots. They also own the Brandon Sun and the Carillon.

Winnipeg Free Press does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 522,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
45 The Leader‐Post, Regina Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. The Regina Leader-Post, established in 1883, places a particular emphasis on events in the City of Regina, provincial politics, agricultural issues, and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Publicly Traded 481,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
46 The StarPhoenix, Saskatoon Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 481,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
47 Journalmetro.com Journal Métro, owned by MétroMédia, is a French-language free daily newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was founded in 2001. MétroMédia is owned by Transmet and has other content media brands. They claim their reach across all brands is 714,675 uniques a month but Journal Metro is its main news publication.

MétroMédia does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, and Narcity, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 469,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
48 SaltWire Network SaltWire Network Inc., a singular digital site with multiple print publications, is a Canadian newspaper publishing company owned by the Dennis-Lever family of Halifax, Nova Scotia, owners of The Chronicle Herald. It also includes the Cape Breton Post, The Guardian in Charlottetown PEI, and The Telegram in St. John's NFLD. As well as smaller publications such asTry-County Vanguard, Truro News, New Glasgow News, Tri-Valley Advertiser, Annapolis Valley Register, and the Journal Pioneer.

Saltwire does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 434,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
49 La Tribune, Sherbrooke Formerly known as Le Groupe Capitales Médias (GCM), Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) was founded in 2019 when GCM went bankrupt. The Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) is the union of the six solidarity cooperatives that publish regional medias Le Soleil (Quebec), Le Droit (Gatineau-Ottawa) Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières), Le Quotidien (Saguenay-Lac -Saint-Jean), La Tribune (Sherbrooke), and La Voix de l'Est (Granby). The newspapers were formerly owned by Groupe Capitale Médias, that filed for bankruptcy protection last August.

According to CBC, workers within the corporation banded together to form a co-operative, that was authorized in Quebec Superior Court last December. Justice Daniel Dumais also authorized a 30 per cent cut in pensions for retirees. CN2i was granted a $12-million fund by public and institutional sources in March 2020 to help jump start business. In 2019, the Quebec government infused $5M into the company, reports CBC. The Coopérative employs 300 people.

CN2i does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, Saltwire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Cooperative 430,919 SimilarWeb Pro monthly average Jan to March 2021.

Uniques N/A from Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Print and Digital
50 Edmonton Sun Metroland Media Media Group Ltd, which is Torstar, owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million. NordStar Capital is controlled owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families. Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC."

Jordan Bitove is the Publisher of the Toronto Star, Co-Proprietor of Torstar Corporation, and founding partner of NordStar Capital. He is also the Managing Director of Bitove Capital which has diverse interests in real estate, hospitality, natural resources and distribution.

Norstar Capital also owns through Torstar: The Star Business, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard,The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record.

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 418,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital

 

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51 The Record Waterloo Metroland Media Media Group Ltd, which is Torstar, owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million. NordStar Capital is controlled owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families. Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard,The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record, and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC."

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 418,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
52 The Windsor Star Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 414,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
53 Winnipeg Sun Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 398,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
54 Ottawa Sun Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 383,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
55 Le Quotidien, Chicoutimi Formerly known as Le Groupe Capitales Médias (GCM), Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) was founded in 2019 when GCM went bankrupt. The Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) is the union of the six solidarity cooperatives that publish regional medias Le Soleil (Quebec), Le Droit (Gatineau-Ottawa) Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières), Le Quotidien (Saguenay-Lac -Saint-Jean), La Tribune (Sherbrooke), and La Voix de l'Est (Granby). The newspapers were formerly owned by Groupe Capitale Médias, that filed for bankruptcy protection last August.

According to CBC, workers within the corporation banded together to form a co-operative, that was authorized in Quebec Superior Court last December. Justice Daniel Dumais also authorized a 30 per cent cut in pensions for retirees. CN2i was granted a $12-million fund by public and institutional sources in March 2020 to help jump start business. In 2019, the Quebec government infused $5M into the company, reports CBC. The Coopérative employs 300 people.

CN2i does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, Torstar, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Cooperative 367,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
56 Calgary Sun Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 335,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
57 Le Droit, Ottawa/Gatineau Formerly known as Le Groupe Capitales Médias (GCM), Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) was founded in 2019 when GCM went bankrupt. The Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) is the union of the six solidarity cooperatives that publish regional medias Le Soleil (Quebec), Le Droit (Gatineau-Ottawa) Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières), Le Quotidien (Saguenay-Lac -Saint-Jean), La Tribune (Sherbrooke), and La Voix de l'Est (Granby). The newspapers were formerly owned by Groupe Capitale Médias, that filed for bankruptcy protection last August.

According to CBC, workers within the corporation banded together to form a co-operative, that was authorized in Quebec Superior Court last December. Justice Daniel Dumais also authorized a 30 per cent cut in pensions for retirees. CN2i was granted a $12-million fund by public and institutional sources in March 2020 to help jump start business. The newspaper chain was founded by former federal Liberal cabinet minister Martin Cauchon. In 2019, the Quebec government infused $5M into the company, reports CBC. The Coopérative employs 300 people.

CN2i does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, Torstar, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Cooperative 325,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
58 Le Nouvelliste, Trois‐Rivieres Formerly known as Le Groupe Capitales Médias (GCM), Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) was founded in 2019 when GCM went bankrupt. The Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) is the union of the six solidarity cooperatives that publish regional medias Le Soleil (Quebec), Le Droit (Gatineau-Ottawa) Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières), Le Quotidien (Saguenay-Lac -Saint-Jean), La Tribune (Sherbrooke), and La Voix de l'Est (Granby). The newspapers were formerly owned by Groupe Capitale Médias, that filed for bankruptcy protection last August.

According to CBC, workers within the corporation banded together to form a co-operative, that was authorized in Quebec Superior Court last December. Justice Daniel Dumais also authorized a 30 per cent cut in pensions for retirees. CN2i was granted a $12-million fund by public and institutional sources in March 2020 to help jump start business. In 2019, the Quebec government infused $5M into the company, reports CBC. The Coopérative employs 300 people.

CN2i does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, Torstar, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Cooperative 324,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
59 St. Catharines Standard Metroland Media Media Group Ltd, which is Torstar, owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million. NordStar Capital is controlled owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families. Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard,The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record, and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC."

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 260,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
60 L'Actualite L'actualité is a Canadian French-language news and general interest magazine published in Montreal by Rogers Communications until 2016, then by Mishmash. Mishmash is owned by private equity firm XPND Capital. The collective is a group of businesses from across culture, media and entertainment, with the common goal of promoting Quebec talent on a global scale. Mishmash Directors are Alexandre Taillefer and Dominic Bécotte. Unable to confirm majority shareholder. Private For Profit 255,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital and Print
61 Press Progress

PressProgress is an award-winning non-profit news organization focused on uncovering and unpacking the news through original investigative and explanatory journalism. Founded in 2013, by the Broadbent Institute, incorporated as a non-profit organization, dedicated to policy research, leadership training and promoting social democratic values. Due to its political and journalism work, the Broadbent Institute is not a registered charity and unable to provide donors with charitable receipts. PressProgress does not have funding arrangements with funders or investors in excess of $20,000, per email with Editor, Luke LeBrun. "As our website notes, all of our funding comes through the Broadbent Institute as well as the support of small donors (average donation = under $10)."

Full-time editorial and reporting positions for PressProgress are governed under a collective agreement with United Food and Commercial Workers’ local 1006-A. The Broadbent Institute, founded in 2011, is Canada’s leading progressive policy and training organization. It says its work is guided by the Broadbent Principles for Canadian Social Democracy – "we believe all people have equal worth and equal rights, and that we all benefit from living in an increasingly equal society."

PressProgress operates on a reader-powered, non-profit model. It receives funding through the Broadbent Institute and a dedicated small donor membership program – its average monthly donation is under $10 from ordinary readers across Canada.

"Our journalism focuses on holding the rich and powerful accountable, exposing unfair and unhealthy working conditions and shining a light on hate and bigotry."

LeBrun shared that "PressProgress received a perfect 100/100 score from NewsGuard's index rating the credibility and transparency of news sources. NewsGuard's review was conducted by Mark Sikstrom, the former Editor for Journalistic Policy and Practices at CTV News and edited by Edward Greenspon, former Editor-in-Chief of the Globe and Mail."

Nonprofit 250,000 Per email with Editor, Luke Lebrun Digital Only
62 VOCM Radio Newfoundland Local First News for St John’s & surrounding communities. VOCM-FM is a Canadian radio station broadcasting at 97.5 MHz from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Owned by Stingray Group, a broadcasting subsidiary Stingray Radio, it is Canada's second-largest owner of radio stations behind Bell Media Radio. Stingray Group is a publicly traded Canadian media and entertainment company based in Montreal, Quebec, with offices in the United States, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland and more. Co-founded by President and CEO Eric Boyko in 2006, Stingray Digital is majority owned by Telesystem, Novacap and Boyko Investment Corporation. The company, whose headquarters are in Montréal, employs 200 people in its Canadian offices in addition to brick and mortar locations in Los Angeles, in the United States, London, in England and Tel-Aviv in Israel.

VOCM-FM is one of two Canadian FM stations with a call sign beginning with the ITU prefix "VO". VOCM-FM and its sister station VOCM are among just four radio stations in Canada still bearing call signs beginning with "VO" (the other two being VOAR and VOWR), issued to the Dominion of Newfoundland before its confederation into Canada in 1949. VOCM-FM first went on the air in 1982, well after Newfoundland became a Canadian province, Wikipedia.
Privately owned for profit 249,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital and radio
63 Times Colonist

Owned by Glacier Media and listed under QCOJ designation as TC Publication Limited Partnership. The Times Colonist is the oldest daily newspaper in Western Canada owned by Glacier Media.

Glacier Media CEO, Jon Kennedy confirmed by phone that Glacier owns VancouverIsAwesome, Castanet, The Times Colonist and a portion of VillageMedia, as well as 59% of ALTA Newspaper Group that includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. Glacier also own 28% of Continental Newspapers with former Hollinger owner David Radler and Radler is the majority owner of Continental divided under many corporate names that include The Kelowna Courier, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Penticton Herald, to name a few. Glacier also owns 48% of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers (RISN Operations Inc.), a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. RISN papers are part of VillageMedia. Sam Grippo, Glacier's chairman of the board, was a group publisher at Hollinger with Radler.

GlacierMedia Digital (GMD) is a Canadian business information and media products company and provides news, market information and sector-specific data within North America and internationally, based in Vancouver. Run by Jonathon J.L. Kennedy, President and CEO who oversees all aspects of Glacier’s business information and community media assets and a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.  The Company’s strategy is to build a standalone digital local media business with leading market positions in British Columbia and other Western Canadian markets. Madison Ventures owns 51% of Glacier Media and is a private corporation owned by a number of investors. We were unable to confirm the majority owner.

Times Colonist does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Tostar, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Publicly Traded 238,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
64 The Peterborough Examiner Metroland Media Media Group Ltd, which is Torstar, owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million. NordStar Capital is controlled owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families. Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard,The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record, and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC."

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 220,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
65 Les Affaires Owned by Contex Group Inc., Les Affaires is a French-language monthly newspaper publishing 14 issues per year. Pierre Marcoux is the majority owner and CEO, confirmed by email with Mr. Marcoux.

It was purchased in 1928 by Remi Marcoux and today falls under his son Pierre Marcoux who founded his new company, Contex Group Inc. in 2019 with acquisitions of flagship specialty brands such as Les Affaires, Contech and Benefits Canada from TC Transcontinental. Marcoux worked for almost 20 years at TC Transcontinental, recently as the President of its Media Sector. This events first media company produces conferences, trade shows and training programs – propelled by powerful publications and websites.

Headquartered is in Montreal, Contex Group, which stands for Content and Experience, offers quality content across its platforms, and is driven by event activities which represent its core growth area. Contex Group employs about 100 people in Montreal and Toronto. "Through more than 75 conferences, 5 trade shows and nearly 100 training sessions, Contex Group Inc. offers in-depth knowledge of various important business topics and issues through content from various publications and affiliated websites." The Contex Group Inc. includes the following brands: Advantages, Benefits Canada, Canadian Institutional Investment Network, Canadian Investment Review, and Deals.
Privately owned for profit 217,000 Comscore Dec 2021 Print and Digital
66 Sing Tao

Sing Tao is Hong Kong’s second-biggest Chinese-language newspaper and has branches in Canada, the U.S., Australia and the U.K. It’s owned by Charles Ho, a businessman closely allied with the Chinese regime. The proprietor is even a member of the influential People’s Political Consultative Conference, per National Post in Dec. 2020. Torstar is also an owner. The Toronto edition of SingTao is half-owned by the Toronto Star now owned by private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020.

The National Post wrote in 2020 that "the newspaper’s usual coverage of Chinese affairs, material is supplied by Sing Tao headquarters in Hong Kong and is consistently pro-Beijing." Victor Ho, then editor in chief of the Vancouver edition of Sing Tao spoke out about the pro-Beijing slant of Chinese-language media in Canada since retiring as editor in chief of the Vancouver edition of Sing Tao, the most-popular Chinese newspaper in this country. Ho appeared at the Commons’ Canada-China relations committee, urging government action on the issue. That should include implementing a law similar to Australia’s to curb overseas interference, he said, and legislation requiring “agents” of countries like China, including sympathetic media, to register as foreign missions, per National Post story.

Sing Tao Media Group Canada has evolved from a traditional newspaper company to a multi-channel media group, serving the growing Chinese Canadian community with newspaper, magazine, radio, websites, mobile APs, social media, e-newsletters and e-commerce channels. As the largest Chinese media group in Canada, Sing Tao reports that it connects with over 1.7 million Chinese Canadian population. Headquartered in Toronto, the group also publishes daily newspapers and magazines in BC and Alberta.

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Privately owned for profit 216,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print, radio and digital
67 The Expositor, Brantford Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 204,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
68 Niagara Falls Review Metroland Media Media Group Ltd, which is Torstar, owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million. NordStar Capital is controlled owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families. Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard,The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record, and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC."

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 198,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
69 The Narwhal

The Narwhal was created by Carol Linnitt and Emma Gilchrist in 2018, and grew out of their previous project, DeSmog Canada. Founded in 2018 as a nonprofit in news, The Narwhal's team of investigative journalists dives deep to tell stories about Canada's natural environment.

In January 2020, the federal government introduced a new designation under the Income Tax Act called Registered Journalism Organization. An RJO may accept donations from anywhere in the world. Here are the rules provided to us by the Narwhal which we very much appreciate for clarity:

  • RJOs and Canadian charities can receive funding from any foreign source as long as they do not include entities or nations on Canada's terrorism list.
  • Both RJOs and Charities must declare the amount of revenue from foreign sources (no distinction between US and other countries). No limit on foreign funding.
  • Charities must list the identity of foreign sources of donations of $10,000 or more.
  • RJOs must identify ALL sources of donations of $5,000 or more
  • An RJO may not accept more than 20% of its funding from any single source, foriegn or domestic.

The Narwhal is a pioneer of non-profit journalism in Canada and is supported by nearly 5,000 monthly members. In 2021, The Narwhal became Canada’s first English-language Registered Journalism Organization (RJO), which allows the organization to issue donation tax receipts and to accept philanthropic grants. In the four years since its launch, the organization has grown from a staff of two to a staff of 22. 

In America, the Nonprofit Digital News landscape has exploded with over 350nonprofit news sites, many funded by tech million and billionaires and Google and Facebook. See ouUS Nonprofit News and Funder Index. 

The Narwhal is also a member of the U.S.-based Institute for Nonprofit News. Its mission on its site says "The Narwhal recognizes that environmental journalism must be grounded in respect for Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous rights and must foreground Indigenous voices."

The Narwhal Fund for Journalism is an endowed fund held by the Ottawa Community Foundation for the ongoing support of The Narwhal’s journalism. In an endowed fund the capital is retained with the annual proceeds used to fund journalism in perpetuity.  Below is the 2021 full donor list:

  • Reader donations under $5,000 were $509,168
  • Canadian Periodical Fund $254,655
  • Wilburforce Foundation $184,848
  • Boreal Songbird Initiative $96,928
  • News Media Canada $73,286 for Local Journalism 
  • International Center for Journalists $72,624 for Meta (Facebook) Accelerator
  • Metcalf Foundation $55,000 for Carbon Cache
  • International Center for Journalists $25,594 for Meta (Facebook) Alumni Accelerator
  • Real Estate Foundation of BC $20,000 for Photojournalism
  • Real Estate Foundation of BC $10,000 for BC Freshwater 
  • European Climate Foundation for $25,318
  • Merwan Engineer $18,508 
  • Unless Ventures/Marco Pimentel $15,000
  • Reader's Digest Foundation $6,000
  • Meta (Facebook) $6,346

Below is the 2020 full donor list:

  • Reader donations under $5,000 were $238,160
  • Wilburforce Foundation $185,653 
  • Boreal Songbird Initiative $98,323 
  • Labour Tax Credit $78,779
  • International Center for Journalists $62,784 for Facebook Membership Accelerator
  • News Media Canada $60,932 for Local Journalism Initiative Reporters
  • European Climate Foundation for $51,431 
  • McConnell Foundation $41,800 for Canadian Climate Narratives
  • Metcalf Foundation $40,000 for Carbon Cache
  • Institute for New Economics $30,195 for Salmon
  • Make Way $25,000 for Great Bear Rainforest
  • Institute for New Economics $24,128 for Indigenous Guardians
  • In-kind Support $18,746 
  • Royal Roads University $12,000 for Climate adaptation

Nonprofit RJO

 198,983

Comscore had The Narwal at 35,000 uniques but they sent us screen shots of their Google Analytics users who have initiated a visit for Nov. and Dec. 2021 and the average is self-reported. Digital Only
70 The North Bay Nugget Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 186,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
71 The Sudbury Star Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 175,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
72 Kingston Whig Standard Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 167,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
73 La Voix de l'Est, Granby Formerly known as Le Groupe Capitales Médias (GCM), Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) was founded in 2019 when GCM went bankrupt. The Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) is the union of the six solidarity cooperatives that publish regional medias Le Soleil (Quebec), Le Droit (Gatineau-Ottawa) Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières), Le Quotidien (Saguenay-Lac -Saint-Jean), La Tribune (Sherbrooke), and La Voix de l'Est (Granby). The newspapers were formerly owned by Groupe Capitale Médias, that filed for bankruptcy protection last August.

According to CBC, workers within the corporation banded together to form a co-operative, that was authorized in Quebec Superior Court last December. Justice Daniel Dumais also authorized a 30 per cent cut in pensions for retirees. CN2i was granted a $12-million fund by public and institutional sources in March 2020 to help jump start business. In 2019, the Quebec government infused $5M into the company, reports CBC. The Coopérative employs 300 people.

CN2i does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, Torstar, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Cooperative 160,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
74 Red Deer Advocate Black Press. The company is administered and majority owned by David H. Black of Victoria, B.C. Founded in 1975, Black Press now publishes more than 170 titles in British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon and Washington state, as well as the Honolulu (Hawaii) Star-Advertiser, the Juneau (Alaska) Empire and San Francisco (Calif.) Examiner daily newspapers.

Black Press is home to some of the oldest, most established newspapers in B.C. and Alberta.From rural voices in Chilliwack and Quesnel, to urban voices in Greater Vancouver, Victoria and Red Deer, market by market these are the leading newspapers in their respective communities.

In the United States, Black Press operates Sound Publishing with 49 titles in Washington’s Puget Sound region; in Hawaii with Oahu Publications; and in Alaska.

In print and online, our urban, suburban and rural newspapers provide clients a superior blend of localized news coverage and unmatched integrated marketing solutions. We invest in relevant journalism that affects the communities we serve. And we strive to meet the marketing needs of our clients with a strategic blend of print, online and mobile marketing solutions.

Black Press does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Torstar, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 140,277 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

Uniques N/A from Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Print and Digital
75 The Walrus

The Walrus is a nonprofit with a mission to bring new thinking and sparks conversation on matters vital to canadians including politics, the environment, business, and society. In an email, they said their donor listing for 2021 will be published in the May 2022 issue of The Walrus. With pressing, they offered to give us an advance list of their largest donors in 2021.

Per an email from Development Director Laura Lavie, "The Walrus is a registered charity, with a diverse revenue model which includes donations, sponsorships and partnerships, advertising, subscriptions, and government funding. Top supporters for 2021 include The Walrus Trust donors, and national partners Air Canada, Labatt Breweries of Canada, Meta (Facebook), Shaw Communications, and TD Bank Group.

She would not confirm amounts so, alas, we will await May 2022. The largest donations two years ago in 2020 are below. We have listed all donors over $10,000.  There is a very extensive list of funders here.

The Walrus Trust (no $$ amount attached)

  • Diane Blake and Stephen Smith
  • Ira Gluskin and Maxine ­Granovsky Gluskin
  • The Honourable Margaret McCain
  • Rosemary Phelan
  • Kim Samuel

Benefactors $100,000+

  • The Chawkers Foundation
  • Concordia University
  • Labatt Breweries of Canada
  • RBC Emerging Artists Program
  • The Slaight Family Foundation
  • TD Bank Group

Advocates $50,000+

  • AstraZeneca Canada
  • Bennett Jones LLP (Toronto office)
  • Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)
  • Carleton University
  • CIFAR
  • Desjardins Group
  • McKesson Canada
  • Ontario Arts Council
  • Scotiabank
  • Shaw Communications
  • Suncor Energy Patrons

$25,000+

  • Air Canada
  • Facebook Canada
  • Edmonton Community Foundation
  • Indspire
  • Johnson & Johnson
  • The Honourable Margaret Norrie McCain,CC, ONB
  • The Reiss Family Foundation
  • Santis Health

Associates $10,000+

  • AGF Management Ltd.
  • Amgen Canada
  • Margaret Atwood, CC
  • Diane Blake and Stephen Smith
  • BMO
  • Bombardier Inc.
  • Broadbent Institute
  • Helen Burstyn, CM
  • Cisco Systems Canada
  • Mitchell Cohen, CM, and Janice Cohen
  • Deloitte Equitable Bank
  • Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin
  • Husky Energy
  • iBooks Canada
  • Martine Irman
  • Janelle and Pierre Lassonde Family Foundation
  • LDIC Inc.
  • McCarthy Tétrault
  • Navigator Ltd.
  • Peerage Realty
  • Jim Pitblado, CM, and Sandra Pitblado
  • Tim and Frances Price
  • Gretchen Ross and Donald Ross, OC
  • Tory Ross and Keith Gordey
  • David and Natasha Sharpe
  • Teneo  

Multiyear Visionary Donors (no confirmation onn $$)

  • The Barry and Laurie Green Family Charitable Foundation
  • Donald K. Johnson, OC
  • Mike and Martha Pedersen
  • Gretchen Ross and Donald Ross, OC

Champion Donors (no confirmation onn $$)

  • Rosamond Ivey
  • Louise MacCallum and Michael Barnstijn
  • The Michael Young Family Foundation
  • Ambassador Donors
  • Helen Burstyn, CM
  • Jodi and Gerald Butts
  • Andrew Pringle, CM, and Valerie Pringle, CM and more
Nonprofit 133,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital Only
76 The Observer, Sarnia Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly traded 132,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
77 The Chatham Daily News Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly traded 114,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital

 

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  Mainstream Media
(ranked by audience size)
               
Top Investors/Donors/Owners
                                  
Tax Status
         
Monthly digital uniques    (each device a person owns counts as one visit) Source
             
Medium  
78 The  Hill Times Founded in 1989, The Hill Times is independently owned by by Jim Creskey and Ross Dickson. Hill Times Publishing Inc.and based in Ottawa. They say, "Independent, non-partisan, essential, and feisty are the hallmarks of all The Hill Times’ publishing products." Their media products include: The Lobby Monitor, the leading news service covering Canada’s lobbying, government relations, advocacy, and communications industries. www.lobbymonitor.ca, Parliament Now, the trusted daily service that gives you Ottawa’s political agenda every day so you’re always in the know www.parliamentnow.ca, and The Wire Report, an independent, high-speed reporting covering Canada’s telecom and media industries at www.thewirereport.ca. Privately owned for profit 109,047 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

Uniques N/A from Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Digital
79 The Simcoe Reformer Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly traded 98,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
80 The Welland Tribune Metroland Media Media Group Ltd, which is Torstar, owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million. NordStar Capital is controlled owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families. Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard, The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC."

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 93,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
81 Brockville Recorder & Times Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 90,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
82 The Sun Times, Owen Sound Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 88,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
83 The Logic David Skok is the founder and has majority control. He modelled his subscription-based business and investigative newsroom on Jessica Lessin's wildly successful $400/year digital subscription.

In his earliest digital days, Skok was the co-creator and director of digital for Global News, where he launched and built Globalnews.ca. He then grew into a well-known digital strategist in Boston. Skok was managing editor and vice-president of digital at Boston Globe, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and part of Jessica Lessin's TheInformation.com accelerator once he'd launched the Logic. Under his leadership at the Globe, BostonGlobe.com’s digital subscriptions grew by 40 percent, and its page views and digital revenue both tripled. He returned to Canada from the Globe to be Toronto Star's associate editor and head of editorial strategy. He then left to start The Logic in 2018, to help build the future of the innovation economy by providing in-depth reporting on the organizations, policies and people driving transformational change.

Private investors who are not listed below are all Canadian citizens, per email with Skok. Those listed as funders include and are found here. The Logic has received investment funding of $100,000 or more from the following organizations, none of which have any editorial involvement: Four Cornerstones Capital, Postmedia Inc., Relay Ventures. Investments from friends and family of $99,999 or less are not listed, though they may choose to publicly disclose their investment. Any time they write about an investor listed above, they disclose this information in the articles.

The Logic has received grants from the following organizations, none of which have any editorial involvement:
The Government of Canada (Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy, Canada Emergency Business Account, Special Measures for Journalism — Canada Periodical Fund). Facebook Journalism Project COVID-19 program (one-time grant of $5,000)

"To prevent conflicts of interest and to ensure our editorial independence, The Logic keeps its newsroom operations separate from its business operations. For example, editorial staff aren't included in discussions about prospective sponsorships, and employees who work on the business side aren't included in discussions about upcoming stories. Our journalists are forbidden from using their positions, and any confidential information of which they become aware in the course of doing their jobs, for any business or personal advantage not available to the general public. Our journalists may not solicit or accept gifts or favours of more than nominal value from any person or organization that might have an interest in The Logic’s coverage. In-depth reporting is capital and resource intensive, we kindly ask you to support it."
Privately owned for profit 87,000

SimilarWeb Nov. 2021, visits per month.
 

The logic doesn't really consider page views a key metric as they also rely on syndication (to library, company, financial services intenal networks) where their stories reach millions of Canadians, per email with founder.

Digital Only
84 The Georgia Straight Owned by Media Central Corporation Inc. (Publicly traded CSE: FLYY). They own a Cannabis website called CannCentral and they also recently bought the alternative weekly NOW Magazine in Toronto. Other subsidiaries include Media Central Acquisition, LLC, Now Magazines, LLC, Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corporation, reported Vancouverisawesome.com

According to longtime owner Dan McLeod, "MediaCentral is preparing to fund the purchase of dozens of alternative papers in Canada and the U.S., each one serving its own unique community, and uniting them under one alternative umbrella." The Georgia Straight is a free Canadian weekly news and entertainment newspaper published in a large ‘tabloid’ format in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Publicly Traded 80,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
85 Money Sense St. Joseph's Communications a privately, longtime owned printing business by the Gagliano family. Tony Gagliano is executive chairman and chief executive officer of the company. Other executives at the corporation include Frank Gagliano, vice chairman; John Gagliano, president of the print group; Kin-Man Lee, CFO; Doug Templeton, president of the content group; and Doug Knight, president of the media group. They also own MacLean's Magazine, Toronto Life, Canadian Business, Money Sense, and Chatelaine. Privately owned for profit 75,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
86 Brandon Sun FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership, a company founded by Ronald Stern and Bob Silver, two businessmen with strong Winnipeg roots. The same owners of the Winnipeg Free Press and Carillon newspapers.

FP Canadian Newspapers does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 73,135 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

Uniques N/A from Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Print and Digital
87 The Coast The Coast is owned and managed by Christine Oreskovich and Kyle Shaw. The Coast (thecoast.ca) is an independently owned digital-first news outlet, supported by and responsible to its community. Its funding model uses a combination of digital and print advertising, sponsored content. We were unable to confirm if the founders were the majority owners and any other investors.

"Reader contributions help sustain the award-winning, needle-pushing journalism you have come to expect from The Coast for the past three decades," says the site. The Coast is currently a for-profit business working towards a stable, sustainable, fair-wage workplace for journalists and support staff. It is making big efforts to pivot from entertainment listings to local news, and doing some interesting data and visualization work. Shaw and Oreskovich started The Coast back in 1993 because Kjipuktuk/Halifax had both a cool scene and deep-seated problems that were not being written about anywhere else. Since then they have published a free weekly newspaper that was an independent source of fearless local reporting and incisive cultural commentary.
 
Privately owned for profit 73,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital Only
88 The Intelligencer, Belleville Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 69,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
89 True North Candice Malcolm is the founder and Editor-In-Chief of True North. She was formerly press secretary for Jason Kenney when he was minister of immigration under former Prime Minister Harper's federal government. Premier Kenney is now Premier of Alberta. We were unable to confirm if the founder is the majority owner and any key donors.

True North is a Canadian digital media platform with a conservative editorial position stated on its site. It is published by the Calgary-based True North Centre for Public Policy, which is a registered Canadian charity. It generated $990,178 in revenue in 2019, according to a document filed with the Canada Revenue Agency. In its 2020 revenue per its filing with the Government of Canada was $1,200,434.00 with 14 full time employees. The registry available to the public does not list donors or detailed spending but over half of the funds are used for internal payroll.

There are four directors of True North Center for Public Policy: Kasara Nejatian, Jessica Kuredjian, William McBeath, and Erynne Schuster. The filing does show that $828,655 of income (the majority) is from foundation grants and donations as income categories, but the filing does not list donors by name. They spend over $100,000 outside of payroll on consultants and another $200,000 on external research and contract services. We were unable to confirm who its donors are. Registered Canadian charities are able to receive foreign funding from any country but they must disclose amounts over $10,000. It is not easy to figure this out.
Nonprofit 63,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital Only
90 Medicine Hat News

ALTA Newspaper Group majority owned (59%) by Glacier Media. ALTA includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. 

Glacier Media CEO, Jon Kennedy confirmed by phone that Glacier owns VancouverIsAwesome, Castanet, The Times Colonist and a portion of VillageMedia, as well as 59% of ALTA Newspaper Group that includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. Glacier also own 28% of Continental Newspapers with former Hollinger owner David Radler and Radler is the majority owner of Continental divided under many corporate names that include The Kelowna Courier, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Penticton Herald, to name a few. Glacier also owns 48% of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers (RISN Operations Inc.), a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. RISN papers are part of VillageMedia. Sam Grippo, Glacier's chairman of the board, was a group publisher at Hollinger with Radler.

GlacierMedia Digital (GMD) is a Canadian business information and media products company and provides news, market information and sector-specific data within North America and internationally, based in Vancouver. Run by Jonathon J.L. Kennedy, President and CEO who oversees all aspects of Glacier’s business information and community media assets and a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. The Company’s strategy is to build a standalone digital local media business with leading market positions in British Columbia and other Western Canadian markets. Madison Ventures owns 51% of Glacier Media and is a private corporation owned by a number of investors. We were unable to confirm the majority owner.

Glacier Media does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Privately owned for profit 57,904 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
 
Print and Digital
91 Rabble One of the first digital journalism organizations in Canada, Rabble reports on national politics with a progressive lens that centres issues of social movements, of labour, and of grassroots activism. In its annual report they say, "our non-profit journalism has proudly maintained a focus on labour and worker rights, grassroots activism, and a progressive analysis of national politics, for two decades." Many of its supporting members are unions like CUPE, United Steel Workers and Catholic Teachers union.

Founded in 2001 by Judy Rebick, current publisher Kim Elliott writes on its website that they are women led and that rabble remains completely free to access. It says it saw the need for broader reporting on stories from civil society built on the efforts of progressive journalists, writers, artists and activists across the country and sees a unique role of reporting on stories from civil society while providing a counter balance to corporate-owned media.

The Jack Layton Journalism for Change Fellowship was created in 2017 to honour the memory of the NDP leader. Rabble's podcast network was an early player in Canada and while they say they are evolving the network they have been very active in this space. Forr example, RadioLabour has an exclusive version of Labour News specifically for Canada hosted on rabble.ca. In spring 2021, rabble partnered with the Tommy Douglas Institute on a six-part series called Courage My Friends. Its broadcast also includes video series including OFF THE HILL is a panel discussion on current issues of national significance, from a progressive and critically applied perspective not covered in the mainstream media and Not Rex Murphy.

Funded by donations, they make a point of saying they are funded without any major funders and community-driven media. They say on their site and annual report that they rely on the support of foundations, the Canadian government, and thousands of individual donors, forward-thinking organizations, In Cahoots advertisers, and grants. "It is not that we wouldn't like to have a foundation backer, or angel investor," they write on the site. Rabble's 2020 annual report is here: In 2020, with donations averaging $5/month, a total of $140,000 was raised from individual donors — over $92,500 of which came from our regular monthly donors. The total operating budget for rabble.ca in 2020 was $376,786, with revenues of $408,480. Heritage Canada and the Canadian Periodic Fund were donors.
Nonprofit funded mostly by unions 56,914 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Digital Only
92 Canoe Post Media's aggregator of lifestyle and entertainment news called Canoe.com. Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly traded 56,748 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Digital Only
93 Brunswick News Owned by Irving Family under Brunswick News, JD irving LTD. Irving and run by Jamie Irving. Its singular digital subscription platform, TJ.news includes The Moncton Times Transcript, Saint John Telegraph Journal, Fredericton Daily Gleaner, Miramichi Leader, Woodstock Bugle Observer, Bathurst Northern Light and more small local legacy print papers. Revenue is based on subscription and advertising. Brunswick News has a hard paywall so only paying subscribers can read thus the lower unique views.

The Irving Family based and dominant in the province of New Brunswick, are Maine’s largest landowner and a supplier of almost a fifth of U.S. oil product imports. Their closely held interests in oil, lumber, and shipbuilding, among others, rank them as Canada’s second or third wealthiest family, per the Wall Street Journal.
Privately owned for profit 56,000 Comscore Dec. 2021. TJ.news has a hard paywall thus unique views are full pay readers, per Irving. Print and Digital
94 The Sprawl Jeremy Klaszus is the founder and editor and sole owner of The Sprawl, which is a for-profit company registered in Alberta. No other funders besides crowdfunding, Canada Periodical Fund and Facebook.

The Sprawl is independent local journalism founded in September 2017 to cover Calgary’s municipal election. "It's crowdfunded, 
ad-free, and made in Calgary—
a reinvention of news 
in tough times. Crowdfunded by over 2,000 members," per The Sprawl site. In 2020, The Sprawl won $135,000 in grant funding from the Facebook Journalism Project specifically to build a membership program and a $30,000 grant from the Canada Periodical Fund, per email with Klaszus.  They have no paywalls and no ads, and all other funding is crowdfunded by its readers.
Privately owned for profit 56,000 October 2021 was 150,000 and December and November near 7-11,000 respectively, per email with founder. This is an average of 3 months ending 2021. Fluctuates based on publishing reporting. Digital Only
95 Beacon‐Herald, Stratford Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 56,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
96 Penticton Herald

Kelowna Daily Courier Newspaper Limited Partnership, formerly Continental Newspapers Canada Ltd., is majority owned by David Radler (who went to prison for defrauding Hollinger with Conrad Black). Glacier Media owns 28% of the Continental Newspapers including the Kelowna Courier and Thunder Bay Chronicle and Penticton Herald.

Glacier Media CEO, Jon Kennedy confirmed by phone that Glacier also owns VancouverIsAwesome, Castanet, The Times Colonist and a portion of VillageMedia, as well as 59% of ALTA Newspaper Group that includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. Glacier also own 28% of Continental Newspapers with former Hollinger owner David Radler and Radler is the majority owner of Continental divided under many corporate names that include The Kelowna Courier, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Penticton Herald, to name a few. Glacier also owns 48% of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers (RISN Operations Inc.), a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. RISN papers are part of VillageMedia. Sam Grippo, Glacier's chairman of the board, was a group publisher at Hollinger with Radler.

GlacierMedia Digital (GMD) is a Canadian business information and media products company and provides news, market information and sector-specific data within North America and internationally, based in Vancouver. Run by Jonathon J.L. Kennedy, President and CEO who oversees all aspects of Glacier’s business information and community media assets and a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. The Company’s strategy is to build a standalone digital local media business with leading market positions in British Columbia and other Western Canadian markets. Madison Ventures owns 51% of Glacier Media and is a private corporation owned by a number of investors. We were unable to confirm the majority owner.

Kelowna Daily Courier Newspaper Limited Partnership and Glacier Media do receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Privately-owned for profit 53,504 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Print and Digital
97 The Sault Star, Sault Ste Marie Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly traded 53,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
98 Cornwall Standard‐Freeholder Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly traded 50,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
99 iPolitics Metroland Media Media Group Ltd, which is Torstar, owned by local Toronto private investment firm NordStar Capital LP. Nordstar owners, Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, bought out Torstar in August 2020 for $60 million. NordStar Capital is controlled owned entirely by the Bitove and Rivett families. Torstar publishes 85 community papers and 7 dailies including its namesake the Toronto Star, iPolitics.ca, Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard, The Welland Tribune, The Waterloo Region Record and operates dozens of digital businesses across Canada. When Nordstar purchased the company holdings from longtime Canadian families who held the class A voting shares, "the NordStar bid included a promise to uphold the Atkinson Principles, which are seen to represent a progressive or liberal perspective, reported the CBC."

Torstar does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately owned for profit 49,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital Only
100 The Trail Times Black Press Group. The company is administered and majority owned by David H. Black of Victoria, B.C.

Founded in 1975, Black Press now publishes more than 170 titles in British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon and Washington state, as well as the Honolulu (Hawaii) Star-Advertiser, the Juneau (Alaska) Empire and San Francisco (Calif.) Examiner daily newspapers. In the United States, Black Press operates Sound Publishing with 49 titles in Washington’s Puget Sound region; in Hawaii with Oahu Publications; and in Alaska. Black Press is home to some of the oldest, most established newspapers in B.C. and Alberta, Canada.

Black Press does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Torstar, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.
Privately-owned for profit 47,409 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

N/A Comscore says the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Print and Digital
101 Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal

Thunder Bay Chronicle Limited Partnership, formerly Continental Newspapers Canada Ltd., is majority owned by David Radler (who went to prison for defrauding Hollinger with Conrad Black). Glacier Media owns 28% of the Continental Newspapers including the Kelowna Courier and Thunder Bay Chronicle and Penticton Herald.

Glacier Media CEO, Jon Kennedy confirmed by phone that Glacier also owns VancouverIsAwesome, Castanet, The Times Colonist and a portion of VillageMedia, as well as 59% of ALTA Newspaper Group that includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. Glacier also own 28% of Continental Newspapers with former Hollinger owner David Radler and Radler is the majority owner of Continental divided under many corporate names that include The Kelowna Courier, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Penticton Herald, to name a few. Glacier also owns 48% of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers (RISN Operations Inc.), a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. RISN papers are part of VillageMedia. Sam Grippo, Glacier's chairman of the board, was a group publisher at Hollinger with Radler.

GlacierMedia Digital (GMD) is a Canadian business information and media products company and provides news, market information and sector-specific data within North America and internationally, based in Vancouver. Run by Jonathon J.L. Kennedy, President and CEO who oversees all aspects of Glacier’s business information and community media assets and a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. The Company’s strategy is to build a standalone digital local media business with leading market positions in British Columbia and other Western Canadian markets. Madison Ventures owns 51% of Glacier Media and is a private corporation owned by a number of investors. Sam Grippo is the chair. We were unable to confirm the majority owner.

Thunder Bay Chronicle Limited Partnership and Glacier Media do receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Privately owned for profit 46,620 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Print and Digital
102 The Daily Press, Timmins Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 46,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital

 

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  Mainstream Media
(ranked by audience size)
Top Investors/Donors/Owners
                                  
Tax Status
       

Monthly digital uniques    

Source
             
Medium 
103 Vancouver Island Free Daily Black Press Group. The company is administered and majority owned by David H. Black of Victoria, B.C.

Founded in 1975, Black Press now publishes more than 170 titles in British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon and Washington state, as well as the Honolulu (Hawaii) Star-Advertiser, the Juneau (Alaska) Empire and San Francisco (Calif.) Examiner daily newspapers. In the United States, Black Press operates Sound Publishing with 49 titles in Washington’s Puget Sound region; in Hawaii with Oahu Publications; and in Alaska. Black Press is home to some of the oldest, most established newspapers in B.C. and Alberta, Canada."

Black Press does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Saltwater Network, VillageMedia, Torstar, CN2i, The Winnipeg Free Press, Glacier Media, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, October 2021.
Privately owned for profit 45,425 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Print and Digital
104 Kelowna The Daily Courier

Kelowna Daily Courier Newspaper Limited Partnership (as listed on government tax credit QCOJ), formerly Continental Newspapers Canada Ltd., is majority owned by David Radler (who went to prison for defrauding Hollinger with Conrad Black). Glacier Media owns 28% of the Continental Newspapers including the Kelowna Courier and Thunder Bay Chronicle and Penticton Herald.

Glacier Media CEO, Jon Kennedy confirmed by phone that Glacier also owns VancouverIsAwesome, Castanet, The Times Colonist and a portion of VillageMedia, as well as 59% of ALTA Newspaper Group that includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. Glacier also own 28% of Continental Newspapers with former Hollinger owner David Radler and Radler is the majority owner of Continental divided under many corporate names that include The Kelowna Courier, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Penticton Herald, to name a few. Glacier also owns 48% of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers (RISN Operations Inc.), a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. RISN papers are part of VillageMedia. Sam Grippo, Glacier's chairman of the board, was a group publisher at Hollinger with Radler.

GlacierMedia Digital (GMD) is a Canadian business information and media products company and provides news, market information and sector-specific data within North America and internationally, based in Vancouver. Run by Jonathon J.L. Kennedy, President and CEO who oversees all aspects of Glacier’s business information and community media assets and a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. The Company’s strategy is to build a standalone digital local media business with leading market positions in British Columbia and other Western Canadian markets. Madison Ventures owns 51% of Glacier Media and is a private corporation owned by a number of investors. Grippo is chair of Madison Ventures as well. We were unable to confirm the majority owner.

Kelowna Daily Courier Newspaper Limited Partnership and Glacier Media do receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, October 2021.

Privately-owned for profit 45,391 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Print and Digital
105 Blacklocks Reporter Reporter-owned private company and majority owned by Tom Korski, managing editor and Holly Doan, publisher. Minding Ottawa's Business. Blacklock’s Reporter reports "it covers news you won't find anywhere else: bills and regulations; reports and committees; Federal Court and public accounts." A reporter-owned and operated newsroom in Ottawa that finds the facts needed by business, labour and associations. Three of the four key reporters spent time as reporters in China. The publication has a hard paywall.

Korski is a former radio reporter who covered politics for dailies in Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton. He was Beijing correspondent for the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong. Tom joined the Canadian Press gallery in 1993. Doan is an award-winning journalist who joined the gallery in 1993. She reported for CBC and CTV in four provinces, was CTV Beijing Bureau Chief in 1995-8, and produced political history documentaries for CPAC.
Privately-owned for profit 45,253 SimilarWeb Pro average monthly uniques Jan to March 2021. Korski counts paid subscribers. Digital Only
106 Canadian National Observer National Observer represents a new digital journalism trend: mission driven journalism and in tandem, a lack of transparency of private ownership of media (whereas publicly traded companies and nonprofits have strict transparency protocols) so we have taken a bit more time to detail its inception below:

Observer Media Group was incorporated in 2012 as a corporation, registered in British Columbia. Linda Solomon Wood, an American who moved to Vancouver, is the sole registered director and officer of Observer Media Group. In a Supreme Court Case registered with the province of BC in 2017, a plaintiff, Vivian Kraus, based on her research, publicly alleged the involvement of Tides USA in the funding of an anti-pipeline campaign in Canada called the Tar Sands Campaign, among other things. The Tar Sands Campaign's express goal is to "landlocked" oil sands crude, keeping it out of overseas markets where it could fetch a higher price than its direct line to the US. She alleges in the filing, that the campaign serves a purpose that is non-charitable and, as such, is something that registered charities should have no part in. Through this filing were able to learn that Wood's brother is Joel Solomon, co-founder of Tides Canada Foundation and former contractor and Chairman of the Board for the Tides Foundation ("Tides USA"). The Tides Foundation is an American public charity and fiscal sponsor working to advance progressive causes and policy initiatives in areas such as the environment, health care, labor issues, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights and human rights, founded in San Francisco in 1976.

In a column in the Financial Post, Vivian Kraus wrote, "Tides is the funding and co-ordination juggernaut behind anti-pipeline activism. Totaling US$35 million, Tides made more than 400 payments (2009 to 2015) to nearly 100 anti-pipeline groups. According to Influence Watch, "The Tides Foundation is a major center-left grantmaking organization and a major pass-through funder to numerous left-leaning nonprofits. Its extensive use of donor-advised funds to funnel grants to center-left political nonprofits has led some right-leaning groups to criticize it as a 'dark money' group. The Tides Foundation calls itself a “values based infrastructure service for progressive nonprofit work.”

Three years after Observer Media Group's incorporation, Linda Solomon Wood founded the news site, Canada's National Observer (CNO). CNO claims its mission is climate change solutions and states on its site "CNO believes that journalism has a key role to play in speeding the world’s transition to climate safety." This is mission driven journalism. Linda Solomon Wood is the majority shareholder. Eleven independent investors also hold shares in the company, as well as long-term team members but we are unable to discover who these 11 are. Again using the BC Supreme Court filing, we were able to learn that the defendants in the case with Observer Media Group were Linda Solomon Wood, Jenny Uechi, Sandy Garossino, Mychaylo Prystupa and Michael de Souza. Why this is notable is that a key original member and writer for CNO is Sandy Garossino whose daughter is Grimes, nee Claire Elise Boucher, is grandmother to Elon Musk and Grimes' child, per LA Times. As we look for transparency on mission driven journalism, it seems important to know if someone's brother is the head of the Tide's Foundation and that a key writer and original member of the team is grandmother to Elon Musk's child. The Tyee, who also accepted money from the Tide's Foundation offered this take.

The centerpiece of the CNO's launch was Bruce Livesey's May 4, 2015 article, "How Canada made the Koch brothers rich." It's second big story is on the Irving Oil Family in New Brunswick in May 2017 when it became the first digital-only news site ever to win a National Newspaper Award for the 8-part series entitled 'House of Irving'. CNO reports that these two first deep stories were crowd-sourced through Kickstarter campaigns.

In an interview with Wood hosted by Jesse Brown on Canadaland in 2016, Brown writes, "the energy sector has flooded Canada's media with money, be it in ad dollars, speaking fees, charitable donations or 'native content' partnerships. What this has bought, in effect, is a lack of critical mainstream discourse on oil and the environment. The National Observer has launched to counter this reality."

Solutions Journalism is a trend in the US where foundations and corporations can pay to fund a story topic to be developed around a societal issue. In our US Nonprofit Media Ownership Index, we explain how it works and who fund the formal Solutions Journalism charity for such stories.

CNO has collaborated with the following foundations and member-owned-companies on journalism projects:

First Nations Forward: BC Real Estate Foundation, Vancity Credit Union, Vancouver Foundation, Victoria Foundation, Catherine Donnelly Foundation, Echo Foundation, Community Foundations of Canada, I-SEA, the Koerner Foundation, the Canadian Centre for Journalism and the Donner Canadian Foundation. Canada's Clean Energy Transition: The Ivey Foundation, Trottier Foundation, and Vancity Credit Union. The Gordon Foundation: reporting on water. United Way of Lower Mainland (for Syrian refugee reporting in 2016); Vancity, Teck Inc. and Tides Canada (for Great Bear Rainforest reporting in 2016); Earthways Foundation (for environmental reporting in 2015) and Tides US (for general reporting in 2015).

CNO landed as a finalist for the Michener Awards, which are given by the Governor General at Rideau Hall. This is one of the highest honours in Canadian journalism and National Observer was the first online-only publication ever to have received a Michener citation. The citation was for reporting on dysfunctions in the regulatory process governing the proposed Energy East pipeline.

Observer Media Group was invited by The Canadian Journalism Foundation to participate in The Facebook Journalism Project's 2019 Accelerator on Audience Development and to receive a grant to implement learnings from the accelerator. It received support from Heritage Canada's Canadian Periodical Fund in 2018. In 2019, it partnered with the European Union on a panel on climate change and with the EU, and a green recovery, on Zoom, fall of 2020.

In 2020 and 2021, CNO received grants from The Government of Canada's Local Journalism Initiative for reporting from Quadra-Cortes Islands (local reporting), Ottawa (federal policy regarding Vancouver and B.C.), Vancouver (food security-support ended in 2020) and Toronto (civic society and youth). It received other business-relief assistance from the Government of Canada during the Covid-19 pandemic. It's advisory board includes Fiona Conway, Edward Ngai, Margery Moore, Evan Hu, Annabelle White, Andrew S. Wright, Esther Chetner, and Stephen Huddart.
For Profit with Foundations who pay to collaborate on story topics. 44,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital Only
107 The Sentinel Review, Woodstock Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 32,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
108 L'Acadie Nouvelle, Caraquet Funded by interest of a trust funded originally by the provincial government that spits off anywhere from $200-700,000, according to past CBC reports. CBC also reported that Irving-owned Brunswick News out of Moncton now prints and distributes L'Acadie Nouvelle. Francis Sonier, the publisher and CEO of Acadie Media.

The newspaper, founded in 1984, has a trust account that was initially set up with help from the provincial government to help L'Acadie Nouvelle offset distribution costs. The interest made off of that trust account normally generates between $600,000 to $700,000 a year. But Radio-Canada reported in 2011 the trust account generated only $212,000 for the newspaper.

During the winter of 2010, the media company announced it was restructuring its operations under the name Acadie Media with three divisions: L'Acadie Nouvelle, the website CapAcadie.com and its printing operation Acadie Presse. 

Sonier said Friday the newspaper's daily circulation is about 16,000.
Trust funded by provincial government 31,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
109 Canada.com PostMedia Network. News aggregator for content from the various online editions of the Postmedia chain of newspapers. Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 29,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Digital Only
110 Prince Albert Daily FolioJumpline Publishing Inc. according to Canadian government QCOJ filing. Roger Holmes, President of Star News Publishing Inc. is a third generation printer and publisher. His daughter Sarah and son Peter are also working in the industry; Sarah is the publisher of the Gabriola Sounder on Gabriola Island in British Columbia, and Peter is the General Manager of Star Press in Wainwright. Sons Aaron and Peter each write a regular weekly column for the Wainwright paper. According to its site, the Holmes family newspaper history begins in Yorkshire, England with Edward Holmes. Edward (Ed) Holmes, born in 1878 started working at age 11 in the composing room of the Bradford Daily Argus, later taking on the role of reporter. Privately owned for profit 27,883 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct 2021 - Dec 2021. Print and Digital
111 Peak Media (readthepeak.com)

Founded by Brett Chang, Alex Blumenstein and Taylor Scollon in 2020. A majority of equity is owned by the founding team. In 2020 they raised $350,000 in startup investment from private investors including The Logic, TechTO and a number of top Canadian business leaders.

In an email they said, "our newsletter and podcast products are all ad supported and profitable. In addition, we sell sponsorships for our content activations — such as our Emerging Leaders List — and events. As a newsletter and podcast-first media brand, we measure off of opens and listens rather than visits. Our metrics are 52,000 newsletter readers with an avg. open rate of 52%. Our podcast, The Peak Daily, gets 33,000 listens monthly. We're on a trajectory to hit 100,000 newsletter readers and 50,000 monthly podcast listens by the end of the year. Prior to The Peak, Brett Chang was a partner at Leaf Forward, a Canadian VC fund focused on early-stage cannabis companies, and a Sr. Policy Associate on Uber’s Canada team.

The Peak promise is to provide busy Canadian professionals with the news they need every morning to understand business, tech, and other must-know stories of the day. Chang writes that they are modelling US newsletters (the US has 10x the population)..."There are a number of profitable newsletters that are doing over $20 million in annual revenue: The Hustle, Morning Brew, The Skimm. But they all have one thing in common... They're American. And when we looked for Canadian equivalents we couldn't find them."

Privately owned for profit 27,400

Based on a direct email with the company, they have 52,000 newsletter subs with a 52% open rate and 33,000 monthly podcast listeners which would make their reach
Digital Only
112 Canadian Business St. Joseph's Communications a privately, longtime owned printing business by the Gagliano family. Tony Gagliano is executive chairman and chief executive officer of the company. Other executives at the corporation include Frank Gagliano, vice chairman; John Gagliano, president of the print group; Kin-Man Lee, CFO; Doug Templeton, president of the content group; and Doug Knight, president of the media group. They also own MacLean's Magazine, Toronto Life, Canadian Business, Money Sense, and Chatelaine. Privately owned for profit 26,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
113 The Discourse Erin Millar, Founder and CEO. Readers funded. Not registered as charitable status. Mission on site states: Reimagining the community newspaper to better represent all of us. Surfacing untold stories since 2014. "We're on a mission to provide journalism to everyone. The Discourse is not funded by a big corporation. We don't put our stories behind a paywall. Instead, we rely on the community to support this work." They list funders at the bottom of their site to include the Canadian Government, SHEO, McConnell, CFC Media Lab, Marigold Capital, Inspirit Foundation, Facebook Journalism Project. However, we were unable to confirm with them if Millar is majority owner and if their are other owners or investors. Privately owned for profit 25,062 SimilarWeb Pro Jan 2021-March 2021.

Uniques N/A from Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Digital Only
114 The Hub

The Hub is a project of the Centre for Civic Engagement, a federally registered charity, and Hub Canada Media, a not-for-profit corporation. The Hub is supported by the Hunter Family Foundation and the Ira Gluskin & Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Foundation.

The Hub also benefits from individual donations. The Centre for Civic Engagement seeks to advance education by conducting research on topics of public interest, including those relating to governance, law, global affairs, economics, trade, technology, the environment, and culture, and publicly disseminating the results of such research; and by providing seminars, workshops, courses, and conferences on topics of public interest including those relating to governance, law, global affairs, economics, trade, technology, the environment, and culture to the public.

Under registered charities, The Center for Civic Engagement shows total assets of 133,159.00, 2020 revenue of $8,181 in 2020 and expenses of $46,064. They checked the box for no foreign funds over $10,000. The four directors are Rudyard Griffith, Malcolm Jolley, Deon Ramgoolam, and Patrick Luciani.

Run by Rudyard Griffiths Executive Director, a senior fellow at the Munk School for Global Affairs and Public Policy and the co-founder and chair of the Munk Debates. Rudyard is a former columnist at the National Post and the Toronto Star. He was the founder and executive director of the Dominion Institute. The Munk Debates are run by the Aurea Foundation, a charitable foundation set up by Peter Munk, founder of Barrick Gold, and his wife Melanie Munk. The Dominion Institute has received funding from the federal government but the Donner Canadian Foundation gave DI its start-up funds. In its first year DI received $200,000 from Donner, beginning a long-term relationship with the large funding agency and its chairman, Allan Gotlieb, a businessman and former Canadian ambassador to the US.

Sean Speer is Editor at Large, a university professor, think-tank scholar and columnist. He previously served as a senior economic adviser to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Stuart Thomson is Editor in Chief, a journalist with experience covering federal politics at the National Post and provincial politics at the Edmonton Journal.The Hub’s mission is to create and curate news, analysis and debate about a dynamic and better future for Canada in a single online information source.

Nonprofit 25,000 The Hub saw a bump to 100K for January 2022, per email with Rudyard Griffith, executive director who confirmed monthly uniques on average have been 25,000.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Digital Only
115 St. Thomas Times‐Journal Postmedia Network Inc. Postmedia is 66% owned by US Private Equity Firm Chatham Asset Management who also own the US newspaper chain McClatchy. Publicly Traded 22,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
116 The Maple Geoff Sharpe is founder of this nonprofit.  Alex Cosh is Managing Editor.  Alex is a journalist based on the traditional territory of the Tla’amin people. Prior to joining The Maple, he wrote for PressProgress, The Tyee, National Observer, Canadian Dimension and local news outlets in B.C. Formerly North99, ReadtheMaple.com is an independent digital news publication, covering Canadian politics from the perspective of the many, not the few. The Maple is an independent and 100% reader-funded publication. They say their mission is public-interest journalism and examining ways to build a fairer society. To date, they have no donors over $20,000, per an email with the founder.

The Maple was founded in August 2021 as the successor to North99, an advocacy group dedicated to building a more just Canada. Unlike North99, however, The Maple is solely a journalistic project, and does not conduct any advocacy work whatsoever. Further, The Maple has no affiliation or relationship of any kind with any political party, advocacy group or third-party adveritizer.

While The Maple is broadly aligned with North99’s aspiration for a more just Canada, The Maple’s managing editor had no involvement with North99, and has full independence and control over the new publication’s content and editorial direction.

"The Maple is 100% reader-funded. Every dollar of our revenue comes from subscriptions to our daily newsletter and additional monthly donations from readers. We do not accept donations from third-party organizations of any kind, and do not allow our publication to be used for advertising. We also publish original long-form journalism that provides in-depth coverage of the policies and political structures that protect the interests of Canada’s rich and powerful," writes Cosh.
Nonprofit 16,500

Per an email with Managing Editor, Cosh.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.

Digital Only
117 The Sherbrooke Record

ALTA Newspaper Group majority owned (59%) by Glacier Media. ALTA includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. 

Glacier Media CEO, Jon Kennedy confirmed by phone that Glacier owns VancouverIsAwesome, Castanet, The Times Colonist and a portion of VillageMedia, as well as 59% of ALTA Newspaper Group that includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. Glacier also own 28% of Continental Newspapers with former Hollinger owner David Radler and Radler is the majority owner of Continental divided under many corporate names that include The Kelowna Courier, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Penticton Herald, to name a few. Glacier also owns 48% of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers (RISN Operations Inc.), a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. RISN papers are part of VillageMedia. Sam Grippo, Glacier's chairman of the board, was a group publisher at Hollinger with Radler.

GlacierMedia Digital (GMD) is a Canadian business information and media products company and provides news, market information and sector-specific data within North America and internationally, based in Vancouver. Madison Ventures owns 51% of Glacier Media and is a private corporation owned by a number of investors. Grippo is also Chair of Madison Ventures. We were unable to confirm the majority owner.

Glacier Media does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Privately owned for profit 16,082 SimilarWeb Pro monthly unique average Oct - Dec 2021.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Print and Digital
118

PoliticsToday.news

Newsletters include:
Queen's Park Today
Parliament Today
BC Today
Alberta Today

Baby Media Mogul founded and owned by Allison Smith, an entrepreneur and digital news publisher who runs a fleet of subscription based political newsletters across Canada. Smith is the sole owner and Politics Today is bootstrapped with no outside funders, per an email with Smith.

Allison launched her first newsletter, Queen’s Park Today, in February 2012 after leaving her job as a Parliament Hill reporter in Ottawa to return to her hometown of Toronto. She bootstrapped the publication from scratch to become one of the most trusted news sources reporting on the Ontario provincial government.

In September 2017, Allison subsequently founded BC Today, which covers politics in British Columbia, and followed it up with the Alberta-focused newsletter AB Today in October 2018. She now employs a team of political journalists and editors across the country.

Allison is also the co-host of the podcast Wag the Doug, which is produced by Canadaland, one of the country’s largest podcast networks. The podcast reports on Ontario Premier Doug Ford, the brother of Toronto’s infamous crack-smoking mayor, Rob Ford.
Private for profit 15,000 Unique monthly readership of newsletters, per email with founder and owner. Digital Only
119 The Low Down Online Since 1973, this newspaper has covered the Gatineau Hills outside of Ottawa. Nikki Mantell is majority owner.  It is a private corporation. This digital news site is recognized by the Canadian government under the new designation of QCJO listed by its corporate entity is "4437594 Canada Inc" and as The Low Down to Hull & Back News. On its site, it lists funded by the Canadian government.  Privately Owned For Profit 13,900 Self-reported by owner Digital Only
120 Lethbridge Herald

ALTA Newspaper Group majority owned (59%) by Glacier Media. ALTA includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. 

Glacier Media CEO, Jon Kennedy confirmed by phone that Glacier owns VancouverIsAwesome, Castanet, The Times Colonist and a portion of VillageMedia, as well as 59% of ALTA Newspaper Group that includes The Sherbrooke Record, Medicine Hat News and Lethbridge Herald. Glacier also own 28% of Continental Newspapers with former Hollinger owner David Radler and Radler is the majority owner of Continental divided under many corporate names that include The Kelowna Courier, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Penticton Herald, to name a few. Glacier also owns 48% of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers (RISN Operations Inc.), a privately owned publisher of three daily newspapers and several weekly newspapers in the U.S. RISN papers are part of VillageMedia. Sam Grippo, Glacier's chairman of the board, was a group publisher at Hollinger with Radler.

Glacier Media does receive undisclosed payments from Google News Showcase along with The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, TorStar, VillageMedia, Black Press Media, SaltWire Network, The Winnipeg Free Press, Narcity and MétroMédia, a program that pays publishers to curate and package stories that appear in Google’s news products, reported by Torstar, Octobeer 2021.

Privately Owned For Profit 12,000 Comscore Dec. 2021 Print and Digital
121 AllNovaScotia.com Online News Service Ltd. In 2001, media entrepreneur David Bentley founded the first online, local news website in Halifax, Nova Scotia. From the start, it was a family affair. Bentley and his daughter, Caroline Wood (who had also been deeply involved in Frank Magazine). Bentley had been a journalist for over 50 years having written for top shelf publications and having founded newspapers and the magazine Frank, chronicled in a Columbia Journalism Case Study on AllNovaScotia.

All Business Online News Group publishes AllNovaScotia, AllNewBrunswick and AllNewfoundlandLabrador. Majority-owned by David Bentley and his daughter Caroline Wood. Publishing daily since 2001, allNovaScotia as one of Atlantic Canada’s premier sources for the latest business and political news in the region. The majority owner of all three publications (as well as allSaskatchewan.com) is "All Business Online News Group Ltd. The company directors are David Bentley, Caroline Wood, Bentley Wood and Geoff Bird. More than a dozen editors and reporters are shareholders in the company. Thirty journalists at sister titles allNovaScotia, allNewfoundlandLabrador and allNewBrunswick are now the primary source of must-have business, professional and government information for nearly 14,000 paid subscribers across the region. More than a dozen editors and reporters are shareholders in the company.

Halifax-headquartered allNovaScotia has established itself as the paper of record. A Monday-to-Friday roster of stories includes lively and informative local coverage on the fishing industry, the energy sector, local restaurants, entrepreneurs, real estate, legal disputes, bankruptcies and more. Registered under the Canadian QCJO designation as entity 3030106 Nova Scotia Limited.
Private for profit n/a 14,000 subscribers per Sept. 2021 press release.

N/A Comscore as the site doesn't meet Comscore minimum reporting standard.
Digital Only
122 AllNewBrunswick.com Online News Service Ltd.

In 2001, media entrepreneur David Bentley founded the first online, local news website in Halifax, Nova Scotia. From the start, it was a family affair. Bentley and his daughter, Caroline Wood (who had also been deeply involved in Frank Magazine). 

All Business Online News Group publishes AllNovaScotia, AllNewBrunswick and AllNewfoundlandLabrador. Majority-owned by David Bentley and his daughter Caroline Wood. The majority owner of all three publications (as well as allSaskatchewan.com) is "All Business Online News Group Ltd. The company directors are David Bentley, Caroline Wood, Bentley Wood and Geoff Bird. More than a dozen editors and reporters are shareholders in the company.

allNovaScotia has also launched sister publications allNewfoundlandLabrador and allNewBrunswick.com. allNewBrunswick.com is registered as AllNewBrunswick.com Online News Service Ltd. and received QCJO status.

       
123 AllNewfoundlandLabrador.com Online News Service Ltd.

In 2001, media entrepreneur David Bentley founded the first online, local news website in Halifax, Nova Scotia. From the start, it was a family affair. Bentley and his daughter, Caroline Wood (who had also been deeply involved in Frank Magazine). 

All Business Online News Group publishes AllNovaScotia, AllNewBrunswick and AllNewfoundlandLabrador. Majority-owned by David Bentley and his daughter Caroline Wood. The majority owner of all three publications (as well as allSaskatchewan.com) is "All Business Online News Group Ltd. The company directors are David Bentley, Caroline Wood, Bentley Wood and Geoff Bird. More than a dozen editors and reporters are shareholders in the company.

AllNovaScotia has also launched sister publications: allNewfoundlandLabrador and allNewBrunswick.com. AllNewBrunswick.com is registered as AllNewBrunswick.com Online News Service Ltd. and received QCJO status.

Private for profit n/a 14,000 subscribers per July 2021 press release. Digital Only
124 AllSaskatchewan.com Online News Service Ltd. All Business Online News Group publishes AllNovaScotia, AllNewBrunswick and AllNewfoundlandLabrador. Majority-owned by David Bentley and his daughter Caroline Wood. AllSaskatchewan was launched in July 2021. Alex MacPherson, Saskatchewan’s best-known business journalist, leads a team that includes Peter Lozinski, also in Saskatoon and Evan Radford (no relation to our researcher Heidi Radford Legg) and Nathan Meyer in Regina. The online publication will follow the subscription model successfully established in Atlantic Canada back in 2001 by news veteran David Bentley and his daughter, Caroline Wood.

The majority owner of all three publications (as well as allSaskatchewan.com) is All Business Online News Group Ltd. The company directors are David Bentley, Caroline Wood, Bentley Wood and Geoff Bird. More than a dozen editors and reporters are shareholders in the company. AllSaskatchewan is dedicated to reporting business in Saskatchewan, talking daily to the owners, entrepreneurs and executives who are making it happen. Registered as AllSaskatchewan.com Online News Service Ltd.
Private for profit n/a 14,000 subscribers per July 2021 press release. Digital Only
125 La Liberté
la-liberte.ca
Presse-Ouest Ltée. La Liberté is a Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada based newspaper founded on May 20, 1913 by Archbishop Adélard Langevin of Saint-Boniface. La Liberté is currently the only French-speaking provincial weekly newspaper in Manitoba. We were unable to confirm majority donors. Nonprofit n/a   Digital and Print

 

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