In defending an independent press, American founding father Thomas Jefferson famously remarked that he would prefer “newspapers without a government” to a “government without newspapers.” So it’s doubtful the third president of the United States would approve of a program for the government to pay reporters’ salaries.

But desperate times for Canadian media, where newspapers are closing and journalists are losing their jobs, especially at the local level, may call for desperate measures.

At least one-third of journalism jobs in Canada have simply disappeared since 2010, according to government data, as news outlets collectively lost some $4.9 billion.

Canada has faced a net loss of at least 343 local news outlets since 2008, according to the Local News Research Project. It doesn’t require an investigative reporter to determine this is a crisis.

Against this backdrop, the federal government has spent $128.8 million since 2019 to support the hiring of more than 400 journalists under the Local Journalism Initiative(LJI) at newsrooms across the country.

The goal? Quality coverage in communities where the free market alone cannot support reporting, particularly news on local governments and civic affairs.

The money is doled out by administrator organizations — such as News Media Canada — representing different sections of the media industry and at arm’s length from the government of the day. Politicians don’t pick which reporters get funded.

News outlets apply to these organizations to hire reporters; individual journalists or content creators can’t apply on their own. All stories produced under the initiative are published under a Creative Commons licence on The Canadian Press news wire, meaning other media outlets are........

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