The government part pays the journalists at Nine, Seven, Crikey and 181 other newsrooms

The Albanese Government is part paying the wages of more than 2,000 journalists across 184 private newsrooms, and more than half of the money went to just four ownership groups. Communications Minister Anika Wells launched the $67.6 million Journalism Assistance Fund in November, and the full list of who took the cheques sits in public on GrantConnect. It reads like a who's who of the outlets that cover federal politics: Nine, Seven, The Conversation, Crikey, The Saturday Paper, The Daily Aus and Mamamia.

The payments run until March 2028. They're drip fed against progress reports the government must be satisfied with, and not one of the 184 newsrooms is required to tell you it's on the books. Every time a funded outlet reports on the government, the government is helping pay the person who wrote the story.

The scheme is Labor's answer to Meta walking away from its Australian news deals in 2024 and the revenue hole that left in newsrooms. The fix it chose was direct: put part of the wages bill on the Commonwealth tab, and write the rules on who qualifies.

Four ownership groups took more than half the fund

Under the fund, publishers receive $39,000 for each full time equivalent journalist over three years, paid as a wage subsidy. The awards published on GrantConnect, all figures GST inclusive, total just over $74 million, and the money pooled fast at the top:

• Nine Entertainment: $16,126,110 across two grants, one to Nine Entertainment Co and one to Fairfax Media Limited, the former Fairfax holding company Nine has owned outright since the 2018 merger. That's about 22% of every published dollar, covering the subsidy on roughly 375 journalists.
• The Seven side of the newly merged Southern Cross Media Group: $11,329,890 across Seven Network (Operations), West Australian Newspapers and Prime Television. Seven West Media merged into Southern Cross on 7 January 2026, with Kerry Stokes' SGH holding 20.06% of the combined company.
• Australian Community Media, owned 50/50 by Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz: $6,224,933 across six separately named companies, including the publishers of The Canberra Times, the Newcastle Herald, the Illawarra Mercury, Launceston's Examiner and Ballarat's Courier.
• The Star News Group network, built around the Thomas family's Pakenham operation: $5,868,291 across eight lines, including $2.7 million to SA Today, a Star linked joint venture with independent South Australian publishers.

That's 53% of the fund to four ownership groups. Bruce Gordon touches two of them at once: he privately owns WIN Television, which took $1,673,100, and he's Nine's largest shareholder, lifting his voting stake to 22.98% in February 2026.

Further down the list: The Conversation ($1,033,890), Crikey publisher Private Media, whose chairman and largest shareholder is Eric Beecher ($737,022), Capital Brief, founded by former Fairfax and Nine executives ($686,400), The Daily Aus, backed by former Nine boss David Gyngell ($549,120), Morry Schwartz's The Saturday Paper ($300,300), the Freedman family's Mamamia ($268,125) and Michael West Media ($128,700).

Canberra decides what counts as news, and opinion doesn't

The grant guidelines define "core news content" as content that "reports, investigates or explains" issues relevant to "engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision making", or current events of public significance. The same guidelines list what doesn't count: sponsored content, lifestyle, real estate, entertainment and celebrity news, and "opinion and editorial pieces".

That last exclusion is the tell. Opinion and editorial writing, the format where governments cop the hardest scrutiny, doesn't qualify as journalism worth funding under the government's own rules.

The definition is applied by a "Program Delegate", described in the guidelines as a manager within the Business Grants Hub of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. The guidelines state the delegate's decision "is final in all matters" and "We cannot review decisions about the outcome of your application." A journalist, under this scheme, is whoever a public servant agrees is one, and there's no appeal.

News Corp, Sky News and The Guardian couldn't even apply

The eligibility rules barred any "foreign controlled Australian entity" from applying. That locks out News Corp's Australian mastheads and Sky News Australia, whose parent company is listed in New York, along with Daily Mail Australia and The Guardian, both controlled from London. None of them appears in the records, and under the rules none of them could.

Also nowhere on the list: ADH TV and the newer right leaning digital outlets. Rebel News, being Canadian owned, was barred by the same foreign control rule. Whether the Australian owned ones applied and were refused is impossible to know, because the department publishes winners only.

The bar caught both ends of the political spectrum, and the effect is the same either way: the loudest newsrooms outside the scheme answer to foreign owners, while the biggest newsrooms inside it now bank cheques signed by the Commonwealth.

Newswire services were barred too. Yet AAP, the wire that feeds copy to nearly every outlet in the country, wasn't left out: the government handed it a separate $33 million over three years under the same News Media Assistance Program.

The rules also excluded any outlet "affiliated with a foreign government, political party, union, financial institution, non government organisation, or policy lobby group" where the tie might be seen to influence content, and any employer of 100 or more staff that hasn't complied with the Workplace Gender Equality Act. Compliance with Canberra's gender reporting regime is now, literally, a condition of being funded as a news publisher.

Man of Many, SEN and a caravanning magazine made the cut

The exclusion list says lifestyle, entertainment and real estate aren't core news. The recipient list says otherwise. Man of Many, a Sydney site covering watches, cars and style, took $368,511. The company behind sports radio network SEN took $248,820. Time to Roam, a caravanning and camping title, took $85,800, enough for two funded journalists. Limelight, a classical music magazine, took $111,540. Elite Agent, a trade title for real estate agents, took $85,800.

Under the guidelines, grant money can only pay journalists producing core news content, so each of those outlets satisfied the department that it employs journalists doing exactly that. How a caravanning magazine and a real estate trade title fit a definition that excludes lifestyle and real estate is a question for the department that approved them.

The oddities keep coming. The taxpayer is now part paying journalists at The Epoch Times ($328,185), an outlet founded by practitioners of the Falun Gong movement, which says it's independent of the movement. At Myanmar Now ($257,400), a donor funded exile news agency whose journalism covers Myanmar, not Australia. At The Catholic Leader ($120,120), owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane. And at ARN ($978,120), the ASX listed radio group behind KIIS FM.

The $67.6 million was gone in 28 days

The guidelines said the fund would stay open until 30 April 2026 "or until funding is exhausted, whichever occurs first". It opened on 21 November 2025 and closed on 19 December 2025, 28 days later, "due to the program being fully subscribed".

There was no merit assessment and no ranking. Applications were "reviewed in order of receipt until available funding is exhausted", the guidelines state. First in, best dressed. A newsroom that heard about the scheme late, or took too long on the paperwork, got nothing. The department says 185 applications succeeded, and nothing in the process weighed quality, reach or need.

The department has said only that 185 applications succeeded. It has never published how many newsrooms applied and missed out when the money ran dry.

Taxpayer money went to a company two days old, a publisher in liquidation and a dead ABN

Wire Media Group Pty Ltd, publisher of The Southern Wire in the NSW Southern Highlands, had its ABN registered on 19 November 2025, two days before applications opened. It registered its business name the day after that, then collected $85,800. No public record names its owners.

Business News Australia Pty Ltd had its $128,700 grant published on 17 December 2025. Five weeks later, on 22 January 2026, the company entered creditors' voluntary liquidation, with founder Camilla Westerlund reportedly describing the funding as "too little, too late". The masthead's website later resumed publishing under ownership that remains unclear.

Korean News Pty Ltd had its $39,000 grant approved on 10 February 2026. Its ABN has been cancelled since 30 June 2026.

Some recipients doubled up through related companies. The Intermedia Group and its majority owned Mumbrella Media collected $471,900 between them. The two Vision China Times entities took $251,394. Several other recipients are family trusts that can't be matched to any masthead from public records at all. All of it went through the process the guidelines describe, and that's exactly the problem: the net was this loose by design.

Wells launched the fund at an outlet that collected $879,450 from it

Wells announced the fund at the Sunnybank office of the Chinese Herald in Brisbane, publisher of the Queensland Chinese Times. Her own media release noted the outlet had already received more than $78,000 under the earlier News Media Relief Program to keep 7 journalists employed. GrantConnect records show two companies bearing the Chinese Herald name went on to collect Journalism Assistance Fund grants worth a combined $879,450 ($278,850 and $600,600).

"Quality, relevant news is essential for keeping Australians informed and connected," Wells said at the launch. "We need Australians telling Australian stories and that can't happen without backing Australian journalists in diverse communities."

Funded newsrooms never have to tell their readers

Nothing in the guidelines requires a funded outlet to disclose the subsidy on its site or in its stories. The document only scripts what happens if an outlet chooses to mention it: it must use the government's wording, that support from the program "covers part of the cost of employing journalists, but does not influence the production of specific content". The denial comes pre written.

The money doesn't arrive as a lump sum. Payments are staged against "satisfactory progress reports", the department can conduct compliance visits, and the Commonwealth can recover funds for breaches of the grant agreement. Funded outlets must hold their journalist numbers until 31 March 2028 to keep the full grant. For the next two years, 184 newsrooms have a standing financial reason to stay on good terms with the department that pays them.

That silence matters in weeks like these. In the same fortnight the press pack piled on Pauline Hanson over a Europe trip that cost taxpayers nothing, not one funded masthead in the country was obliged to remind its readers whose money part pays its reporters.

The next $31.5 million is being decided right now

The Journalism Assistance Fund is the first tranche of $99.1 million in News MAP grants. The News Innovation Fund, worth $31.5 million with individual grants of up to $9 million, closed on 4 June 2026 and is under assessment now, with the same department deciding who gets funded to build new audiences and revenue streams.

Around the grants sits the rest of the package: the $33 million for AAP, a mandated minimum of $3 million a year for two years in Commonwealth advertising for regional newspapers, $10.5 million for the media regulator ACMA to measure media diversity, and a government led National Media Literacy Strategy, due in 2028, to establish the skills Australians need to "critically engage" with news.

The government says the framework balances support for the sector with "the need to maintain the sector's independence". The paperwork says 184 newsrooms answer to the department that pays them until March 2028, and the next list of names lands on GrantConnect 21 days after each new agreement is signed.

The full list: every grant, every owner, every slice of the fund

All 184 grants published on GrantConnect under the Journalism Assistance Fund, sorted by size. Amounts are as published, GST inclusive; the program total is $67.6 million ex GST, $74,356,100 as published. The department says 185 applications succeeded; 184 award records were public at the time of writing. Ownership is compiled from company websites, ABN Lookup, ASX filings and Australian press reporting. Where no public record names an owner, the table says so. Every grant of $42,900 equals exactly one funded full time journalist.