The two publishers leading a US$10 billion class action against Google have met for their first interview to reveal why and how they intend to fix global advertising.

The two, who live 14,000km apart, are seeking damages for themselves and thousands of publishers across Australia and Canada.

Krista Schade, managing director of The Riverine Grazier, in Hay, NSW, has just emerged as the lead litigant in an Australian suit being brought by Maurice Blackburn.

She joins Lisa Sygutek, publisher of the Crowsnest Pass Herald in Alberta, Canada, who is leading the fight for 1,200 publishers there.

They now form the spearhead of a rising class action movement now spawning copycat suits in the UK, the US, across South America and half of Europe.

In their first interview, the pair revealed how they intend to dethrone Google, perhaps Meta too, and return fairness and transparency to the global ad market.

“This isn’t somebody suing because a candy bar was wrapped incorrectly. This is the most important lawsuit for our industry that we’re ever going to have,” said Sygutek.

In a wide-ranging video interview, published in full on Ricky Sutton’s Future Media Substack, they reveal:

• They don’t want government bailouts, preferring a day in court to meet Google face-to-face.

• They have tough words for media’s big end of town, branding them cowards who have forgotten their reason for existing, and

• Criticise the industry for naively falling for Big Tech promises and allowing themselves to become silenced, shackled, and overly reliant.


Fair go

Sygutek has been leading Canada’s fight for fairness for three years.

She said: “None of the large publishers would touch it with a 10 foot pole. They didn’t want to rock the boat. Honestly, I thought they were cowards.

“Sometimes you just have to stand up to bullies. I’m an independent publisher. I’m not hampered by big industry telling me what I can and can’t do. It’s been a rollercoaster ever since.”

News that the Australian case would be led by Schade and The Riverine Grazer broke late last week. Court papers could be filed as early as today.

“We have a great team of lawyers, with Miranda Nagy and the team at Maurice Blackburn,” said Schade.

The Riverine Grazier is a small local paper serving the 3,000 residents of Hay, 710km west of Sydney and 400km north of Melbourne, on the Murrumbidgee River.

“We’re a legacy print product started in 1873 and until a couple of years ago, we were purely in print,” Schade continued.

“The paper has an important history of standing up for the town. It’s been part of anything the community needs, or needs to save, and we want to continue that.”

Her suit alleges that Google commandeered the local advertising market to such an extent it is impossible for publishers to survive.

She described her goal from the $1 billion Australian suit as being to win change.

“Change that leads to a fairer system might sound naive and lofty, but it’s exactly why we’re involved,” she said.

“It’s very Australian to say this, but we just want a fair-go in a competitive market. That’s all.

“It really shouldn’t take lawsuits all across the world to get it, with little newspapers being the ones having to stand up to make that happen.

“We don’t need Google to go away, we just need it to play nicer.

“As a tech company, it does good stuff. It’s really innovative. The driverless cars, the agriculture in Third World countries… but the anticompetitive bit, that just has to go.

“If Google can be forced to be fair, then we can all enjoy the benefits of the other stuff it does and not feel guilty. If it can be a more holistic company, then we all survive.”

Both cases are being funded by an Australian-based Swiss investment firm called OmniBridge, to level the playing field with Google’s legal heavyweights.

“It’s a hedge fund made up of retired lawyers and judges that look at different lawsuits around the world and decide if they think they’re viable lawsuit,” Sygutek revealed.

“They fund the lawsuit and get a percentage of the winnings, so it’s no money out of my pocket. We know what’s coming at us.”

Trial agreed

Google recently fought the Canadian case seeking to have it thrown out, but the judge ruled it will go to trial.

“I sat in that courtroom for three days so the judge could see that I was real,” Sygutek added.

“The lawsuit needed a face, and I looked Google right in the face and said: This is who I am, and I’m representing all the newspapers in the country. Have fun, because I’m not backing down.”

She stepped up after she saw $200,000 of national advertising leech to Google, and when she moved to use Google ads, her payments were 7 cents.

“We had to lay off half the staff. I started delivering newspapers, and stuffing fliers like I was 15 years old again,” she said.

“It started with me and then spread to every paper in the country, a sliding scale of decimation.”

No plan B

Schade said Google’s grip left her having to consider raising ad prices for local advertisers.

“My reasoning was that if I could create some ad revenue from Google then I wouldn’t need to put up ad rates for our local butcher.

“I could even employ another journalist to cover more stories.

“We could keep the paper’s cover charge low, and advertising prices low, because I was going to make this digital money from Google.

“That was my thinking, and what I was hoping for. It wasn’t possible.”

Schade added that Google’s dominance means there is no plan B.

“Businesses need choices, so do publishers, and even readers… We need choices in our advertising, and digital platforms that are competitive and fair.

“The whole market feels deliberately difficult to navigate, and it lacks the transparency to know what ads sell for and what you get back. You can’t make a decision.

“And if I decide not to (use Google) because I’m not really keen on a deal, what else can I do? There’s no other market. There’s no other competitor.”

Disinformation chaos

The complaint echoes evidence raised by the US Department of Justice during three landmark antitrust cases against Google’s app store, search and ad dominance.

Google has lost the app store and search trials, and a verdict on its ad tech is due shortly.

Regulators are demanding the Silicon Valley giant is broken up to restore competition.

Sygutek said: “We tried to run ads on our webpage and made nothing. It cost me more to hire somebody to do the sales than we made.

“Even Federal Government ads went to Google. They all just jumped on the bandwagon.

“My newspaper is the history of my community. This is our 95th year. You can go back to any point in those 95 years and know exactly what happened.

“You can’t do that on search or social media. It has no checks or balances.”

Schade agreed. “Same with us. Our newspaper is the diary of my community,” she said

“It’s not big enough to attract national news until there’s a crisis. Then if something dreadful happens like a fish kill in the Darling River or a bushfire, the national news reports crisis, crisis, crisis, and then p*** off again.

“They’re not interested in the follow up, or how it affected the community, or how it rebuilds. We do that, and we do it all the time.”

She added: “I love my newspaper and my community. I have never lived anywhere else, and I have no plans to be anywhere else.

“My husband was born here. I was born here. My kids were born here. This is my town.”

Sygutek added: “Same. My children are fifth generation. We emigrated from Europe to the town that I live in right now.

“I love it so much that I ran for town council. I’m now a community leader. When you’re trusted in the place you love, you want to see it thrive.

“I truly feel that community newspapers are the heartbeat of the community. We have the death notices, and the birth notices, and the tragedies – all the things that make a community

“If we lose that link, I really think that there’s going to be chaos.

“If there’s no place for small newspapers, you are left with a desert, and that vacuum is filled by something, and it’s disinformation. Then that causes panic.

“Local news is more than a newspaper, it’s the heart and soul of the community, and that’s what I really feel we are fighting for.

“We’re fighting for our livelihood. We’re fighting to keep our community safe, and whole and positive.”

Corporate vacuum

Both Schade and Sygutek think big media organisations lack the local connection to plug the gap left by a wipe-out of local press.

“If we aren’t there to fight for the community we love, then who will?” per Schade.

“A corporate newspaper won’t do it the way that we can, and the way that we want to.”

Sygutek added: “Corporate media has caused us more harm than good because they’ve forgotten who they are.

“People have an inherent trust in their newspaper, and as a newspaper you have an oath to uphold that.

“Big corporate newspapers have somehow lost that. They’re about profits and bottom lines, and somewhere in that, they’ve lost their meaning.”

Schade concurred: “Corporate newspapers have locked themselves into not being able to be part of something that’s aiming for change.

“They’re so locked into the corporateness that surrounds them that they cannot step to one side for good.

“That’s where we have an advantage, because we’re small and independent.

“If you’re part of a massive, international organisation, with editors, and managers, and heads of whatever in every country, it means there’s always a businessperson at the top.

“Once journalism is all about business, then the leaders are too far removed from the people covering the news, and they might as well not be there at all.”

Digging in

Sygutek suggested Canada foreshadows what will follow in Australia – and around the world – without intervention.

 “I’m so disgusted by the big media in Canada. The situation we are in is 100 per cent the result of their cowardice and their inability to find their voice,” she said.

“I’ve been in this lawsuit since 2022. I reached out to all the big media in the country to get on the bandwagon.

“I could not get air-time anywhere. I cannot even get them to discuss it.

“The big publishers are like dogs being given scraps of food. They’ve been declining for 10 years so they’re willing to accept them, but I’m not.

“I've never backed down from a fight in my life, and I’m certainly not going to back down now.

“We’re going to win this, and it’s not just about money, it’s about ethics. It’s about fairness. It’s about doing what’s right.

“And if you don't do what’s right, we all know that evil will prosper when good men do nothing.

“That saying sticks with me all the time. It’s about telling truth to power. We must fight for what’s right, and the world doesn't do enough of that.

“We’re so busy worrying about who we’re going to offend, or who we’re scared of, that we never actually just say that what’s happening is wrong.

“So, I’m going to hold them accountable, and hold Google accountable.

“We’ll see how we weather this storm, but what I do know is this. If we go down - if our communities go down - then we went down fighting tooth and nail for it.”

Interested publishers can register for the local class action here.