Exclusive: government conducted federal seat analysis to determine which seats would benefit from $50m program, FOI documents showFollow our Australia news live blog for the latest updatesGet our free news app; get our morning email briefingSome regional
Australian publishers that won multimillion-dollar government grants designed to protect local journalism jobs sacked staff and closed newsrooms before the ink was dry on their grant agreements.
Guardian Australia can also reveal that the government conducted a federal seat analysis of the Public Interest News Gathering (Ping) grants to determine which seats would benefit from the $50m program. The communications minister, Paul Fletcher, did not respond to questions about the analysis.
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