A Welsh language news website set up after being awarded a £100,000 annual grant for the next four years will close down after just five months in operation.
Corgi Cymru, the brainchild of former S4C digital executive Huw Marshall, was launched by the media giant Newsquest in April. It received funding from the Books Council of Wales, whose grant in turn comes from the Welsh Government.
Previously Golwg 360, an offshoot of the Welsh language current affairs magazine Golwg, received an annual grant of £200,000 to run a digital news service. The Books Council decided to halve Golwg 360’s grant and provide the other £100,000 to Corgi Cymru.
It has now been confirmed that Corgi Cymru's news service will be terminated at the end of October and the public funding will end. One full-time and one part-time job are now at risk, and a consultation will take place with affected staff at Newsquest, starting immediately.
Helgard Krause, chief executive of the Books Council, said that the Books Council and Newsquest had agreed that the best thing for both parties was to terminate the funding agreement and close the Welsh digital news service at the end of October "after intensive consideration and careful discussion”.
Ms Krause said: "We have been in regular contact with Newsquest over the past few weeks and we are very sorry to see Corgi Cymru close, but we understand that circumstances have changed since the grant was awarded, due to the current challenging environment. "Our thoughts are with the staff who have been affected by this decision."
Thanking the Book Council for their support, which allowed the launch of Corgi Wales earlier this year, Gavin Thompson, regional editor of Newsquest, said: "Unfortunately, it became clear that even with the support of the Books Council and given the challenging economic environment, that building a new Welsh language enterprise at this time would not be economically sustainable.
"We have been in constructive discussions regarding the future of the service over the past few weeks, following the closure of The National Wales.”
The Books Council will announce the process for re-tendering for the remaining funding of the Welsh Digital News Service grant from 2023 onwards over the next few weeks.
Corgi Cymru’s companion English language news website The National closed in August, 18 months after launching, blaming competition from other outlets. Its two dedicated members of staff were warned that as they hadn’t been employed for at least two years, they were not legally entitled to redundancy payments.
Mr Thompson said at the time: “Despite the best efforts and dedication of the team, competition from free news outlets including BBC Wales online means The National Wales has not been able to grow its paying subscriber base to a sustainable level.”
In addition to the dedicated staff members, the paper’s articles were provided by reporters working on other Newsquest titles in Wales and by those working for the Local Democracy news service funded by the BBC.
The National’s website was launched on St David’s Day 2021. To coincide with the launch, it published what was described as a “souvenir” print edition followed by a special edition to preview the Welsh Senedd election. A weekly newspaper edition was published weekly on a Saturday until November 2021, when the last printed edition went on sale.
At the time Mr Thompson said: “The main objective for the newspaper was to raise awareness of the new digital news service for Wales as an alternative to the UK national news brands published out of England.”
It was claimed that the print edition had “achieved its objective” and that it would return to its “pop-up format”, with details of future pop-ups released in 2021. But no further newspapers were produced.
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