Trinity Mirror’s (LSE: TNI) Media Wales division is one of five organisations to bid for a £600,000 three-year public grant with which to launch a Welsh-language news website, according to HTFP. Media startup Dyddiol Cyf announced its highly ambitious plans to launch a daily Welsh paper and website, Y Byd, with 24 staff way back in 2006. But the partly donation-funded project was stillborn when a Welsh Assembly Government review, initiated as part of a power-sharing coalition deal, decided to invite bidders for predominantly online operations and capped funding at £200,000 a year - far less than Y Byd said it needed. Now Cardiff-based Media Wales, which publishes the English-language Western Mail, South Wales Echo and Wales On Sunday papers together online as icWales, wants in.

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Trinity Mirror’s bid may stick in the throat of smaller hopefuls, coming as it does as a plea from a relatively large commercially-funded entity rather than a struggling public enterprise. But Trinity itself is not in rude financial health and, having demonstrated it can at least run its existing news orgs professionally, it may now be considered a safer pair of hands. A growing 21.7 percent of those in Wales speak Welsh - but another 139,000 around the world use the language… a well-run online operation may fulfil the dream of reconnecting the diaspora in places like Patagonia. Still, the fledgling operation would face competition from BBC News’ own well-funded services in both Welsh and English. The grant would be administered by the Welsh Books Council.