How to close the site, do not care about social networks, prohibit copy-paste and become a leading media company

AllNovaScotia charges $ 360 a year for accessing its content, and it doesn’t matter before other news sites survive. How did it happen that the most influential people in the region listen to him? Why is it profitable, and the rest barely make ends meet?

Every morning, the political and business elite of the largest of the Primorsky provinces of Canada begins with the AllNovaScotia site, drawing on it news about the life of their own region. The site recently turned ten years old, and in terms of influence, it competes with the local press. He achieved this by breaking the rules: free access to the site is almost impossible, the site is not represented on social networks, there are no multimedia materials on the site, and you can hardly find a hyperlink somewhere.

But he has applications for iOS and BlackBerry devices, to which he delivers business news, messages from the city hall and the local legislative assembly without any delay. He furnishes competitors almost every day and won a loyal audience with an explosive mixture of government orders and details from the private life of all of the least significant people in the region.

The editors are located in Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia , with a population of less than a million people. Ask anyone on the street, and eight out of ten will answer you that they have never heard of AllNovaScotia.
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“I think even all nine,” says Parker Donham, a former journalist for the now-closed Halifax Daily News newspaper, a consultant and blogger. - “But the one who knows, most likely, will be an assistant deputy minister or some regional manager. It seems that reliance on paid access and a small amount of advertising is quite a working business model. In general, it is quite normal media. There are not many politicians and businessmen whose morning does not start from this site. ”

AllNovaScotia has 5950 subscribers, their monthly subscription fee is 80% of the company's revenues. Such attendance cannot be compared with a competitor - the newspaper Chronicle Herald, it is already 137 years old, and its weekly circulation is 108,389 copies. For $ 30 a month, you access the site from three different email addresses. But copying the content and sending it to someone will not be easy. The content produced by the editors of 14 people, 11 of which are reporters, is packaged in a flash container. So at best, you will have to make screenshots and glue them into one picture; you won't find the Share button here.

The head of the association of small and medium-sized businesses in the region (5200 companies in total) argues that the site’s impact on the members of the association is not wide, but strong. “I would venture to suggest that the majority have never heard of AllNovaScotia,” said Lin Hachi, vice president of the Atlantic Branch of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. “However, as far as I know, everyone who has an influence on politics or is associated with the authorities knows this site and is following it very closely.”

In many ways, AllNovaScotia is similar to the Massachusetts Statehouse News Service . This is a network resource covering all the issues of government activity for lobbyists, officials and businessmen. However, the AllNovaScotia approach is both wider and bolder.

In the center of each issue are permits for real estate management, court orders, transfer of land plots. As well as success stories and failures associated with them. One of the January issues was a typical mix of top stories and gossip. The issue of 25 articles includes:

• a lightning to say that the first Apple store in the region will open in the local hypermarket;
• a notice that a buyer has been found for one of the closing paper mills;
• descriptions and photographs of a property worth $ 7.6 million purchased by a local magnate in Florida;
• dossier on three new partners of the leading law firm of the capital of the region;
• an obituary of a small local businessman who sponsored a local hockey team.

Former chief editor, who retired in June, Kevin Cox said that the target audience of the site is a complexly intertwined and family-oriented business community. “The strangest thing is that they like to read about each other. Not in a satirical sense, but quite seriously, ”continues Cox, who previously wrote articles for the Globe and Mail newspapers, and now writes comments for the site and is going to take the post of priest of the United Church. “How does the Fountain family squander money?” How do they make money? To whom do they distribute them? ”

As it turned out, the Fountains, one of the largest benefactors in the region, spent a decent amount on their Christmas party on December 10, ordering Tony Bennett’s performance on it. So the next issue of AllNovaScotia came out with an editorial, savoring the details of the festival, Bennet's set list and guest list with an explanation of who is who.

Such a focus on the site on people and their wealth distinguishes the company from other business media. In the texts, the names are in bold type, followed by their wages and the estimated value of their real estate in brackets. In almost every issue there is news about who is suing who.

“We wrote about real estate. We wrote about local securities. We wrote about old families. ”- Cox tells about the beginning of its activities in 2004. - “We wrote about large transactions, about small transactions. About breweries and cafes. Some news was devoted to such petty occasions to which no one paid attention. ”

The character inherited from the site of its founder David Bentley, who in the 1980s became a co-founder of Frank Magazine . This is a very shameless print and online magazine that chronicles the divorces of local celebrities, squabbles and intrigues. Many in this conservative region read it, although few admit to their deed. Ten years before, Bentley founded a separate newspaper, which later became known as the Halifax Daily News. This rambling tabloid in 1994 became the first Canadian newspaper to launch its website. The newspaper closed in 2008, twenty years after Bentley sold it.

Now David is no longer running the Frank Journal, he says that the readers of AllNovaScotia are businessmen, officials, and heads of health and social services. These are people who need to know what is happening, and who reads the materials, “just to know who is suing and who owes whom.”

Cox claims that the site writes about the private life of the local business elite, if it can affect the business in which they operate.

“The fact that you are Colin Macdonald from Clearwater does not mean that we will not delve into the underside of the value of the securities of your business. And this does not mean that we will not interfere in people's personal lives, ”says Cox. This approach did not irritate McDonald, director of an international fishing company with an annual turnover of $ 300 million. The site wrote a lot about Clearwater during a friendly takeover in 2011. When MacDonald went fishing in Newfoundland during the deal, the site published an article titled “Colin went to fish” in which he asked whether the passion of one of the company's most loyal founders for business diminished.

In a letter, MacDonald wrote: "AllNovaScotia provides me and, I would venture to suggest, many more business leaders with the latest news about what is happening in the community." This is a competitive advantage over the rest of the media in the region, which are slower and "suffer from a lack of business information and an understanding of the subject matter."

In response, the newspaper Chronicle-Herald launched a morning business newsletter in 2011 and hired business reporters. But an important factor in the success of AllNovaScotia is not only the subject, but also the style of presentation of materials. “We argue on a huge number of topics. It could have happened, it could have happened. ”Says Cox. “We write about this with a fair amount of complacency, which many business publications would never have allowed themselves.”

To what extent does this style owe its roots to the Candid Magazine? “I think it’s very significant.” Adds Cox. “We are sharply criticized by the local school of journalism for using anonymous sources. But they speak to us such people who will not speak to anyone else. If they give me noteworthy information, and I can recheck it, I think it is my duty to publish it. ”

And for Bentley and his daughter, the publishers of AllNovaScotia, “debt” is impossible without paying for access to the site. “We have to do it. Otherwise they won't buy a damn thing, ”he says emphatically. “Our competitors are people who want to read for free. This is a huge problem, sucking our blood every day. Sounds like paranoia, but it's true. ”

“As a result, we have a website that, according to current concepts, should not appear on the Internet at all,” says consultant and blogger Donham. But for Bentley, it's in the order of things. Unlike other media executives, who consider "what they get for their content more than what it actually costs," Bentley knows that his information is worth his audience. He recognizes the importance of social media in the Arab spring, but insists: "You can not engage in the production of content and do not receive payment for its production."

With all this, he is careful in assessing the success of his site as a business model. “He is with us 10 or 11 years. This is just one place. ”He says. - “What is the success here? If only we had covered the whole continent in one fell swoop, another thing would have happened, right? ”