Blue sky thinking in Nova Scotia

What if journalists built the internet?

The great paywall debate aside, there's a presumption these days that we know more or less what the future of online journalism looks like. There were be social media. There will be copious data analysis. There will be content aggregation, more links than you can shake a stick at and some whizzy interactive tools we haven't even dreamed up yet. (Computer games to tell news stories. Really?)

But a fascinating article over at the Nieman Journalism Lab looks at one news organisation which is breaking all the 'rules' and yet still proving a real success. AllNovaScotia.com, a website now 10 years old, is tightly paywalled, has no multimeeja content to speak of, doesn't bother with social media and even publishes all its pages on Flash as the ultimate anti-copying and pasting device.

Instead of relying on advertising, it charges a $30 monthly subscription to a small but loyal audience of 5,950 readers, who tend to be 'opinion-formers' - bigwigs in local politics or business. A team of 14 - including 11 reporters - then focus on finding and writing must-read stories, described as a 'mixture of hard news and betcha-didn’t-know information about the province’s movers and shakers'.

It's the ultimate niche publication - but it works:

Ask 10 people on the street about AllNovaScotia and it’s likely eight will say they’ve never heard of it.

“I think it might be nine people,” says Parker Donham, a former journalist for the now-defunct Halifax Daily News, communications consultant, and blogger. “But the one who did would be an assistant deputy minister or a regional manager. Between people paying for it and a limited amount of advertising, they’ve got a business model that seems to work.”

“On the whole, I think they are the paper of record now,” adds Donham. “I don’t think there are many serious business or political people who don’t see that every morning.”

Starting with content people want to read, then delivering it to them in the simplest way possible which ensures they have to pay for it. It shouldn't be revolutionary, but it is.

And while the AllNovaScotia.com model clearly won't work everywhere, and probably couldn't be scaled up for a national publication, it would be nice to see more examples of journalists genuinely exploring new options, and publishers worrying less about the bells and whistles on the delivery system and more about what they're actually delivering.

'Content is king', is the favourite mantra of the future-of-journalism types. They're right - and AllNovaScotia.com proves they should start acting like they believe it.