News From The Coast
The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region. Mark Leger is the editor of Huddle and the Director of News Content for Acadia Broadcasting.
They were the most difficult two days of my professional life. It was October of 2004 and my business partners and I had decided to sell here, a weekly newspaper based in Saint John that we had owned operated for nearly five years.
On the outside, I remained upbeat when we announced the sale to Brunswick News. In meetings with staff members, in my column to readers, during an interview on the local CBC radio morning show, I talked about the opportunity to sustain and grow the paper with the resources and support of a larger news organization. I would remain the editor, a committed and active participant during the next phase of development.
On the inside, I was heartbroken to sell the news and entertainment paper I’d co-founded with a group of like-minded young people, even though I knew it was the best way for it to survive in the long run.
Many local businesspeople congratulated me because “exits” like this are a natural part of the growth process for many successful businesses. I didn’t know how to respond but I maintained the cheery façade, even as I remained numb and distressed beneath the surface.
I don’t think my experience was unique. I imagine many founders of companies big and small, from a variety of sectors, experience the same mixed emotions when they sell their businesses.
Earlier this week, Christine Oreskovich and Kyle Shaw announced the sale of The Coast, which they founded in Halifax as a news and entertainment weekly in 1993, to Overstory, a B.C.-based media company with more than 10 Canadian publications.
Related: Halifax’s ‘The Coast’ Sold To B.C. Media Company
The Coast has been an indispensable source of news on community issues, politics, entertainment, and culture, with a loyal base of readers, many of whom have followed the growth and development of the paper since it began.
I count myself amongst that group; I was living in Halifax at the time and about to go to journalism school myself.
Seven years later, we launched here and considered them role models and peers; here and The Coast were part of a North American-wide movement to publish “alt” papers in small and large urban areas.
By describing my own fraught reaction to the sale of here, I don’t mean to suggest The Coast founders are going through the same thing. Every business owner will have their own ways of managing through a sale process and experience a range of emotions, depending on the circumstances.
But we did face similar obstacles to growth, albeit in a very different context. Local media outlets tackle the same challenges as businesses in other sectors; how to scale and adapt to changing circumstances to remain vibrant and grow.
here started as a Saint John paper but expanded into Moncton as part of a growth plan. Brunswick News took the paper into Fredericton after the acquisition. It was also the early days of digital media, but we could already see that was the future.
For more than 25 years, The Coast published a weekly print paper and built up a successful event business. Then the pandemic hit, dealing a knock-out blow to the print paper and curtailing events, at least during the worst periods of the pandemic.
In a letter to readers earlier this week, Oreskovich and Shaw wrote about the advantages of being part of a larger group of companies that could help address the challenges of pivoting from a weekly print paper to a digital publication.
“We knew we needed expert guidance and we felt we owed it to our team and readers to find a partner that could coach and mentor The Coast into being a stronger digital media outlet. Overstory is that partner,” they wrote. “We believe being a part of Overstory’s larger community will help us build up The Coast.”
Huddle itself pursued this strategy when co-founders Allan Gates and Lise Hansen originally partnered with Acadia Broadcasting, which is now the sole owner. We have a content-sharing partnership with Acadia’s radio stations in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which allows Huddle to grow its audience and news offerings.
And it’s not just smaller, local news outlets that are looking for opportunities to scale and take advantage of being part of larger entities.
In February, Toronto-based Postmedia, which owns papers like the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen, announced it was acquiring Brunswick News. New Brunswickers have long seen Brunswick News and its stable of daily and weekly newspapers as the big fish. Now it’s been swallowed by a larger, national chain looking for a Maritime presence.
“The addition of BNI brands allows Postmedia to serve audiences and marketers from the Pacific to the Atlantic,” said Andrew MacLeod, the president and CEO of Postmedia.
Related: Postmedia To Acquire Irving-Owned Newspapers
Jim Irving himself called the sale a win for New Brunswick readers.
“Postmedia is well-positioned to make the transition to the digital world of providing New Brunswickers with a reliable source of local, regional and national news as well as access to much broader news coverage,” said Irving, the co-CEO of J.D. Irving, Limited.
The challenge for the New Brunswick papers and The Coast is that they were bought by companies from outside the province, so the new owners will have to win the hearts and minds of local readers. Rightly or wrongly, people believe local owners are better stewards of community media outlets.
That’s especially true for outlets owned and operated by their founders. In our case, it made the transition smoother when I stayed with here (though for only a few months as it turned out) because the paper still had the same vision and content.
Luckily for Halifax readers, Shaw and Oreskovich plan to stay and help The Coast grow through its next stage of development, calling Overstory a “partner” in that process.
“Like The Coast, Halifax is at a point of change between the old and the new,” they wrote. “As the city goes through its biggest shift, we feel it is important to preserve the magic, the weird, the soul of this place we all love. But it’s the thrill of the new, the opportunities and the people evolving the city that has us most excited, and we promise The Coast will be here covering its progress for you.”
As hard as it was for me to sell our paper nearly 20 years ago, change is inevitable and not always a bad thing. Newspapers are bought and sold all the time, just like other businesses, and it can help them evolve, often for the better.
That will hopefully be the case for The Coast, and it certainly has a better chance with Shaw and Oreskovich along for the journey.