About AllNewfoundlandLabrador

AllNewfoundlandLabrador

Overview

allNewfoundlandLabrador is a subscription-only online newspaper covering business and politics in Newfoundland and Labrador, published from a bureau in St. John's by the Halifax company behind allNovaScotia, Atlantic Canada's best-known paywalled news service. It applies the parent publication's formula — original reporting on business and government, sold by subscription, with no free content — to Canada's easternmost province: the offshore energy sector, the fishing industry, provincial politics, courts, companies and the people who lend to, advise and regulate them.

The publication set out to be, in its founders' design, an essential daily source for the province's business community, and other news organisations treat it that way: its reporting is cited on the record by national outlets when it surfaces facts they did not have. It publishes five days a week, Monday to Friday, and a single subscription opens both it and its Nova Scotia sister.

History

The parent company was founded in Halifax in March 2001, when print veteran David Bentley launched allNovaScotia with his daughter, Caroline Wood. Bentley had form as a newspaper builder. In 1974, with his wife Diana and partners Patrick and Joyce Simms, he had founded the Great Eastern News Company, starting with a weekly broadsheet for the Halifax suburbs, the Bedford-Sackville News. The paper acquired its own press in 1978, became a six-day tabloid, the Bedford-Sackville Daily News, in 1979, and moved downtown in 1981 as The Daily News, building a reputation for hard-hitting stories the Chronicle Herald was not carrying. Newfoundland Capital Corporation took a controlling interest in 1985 and full ownership in 1987; the Daily News passed to Southam in 1997 and to CanWest in 2000, and outlived its founder's involvement by years, publishing until February 2008. allNovaScotia, launched while that paper was still appearing under other owners, was Bentley's digital second act — a business and politics newspaper published only online, behind a complete paywall, at a time when the industry was giving content away. It became a studied success: J-Source called it "a paywall success story," NiemanLab profiled how a "tightly paywalled, social-media-ignoring, anti-copy-paste, gossipy news site" became a dominant force in Nova Scotia, and Columbia Journalism School turned it into a teaching case — Kelly Toughill's 2013 study, "AllNovaScotia.com: Success or Anomaly?" The company itself billed the Nova Scotia title, in its 2016 launch release for the Newfoundland expansion, as Atlantic Canada's premier source for daily business and political news and as a publication that had established itself as the province's paper of record over its first 15 years — its own billing, but one the journalism literature had largely endorsed. As of 2013, Canadian Business reported, the company claimed more than 7,000 subscribers and employed 15 paid journalists — its own figures, from that date.

The Newfoundland and Labrador expansion was announced on 22 February 2016. The company had opened a St. John's bureau in late 2015, which was already filing what the launch announcement called a steady stream of business and political stories, and allNewfoundlandLabrador became the company's first publication outside its home province. Caroline Wood was publisher; Judy Myrden was the new publication's managing editor. Bentley, quoted in the launch release, argued that there was "a real appetite for our brand of news coverage in Newfoundland and beyond"; noting that it had been a tough year for daily newspapers, he added that "the future is bright for insightful local news" and that the company was investing in local coverage while others cut it. Myrden made the local case — "Despite the downturn in the offshore industry, St. John's has a vibrant business community" — and Wood reported that subscriptions had already risen since the bureau opened. The Globe and Mail covered the launch the same day as a noteworthy bet on paid local news.

Content and Coverage

The brief, as set out at launch and borne out by the reporting other outlets cite, is specialised business and political intelligence: the energy sector first of all — the offshore oil industry and its supply chain — followed by the fisheries, entrepreneurs and start-ups, lenders, lawyers, accountants and the provincial government whose decisions move all of them. The launch release described the new publication, in the company's own billing, as fast becoming "an essential source of news and information for the energy sector, the fishing industry, entrepreneurs, lenders, lawyers, accountants and more." It is reporting meant to be used in decisions, priced accordingly, and the parent company's model guards it accordingly — NiemanLab's profile of the formula noted its anti-copy-paste protections alongside the hard paywall, measures designed to keep subscriber-only reporting from circulating freely once sold.

Two examples show the service doing that work in recent years, each visible because another newsroom credited it. In November 2024, allNewfoundlandLabrador first reported that H3 Development would sell the provincial government a further 54 acres of land for a new St. John's hospital for some $23 million, beyond the ten acres being donated — a detail the province's transportation and infrastructure minister, Fred Hutton, subsequently confirmed publicly. And in January 2026, CBC News reported that allNewfoundlandLabrador had revealed that Stephenville airport owner Carl Dymond had lined up a new American business partner, Marko Stevanovic of ManKey Technologies — reporting that fed directly into the court-supervised receivership fight over the airport that CBC was covering.

Audience and Reach

The intended readership is the province's professional and business class: energy and fisheries executives, entrepreneurs, bankers and lenders, lawyers and accountants, and the political and public-service world around them. No current circulation or subscriber number for allNewfoundlandLabrador is published, and none is claimed here; the most recent figures on record are the parent company's own — the 7,000-plus subscribers claimed for the whole company in 2013, before the Newfoundland publication existed. At launch in 2016, a subscription to the combined service was priced at an introductory $15 a month, rising to a regular rate of $30 a month, with the regular rate allowing a subscriber to add up to two more readers at no extra cost; those are the launch-era prices, stated here as historical record rather than a current tariff.

Digital Presence

allNewfoundlandLabrador is an online-only publication with no print edition. Like its sister, it sits behind a hard paywall that prevents non-subscribers from viewing content — the deliberate, much-studied feature of the Bentley model, which also famously ignores social media as a distribution channel and protects its copy against forwarding. Publishing runs Monday to Friday, matching the working week of the business and government readers it serves.

Ownership and Organisation

The publication is owned by the Halifax-based company that publishes allNovaScotia, founded by David Bentley and Caroline Wood; Wood was publisher of allNewfoundlandLabrador at its launch, with Judy Myrden as managing editor in St. John's. Editorial work is done from the company's St. John's bureau — opened in the fall of 2015, ahead of the formal launch — within the Halifax organisation; this listing follows the directory record in placing the publication in St. John's, where its bureau and its subject matter are, while its parent company is headquartered in Halifax.

Contact and Availability

allNewfoundlandLabrador is available by subscription through its website, allnewfoundlandlabrador.com; a subscription also provides access to allNovaScotia.com. The publication is produced by its St. John's bureau and published online five days a week, Monday to Friday. Content is reserved to subscribers, and no print edition is offered.