Earthblog

Calgary media company claims territory on the Internet news market

While many news outlets are struggling to find viable online revenue models to serve an audience used to getting free content, a Calgary-based online media company is earning income and international attention for their freely available opinion, editorial and news commentary articles.

Troy Media Corporation is by no means a traditional news outlet, but after just five years they have established bureaus in New York and Brussels and their content is consistently published in over 650 outlets worldwide with a circulation of 225 million in 2008 according to their monitoring system. They have forged a new role in the changing media landscape by embracing the broad audience on the Internet.

Former editorial pages editor and editor of digital development at the Calgary Herald Doug Firby, now senior editor and Alberta columnist at Troy Media, has witnessed first hand the effect that the Internet has had on newspapers. He attributes Troy Media’s success to well-edited, well-written, reliable copy and fewer resources and smaller editorial staff at news outlets. Firby is one of six editors and 15 to 20 writers on the Troy Media team, along with veterans of the Canadian Press, the L.A. Times and the Wall Street Journal among others.

“I think Troy Media is actually filling in an important void that sort of opened up as traditional print media has fallen on hard times economically,” Firby said. His Alberta column is written for a broader audience, he says. It has been published all across Canada.

“We have gotten to a point in terms of the evolution of the media in which we have to accept that the platform is less relevant than the content. Newspapers have to stop thinking of themselves as a piece of print that you hold in your hands in the morning. They have to think of themselves as news content generators and the customer is actually going to decide the most convenient way in which they want to read your content,” Firby said.

Although Firby receives competitive compensation for his columns, they have until recently represented just one half of Troy Media’s content: the non-revenue generating half. Troy Media has, however, begun charging a fee for select syndicated. The company’s long-term goal is to have a similar columnist in every province and territory.

Even after creating a thriving online content provider, Troy Media Corporation founder and editor-in-chief still starts everyday by flipping through the daily broadsheets

The other 50 per cent of Troy Media’s content is responsible for 90 per cent of their revenue. Organizations that want to have their voices heard, such as the Canada West Foundation and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy to name a few, pay Troy Media to edit opinion pieces and distribute them to a network of daily, weekly, monthly and online publications. This original idea, which distinguishes Troy Media from traditional news outlets, is the brainchild of founder and editor-in-chief Gary Slywchuk.

Slywchuck had thirty years of news industry experience under his belt before Troy Media was conceived. A self-proclaimed old newsman and journalist at heart, he still starts his day by reading both national daily newspapers and the local broadsheet with a cup of coffee, of which he limits himself to four a day. He had no idea that his company would become what it is today. In fact, there was a time when he thought it was “dead in the water.”

Slywchuk started Troy Media Corporation after he retired. It began selling original news content to newspapers. After he realized how little they were paying he put the project on the back burner and became a media consultant for the Canada West Foundation. He developed a simplistic template based on consistent media interaction that worked so well that other not for profit organizations began to request his services. All of a sudden, Troy Media Corporation had come back to life.

“We try to discover issues sometimes that are not part of the dialogue yet and we try to create them as that,” Slywchuk said. He believes in a well-defined audience, and defines his audience as journalists. He noticed that organization’s tend to think of journalists as lazy, which he says couldn’t be farther from the truth.

“You have to feed them right, you got to make sure you answer their questions right and give them the materials that they need to do their job and once you do that it opens up the opportunity for them to have a better understanding for what’s going on,” Slywchuk said about journalists, illustrating his simple and consistent information distribution template.

Slywchuk’s goal -- to offer issues to the public dialogue -- was recognized by Alberta legislature reporter Mark Lisac in an email to Troy Media commending the company’s contribution to the provincial political dialogue.

A former legislature correspondent for the Canadian Press and the Edmonton Journal, Lisac now runs MSL Publishing Ltd., which prints a weekly six-page newsletter called Insight Into Government. He said he has noticed how the internet has made government information more accessible, but that he won’t migrate his company online because of it’s difficult to make money online.

“Before the Internet was around it may have been a lot more difficult to set up a business like that, which does in fact make a lot more information available,” Lisac said about Troy Media. “They do disseminate articles that may not in the past have been appearing in print.”

The Calgary Herald has published Troy Media copy in its editorial pages, but not too often

according to editorial pages editor Lisia Corbella. Corbella said she is bombarded with up to 30 unsolicited submissions per day, but they are mostly unprofessional compared to Troy Media’s articles.

“It is a helpful service because first of all you know that you are getting stuff that has been looked over and it is flagged and the headshots are available,” Corbella said about Troy Media. “I can understand why not-for-profits or organizations would use a service like Troy Media.”

Maclean Kay is one writer who has seen his byline in the Herald thanks to Troy Media. Kay is a recent graduate of Mount Royal College before it became a university. The copy that he has written for Troy Media has been circulated and published in newspapers from coast to coast.

“That is one of the coolest things about writing for Troy,” Kay said, adding that he is very satisfied with his financial earnings.

Every article distributed by Troy Media goes through a meticulous six-week editing process where it is reviewed two times by at least three editors. Slywchuk’s passion for high quality information is the driving force behind the business.

“There is a lot of crap on the Internet. Hopefully Troy Media is not part of that crap,” Slywchuck said. He was proud to learn that over 87 per cent of the time Troy Media appears in Google search results it is on the first page and often the very first link, but he was sure to add later that relying on Google news alone is not being truly informed.

”The problem with the Internet is that that stuff is put out there by people who aren’t journalists or trained to actually see a story properly, how to report a story properly with the proper tone and everything else,” Slywchuk said.

“Objectivity is something you strive for although you have to always realize you can never achieve it. It is very important to realize that we all have our biases, but you strive for the objectivity. It is people who think they are objective who are the dangerous ones. And always remember you could be right or wrong. There is no answer all the time,” Slywchuk added.

Slywchuk admits that he does not know what to expect in the future. In the changing media environment his whole operation could be going down hill in as little as three months, Slywchuk admits, but for today Troy Media Corporation has made their claim on the new frontier known as the Internet.