 |
David Bentley is a Canadian businessman from Halifax, Nova Scotia who has been involved in print media since the 1970s.
Contents
Born in England, Bentley emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1966. [1]
|
David Bentley is a Canadian businessman from Halifax, Nova Scotia who has been involved in print media since the 1970s.
Born in England, Bentley emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1966. [1]
Bentley and his wife Diana, along with Patrick and Joyce Sims, founded, The Great Eastern News Company Ltd., in 1974 and started publishing a weekly broadsheet named The Bedford-Sackville News, which focused on the suburban communities of Bedford and Lower Sackville within the Halifax-Dartmouth metropolitan area.
The Great Eastern News Company Ltd., was initially published out of Bentley's home but a press was acquired in 1978 and the company moved into a new building. A year later the format changed to a tabloid and began publishing six days a week as The Bedford-Sackville Daily News. The paper gained a reputation for printing stories that were not covered by its competition, The Chronicle Herald , some of which were considered sensational. In 1981, Bentley's company moved into downtown Halifax from its suburban base and renamed the tabloid as The Daily News , while gaining a reputation for hard-hitting stories and expanded sports coverage.
In 1985 the Newfoundland Capital Corporation or NCC gained a controlling interest in the paper and purchased Bentley's remaining share in 1987.
With the money received from sale of The Daily News to NCC, Bentley, along with Lyndon Watkins and Dulcie Conrad started a bi-weekly "gossip rag" or "scandal magazine" known as Frank to sell the sensational news coverage that mainstream press was averse to covering. Rare to the industry, the magazine had no advertising and operated solely from its print sales.
The first issue was published in November 1987 and focused on gossip about the private lives of the rich, famous and politically connected in the Maritime provinces.
Bentley expanded the Frank franchise to include an Ottawa edition in 1989 with the help of Michael Bate. This edition quickly outsold its Maritime counterpart, feeding off the void of gossip news in mainstream media in the nation's capital.
Bentley followed a successful formula with the magazine, feeding the need for gossip among the powerful, as well as the average citizen. It was often rumoured that each edition was incorporated as a separate legal entity, leaving no assets for potential lawsuits over libel, however there is no proof that this was ever done.
While the Maritime edition continued to grow in popularity, the Ottawa edition took off in just a few years, rising from a start of 600 copies to a publishing run of over 16,000 at the height of the Mulroney years. It was during this time that the Ottawa edition of Frank brought the magazine its greatest notoriety by satirically running a contest in 1991 inviting young Tories to "Deflower Caroline Mulroney, invoking the Prime Minister's wrath on Bentley and his partners. Mulroney joined several women's groups in denouncing the ad as an incitement to rape, but the magazine maintained that it was commenting on the Prime Minister's perceived habit of using his daughter as a political prop. The magazine also scooped the identity of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's love child with Deborah Coyne in 1991.
Bate subsequently bought out Bentley and his other partners to take the Ottawa edition of Frank independent.
Bentley continued with his publication of the Maritime edition of Frank, leading the magazine to several scoops, including the charges of sexual assault against former Premier of Nova Scotia and Trudeau-era cabinet minister Gerald Regan, in which he was subsequently acquitted.
Dulcie Conrad sold her share of the Maritime edition of Frank in the mid-1990s to Bentley and Watkins. In September 2000, Bentley and Watkins sold an equity stake in the Maritime edition of Frank to one of the magazine's reporters, Clifford Boutilier.
In March 2001, Bentley and his daughter Caroline Wood launched an online Monday to Friday business newspaper focusing exclusively on Nova Scotian businesses entitled, allNovaScotia. [2]
Similar to the Frank experiment, allnovascotia.com contains a hard-hitting approach to news, however, it focuses exclusively on business-related news and not personal gossip or scandal but does contain scoops on lawsuits and other information not found in mainstream Nova Scotian media. Bentley and his daughter contribute to the paper along with several other reporters. The online newspaper survives on subscriptions and advertisements. [3] In 2016, Bentley and Wood launched a sister publication, allNewfoundlandLabrador, bringing its model to St. John's, but sharing resources and providing subscriber access to both sites. In 2020, the family business expanded again with the launch of allNewBrunswick.
Nova Scotia is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native English-speakers. The province's population reached 1 million in December 2021.
The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is a maritime museum located in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Frank is a bi-weekly Scandal or satirical magazine published since 1987 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Halifax, formally known as the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), is the capital and largest municipality of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. It had a population of 403,131 in 2016, with 316,701 in the urban area centred on Halifax Harbour. As of July 2020, Statistics Canada estimated the population of the CMA at 448,544 and 347,834 in the uban area. The regional municipality consists of four former municipalities that were amalgamated in 1996: Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford, and Halifax County.
Music is a part of the warp and weft of the fabric of Nova Scotia's cultural life. This deep and lasting love of music is expressed through the performance and enjoyment of all types and genres of music. While popular music from many genres has experienced almost two decades of explosive growth and success in Nova Scotia, the province remains best known for its folk and traditional based music.
Bedford is a former town and current urban community of the Halifax Regional Municipality, in Nova Scotia, Canada. It was an independent town from 1980 to 1996. Bedford is on the northwestern end of Bedford Basin, an extension of the Halifax Harbour, which ends just before Nova Scotia Highway 102 and the Bedford Bypass, next to Lower Sackville. Bedford is at the junctions of Trunks 1, 2, and 7.
HMCS Sackville is a Flower-class corvette that served in the Royal Canadian Navy and later served as a civilian research vessel. She is now a museum ship located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the last surviving Flower-class corvette.
The Daily News was a tabloid newspaper in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that was published from 1974 until ceasing operations in February 2008.
Donald H. Oliver is a Canadian lawyer, developer and politician. Appointed by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Oliver served in the Senate of Canada from 1990 until 2013. He was the first black male to sit in the Senate and the second black Canadian appointed to the chamber.
Maritime Union is a proposed political union of the three Maritime provinces of Canada – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island – to form a single new province. This vision has sometimes been expanded to a proposed Atlantic Union, which would also include the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Charles Fenerty, was a Canadian inventor who invented the wood pulp process for papermaking, which was first adapted into the production of newsprint. Fenerty was also a poet.
Michael Bate is a Canadian media entrepreneur and one of the founders of the Ottawa edition of gossip magazine Frank.
The Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) in Nova Scotia, Canada has a widely varied geography.
Halifax, Nova Scotia is the largest population centre in Atlantic Canada and contains the region's largest collection of media outlets.
EastLink TV is the brand for EastLink's community channels that serve Northern Ontario, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. As of 2009, the company's systems in Western Canada are served by the distinct PersonaTV division.
CSS Acadia is a former hydrographic surveying and oceanographic research ship of the Hydrographic Survey of Canada and its successor the Canadian Hydrographic Service.
Len Goucher is a Canadian politician, who represented the electoral district of Bedford in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 2006 to 2009. He is a member of the Progressive Conservatives.
Barry Barnet is a Canadian politician. He represented the electoral districts of Sackville-Beaver Bank and Hammonds Plains-Upper Sackville in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1999 to 2009. He was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Nova Scotia.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Nova Scotia:
Stephen Allen Craig is a Canadian politician, who was elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly in a by-election on June 18, 2019. A member of the Progressive Conservatives, he represents the electoral district of Sackville-Cobequid.