Making National News
A History of Canadian Press
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- $40.99
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- $40.99
Publisher Description
For almost a century, Canadian newspapers, radio and television stations, and now internet news sites have depended on the Canadian Press news agency for most of their Canadian (and, through its international alliances) foreign news. This book provides the first-ever scholarly history of CP, as well as the most wide-ranging historical treatment of twentieth-century Canadian journalism published to date.
Using extensive archival research, including complete and unfettered access to CP’s archives, Gene Allen traces how CP was established and evolved in the face of frequent conflicts among the powerful newspaper publishers – John Ross Robertson, Joseph Atkinson, and Roy Thomson, among others – who collectively owned it, and how the journalists who ran it understood and carried out their work. Other major themes include CP’s shifting relationships with the Associated Press and Reuters; its responses to new media; its aggressive shaping of its own national role during the Second World War; and its efforts to meet the demands of French-language publishers.
Making National News makes a substantial and original contribution to our understanding of journalism as a phenomenon that shaped Canada both culturally and politically in the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Canadian Press is a venerable institution, but there have been few formal studies of it. Veteran journalist Allen addresses that lack, beginning with CP's origins during WWI, an age when Canadian news was often quite regional or filtered through the sensibilities of Americans. Allen divides CP's history into seven periods: the decade of its formation; the era when it was formulating its relationship to the government, eventually eschewing subsidy for independence; the era when it struggled to adapt to the new medium of radio; the challenges of the WWII; the post-war era; the 1960s and the rise of a true Canadian consciousness; and finally a grand overview of journalism from the 1920s to the 1970s. The prose is detailed, clear and informative. Lavish endnotes and a lengthy bibliography are provided. The work is fascinating not just for the compact history of the CP that it provides but the perspective it provides on Canada. CP's evolution parallels those of other Canadian institutions and certain events, such as the effects of radio, and casts an illuminating light on current technological challenges facing CP. Insightful and informative, this text will stand as the definitive history of Canadian Press.
