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.

Gene Allen is a professor in the School of Journalism and the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at Ryerson University. A professional journalist for 20 years at the Globe and Mail and the CBC, he was director of research and a senior producer for the award-winning documentary series Canada: A People’s History and editor of its companion book.

Gene Allen's profile page

• Short-listed, Canada Prize in the Humanities awarded by Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences

‘Author Gene Allen has produced the first comprehensive history of Canadian Press from its creation in 1917 to the 1970s… More importantly, Allen concludes, its [CP’s] coverage fostered a sense of nationhood in its countrywide news audience, “systematically and permanently drawing Canadians more closely together in an increasingly integrated national and cultural space.”’

Canada's History Magazine, June-July 2014