The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper

This addition to the "Perspectives on Canadian Culture" series describes how Canadian newspapers were born as a tool of government, gradually became a tool of various political parties, and freed themselves of that yoke only after their supremacy had been broken by TV and other media.

The author discusses the Colonial Reform Press and their crucial role; the propagation, before Confederation, of the idea that political parties should found, sustain, and control newspapers; western expansion and the developing professionalism of staff and reporting; the 19th century origins of today's most powerful papers and the birth of independent papers; the heyday of the two-paper town as an outgrowth of the polarity of Liberals and Conservatives, and the eventual breakdown of this system with the growth of chain ownership; and the age of mergers, consolidations, and new technologies.