The Canadian Press

What is The Canadian Press?

The Canadian Press is Canada's national news agency. The Canadian Encyclopedia records that it was established in 1917 "in order to bring news back from Canadian troops in World War I", and describes it as "a membership-based co-operative owned by the majority of daily newspapers in the country", with bureaus and correspondents in every major city in Canada, a head office in Toronto and a bureau in Washington, D.C.^[1]

The corporate form has since changed, and the agency's own account of it is the one available. On its news site it states that it operates as Canadian Press Enterprises Inc., a privately held Toronto-based corporation with three shareholders — Torstar, publisher of the Toronto Star; The Globe and Mail; and Montréal's La Presse — and describes itself as "Canada's No. 1 source for news – in French and English", with a French editorial department in Québec.^[2] CTV News, which carries the wire, describes CP as "a for-profit enterprise owned jointly by three of Canada's largest media companies" and as "a news source and leader in providing real-time, bilingual multimedia stories across print, broadcast and digital platforms", with "more than 180 journalists".^[3] The founding of the co-operative in 1917 and the later reconstitution as a shareholder-owned company are two different events and are kept apart here.

What does The Canadian Press cover?

CP is a general news agency whose sports desk is one of several. Its output reaches readers through client publishers and broadcasters rather than through a destination of its own: CTV News maintains an author page for The Canadian Press on which sports stories, including coverage of the Vancouver Canucks and Ottawa Senators, appear under the agency's byline alongside its general news.^[3] In practice that means the game reports, transaction stories and league news carried in identical form across Canadian outlets are usually CP copy, in English through The Canadian Press and in French through La Presse Canadienne.^[1][2]

The agency also runs two annual awards that function as a national sporting institution. The official awards site states that "male and female athletes in Canada have been recognized for their incredible contributions to their sport by the Canadian Press", that the trophies took the names of Lionel Conacher and Bobbie Rosenfeld in 1978 as tributes to two Canadian athletes of the first half of the twentieth century, and that they were previously announced as the Canadian Press Male Athlete of the Year and the Canadian Press Female Athlete of the Year.^[4] The Canadian Encyclopedia records that the Lionel Conacher Award "is presented annually to Canada's best male athlete, as decided by a poll of Canadian sports journalists", first awarded in 1932 and named in 1978,^[5] and describes the Bobbie Rosenfeld Award in the same terms for Canada's best female athlete, given since 1932 and formally named in 1978.^[6]

For the events those awards attach to, see sports in Canada.

How large is The Canadian Press's audience?

A wire service does not have an audience of its own in the sense a broadcaster does, and no circulation or reach figure for The Canadian Press could be retrieved. What is documented is the scale of its distribution and its staff. CTV News states that more than 180 journalists produce the agency's copy;^[3] the agency states that it "serves many of the daily news publishers in Canada, providing reliable and relevant news, photos, video and graphics".^[2] The Canadian Encyclopedia records that members contribute to a Canadian Press Member Exchange, with more than 20,000 stories submitted in a typical year, and that the agency has access to content from over 100 daily newspapers and 500 radio and television channels.^[1]

No audited figure for the size of the sports desk, or for the number of sports items it files, could be retrieved, and none is asserted here. The second-hand nature of the corporate description above should also be noted: the shareholder list rests on the agency's own site, corroborated only in general terms by CTV News.^[2][3]

Since when has The Canadian Press existed?

The Canadian Encyclopedia gives 1917 as the year of establishment and records that the French-language service was inaugurated in 1951.^[1] The agency's own site gives the same founding year and states that it was created by an act of Parliament as a news co-operative.^[2] CTV News describes it as having been "Canada's trusted national news agency for more than 100 years".^[3]

The awards long predate the current rights agreements: the Conacher award has been given since 1932 and the Rosenfeld award since 1932 or 1933 — The Canadian Encyclopedia gives 1932, the awards' own site 1933 — and both took their present names in 1978.^[4][5][6] The founding year, the year the French service began and the year the agency ceased to be a co-operative are three separate dates; the last could not be established from a source retrieved for this page.

Why does The Canadian Press matter in Canada's sport?

Because most Canadian sports reporting outside the broadcasters' own studios travels on its wire. A game report filed once in Toronto or Montréal appears, in English and in French, across newspapers, broadcaster websites and radio bulletins; CTV News's own author page for the agency is a concrete instance of that.^[3][2]

The agency is also the body that names Canada's athletes of the year, a designation given by a poll of sports journalists rather than by a federation, and running since 1932.^[4][5][6] That places it in a different relation to Canadian sport from the broadcasters: it holds no rights and buys no fixtures, and its standing rests on the distribution of its copy.