Balancing Academic and Corporate Interests in Canadian Journalism Education

Abstract

Journalism education in Canada lags far behind the field in the United States, both in history and numbers. The first university-level schools of journalism in Canada did not open until the late 1940s, and until the mid-1970s there were only three four-year journalism schools there, all in the dominant province of Ontario. Two major reasons for this belated development have been practitioner resistance and a lack of funding. Despite the former, the number of university journalism programs in Canada has seen a recent upturn. This is largely a result of increased corporate funding, which has raised concern for academic independence.