Wikipedia:Canada Education Program/Courses/Present/The Newspaper in Canadian Society (Michael Valpy)/Course description

Course description
This course explores the newspaper in Canadian society through lectures, expert guests, field trips, class projects and group discussions. The course tracks the origins, development and future prospects of the newspaper, primarily but not exclusively in anglophone Canada from the late 18th century to the present. A familiarity with the major themes of Canadian history is an advantage.

The course objective is to examine and reconcile two key questions about newspapers, questions that will be asked within the context of (a) the evolving creation of public information liberated from the private preserve of society’s knowledge elites and (b) a concomitant decline of cultural deference to traditional knowledge sources. The two key questions are (1) What is journalism's broad role in society and why is it important, and (2) what might journalism -- specifically newspapers -- look like in 10 years' time?

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