About La Presse Canadienne

La Presse Canadienne

La Presse Canadienne (PC) is the French-language news service of The Canadian Press, Canada's national news agency. Established in 1951, it is the francophone counterpart to the English-language CP wire, providing French-language text, audio, photographic, video and graphics content to newspapers, radio, television, websites and commercial clients across the country. As the French service of an agency founded in 1917, it is one of the principal instruments through which national and international news reaches French-speaking Canada.

Overview

The Canadian Press operates in both of Canada's official languages, and La Presse Canadienne is its French-language arm. Where the English service is known as CP, the French service is abbreviated PC — and its byline, "La Presse Canadienne," is one of the most familiar in Quebec and francophone Canadian journalism, appearing on countless newspaper stories, newscast scripts and website articles every day. The service covers the same national and international agenda as its English counterpart — federal politics, the economy, courts, sports, culture — while also serving the distinctive news needs of francophone audiences, from Quebec City to the Acadian communities of the Maritimes to the francophone minorities of Ontario and Western Canada.

La Presse Canadienne draws on the full resources of The Canadian Press: more than 180 journalists in bureaus across Canada, a correspondent in Washington, D.C., and the agency's worldwide news exchange through its alliance with the Associated Press. Its content spans text, audio, photography, video and graphics, serving the full range of modern newsroom needs.

History

The Canadian Press was created in 1917 — by act of Parliament, as a news co-operative with a government grant — as a vehicle for Canadian newspapers to exchange news and information across the vast country. For its first three decades it operated essentially in English. A first step toward French-language broadcast service came in 1945, when CP established a French-language radio news service — the first such wire service for French broadcasters in North America. But it was not until 1951 that the agency created a full French-language news service, La Presse Canadienne, giving the agency a permanent francophone arm operating in both of Canada's official languages.

The creation of the French service reflected the postwar growth of francophone media and the recognition that a national news agency could not serve the whole country in one language. With the arrival of radio and television, the agency also created broadcast-focused subsidiaries — Broadcast News on the English side and its French counterpart for radio and television — to write copy specifically for broadcasters and to produce audio and video material.

La Presse Canadienne grew alongside its English sibling through the second half of the twentieth century: the establishment of the CP Picture Service in 1948, which wired photographs to television stations and newspapers instead of mailing them; the expansion of the agency's bureau network; and the progressive addition of new formats — online breaking news in 1996, breaking news video in 2007 — all of which were mirrored in French. In 2010, The Canadian Press was taken over by a new for-profit entity, Canadian Press Enterprises Inc., owned by Torstar, The Globe and Mail and Montreal's La Presse; La Presse Canadienne continued as the agency's French service under the new ownership.

The deeper roots of the agency reach back further. The Canadian Press took the succession of the Canadian Associated Press, founded in 1903; it began as a distribution network facilitating the circulation of newspapers, and its editorial committee first met during the First World War to inform the Canadian public about the war effort of Canadian soldiers overseas. In 1923 the agency transformed itself into a national, not-for-profit news co-operative — collecting and effectively distributing news to its members, who comprised all Canadian newspapers — on the model of Britain's Press Association. That decision was taken under the threat of denunciation of the quadripartite news-agency treaty, which materialized four years later: the information agreement of August 26, 1927 opened Canada and Latin America to the Associated Press. With the arrival of radio and television — and competition in particular from American stations — La Presse Canadienne created subsidiaries for broadcasters, Nouvelles télé-radio on the French side and Broadcast News on the English side, to write copy specifically for radio and television presenters and to produce audio and video material.

Today the agency maintains bureaus in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, with staff correspondents in St. John's, Fredericton, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Victoria and Washington, plus a network of freelance stringers — and it is the sole Canadian distributor of news from the Associated Press.

Content

La Presse Canadienne provides the full range of agency journalism in French: breaking news and developing stories in text; audio reports and actualities for radio; video for television and digital platforms; photographs and graphics. Its coverage spans the national agenda — Parliament and federal politics, the economy and markets, the courts, national sports, arts and culture — as well as international news drawn from the agency's exchange with the Associated Press and its own correspondents.

For francophone newsrooms, the PC wire is the backbone of daily journalism. A French-language daily in Quebec or New Brunswick, a francophone radio station in Ontario, a community weekly in Manitoba — all rely on La Presse Canadienne for the national and international stories they cannot staff themselves, while contributing their own local reporting to the cooperative exchange. The service also covers stories of particular resonance for francophone audiences: language-rights debates, francophone community affairs, Quebec politics and culture.

Coverage & Audience

La Presse Canadienne serves francophone media across Canada: daily and weekly newspapers, radio and television stations, news websites and commercial clients in Quebec — the heartland of its audience — and in francophone communities from coast to coast to coast. Its indirect audience is the millions of French-speaking Canadians who read, hear or watch PC copy every day, most of them without ever noticing the byline.

The service draws on The Canadian Press's national bureau network — with bureaus in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, correspondents in St. John's, Fredericton, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Victoria and Washington, and a network of freelance stringers — and on the agency's international exchange arrangements. It is, with its English counterpart, the principal channel of national news for the French-language press, radio and television of Canada.

Ownership

La Presse Canadienne is the French-language service of The Canadian Press, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. The Canadian Press was founded in 1917 as a private, not-for-profit co-operative owned and operated by its member newspapers; in 2010 it became a for-profit business under Canadian Press Enterprises Inc., owned by Torstar, The Globe and Mail and Square Victoria Communications Group (as of January 2020). La Presse Canadienne operates as an integral division of the agency rather than as a separate company.

Digital Presence

La Presse Canadienne has no standalone public website separate from its parent agency; its services are delivered through The Canadian Press's professional platforms at thecanadianpress.com, which serves both the English and French services. The PC byline appears across the digital properties of Canada's francophone media — the websites of Quebec dailies, Radio-Canada's digital platforms, and countless community news sites — making it one of the most widely distributed French-language news brands in the country even without a consumer-facing site of its own. For the industry, the agency's corporate site provides information on services, bureaus and subscriptions in both official languages.