my.ryerson.ca

School of Journalism

Gene Allen

Title:

Associate Professor

Address

RCC327

Telephone:

416-979-5000 x6393

Email Address:

gene.allen@ryerson.ca

Biography:

Gene Allen had an extensive and varied career as a television news and documentary producer and as a newspaper editor and reporter before joining Ryerson's Journalism faculty in 2001.

From 1997 to 2001, he was director of research and a senior producer of the CBC/Radio-Canada television series Canada: A People's History. The series was broadcast nationally on CBC in 2000 and 2001 and won a Gemini Award for Best Documentary Series. He also edited both volumes of the best-selling companion book to the series, Vol. I of which was recognized by the Canadian Booksellers Association as Non-fiction Book of the Year for 2000.

During his 10-year career at the CBC, he also worked as a producer and writer on the award-winning television documentary series Dawn of the Eye, assignment desk producer for CBC Radio's Morningside, assignment editor for CBC national TV news, and a writer on The National. Between 1979 and 1991 he worked at the The Globe and Mail, holding positions as foreign editor, Queen's Park reporter, assistant city editor and copy editor, among others.

Gene is Director of the School’s new Master of Journalism program, a member of Ryerson's Faculty of Graduate Studies and a faculty member in the York/Ryerson Joint Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture, in which capacity he supervises the research of several Master’s and PhD students. He is currently working on major research projects about the history of the Canadian Press news agency, and about the development of national news in Canada. He was chief organizer of the first “Conference on Media History in Canada,” held in Toronto at the end of May 2006, and is co-editor of a volume of essays on Canadian media history. In the summer of 2005, he was Guest Professor of Canadian Studies at the Free University in Berlin, Germany.