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Paul Knox

Paul Knox

Professor Emeritus

Now: Writer, analyst, mentor. Then: dept. chair, prof @RSJNow; LatAm corro, columnist, editor etc. @globeandmail & others. Always: Curious, listening up.

Today’s journalism students will create tomorrow’s news media in exciting new forms. Paul shows them how to use tested techniques for hunting down information, subjecting it to critical analysis and presenting it well. He also demonstrates how the systematic study of journalism’s rich past and its tumultuous present can broaden and deepen their work.

Paul joined the School of Journalism in 2005 after more than 30 years as a reporter, editor and broadcaster. He served as chair until 2010. He has reported from five continents, spent six years as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, and has been a mentor to scores of journalists and journalism students. He has taught introductory reporting, feature reporting, international reporting, copy editing, media ethics, History of News and Critical Issues in Journalism.

His career in journalism began at the University of British Columbia’s student newspaper, the Ubyssey, and included jobs at the Vancouver Sun and the News Letter (Belfast, Northern Ireland). He joined the Globe and Mail in 1978 as a copy editor and later held several reporting and editing positions. He was a correspondent based in Mexico City (1985-88) and Rio de Janeiro (1988-91), and from 2001 to 2004 he wrote the Worldbeat column on global issues. He was foreign editor in 2004-2005.

Paul studied at Harvard University in 1983-84 as the first Martin Wise Goodman Canadian Nieman Fellow. Columbia University awarded him the Maria Moors Cabot prize in 2000 for his reporting on the Americas. He maintains a keen interest in Latin America and continues to write and comment  on media issues and international affairs. His publication credits include the annual Canada Among Nations, Canadian Foreign Policy, the Mexican Review of Canadian Studies, International Journal, the Literary Review of Canada and the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Book of the Year.

BA, MA, (Political Science) University of British Columbia

Canadian journalism education, the history of international news coverage in Canada, challenges to freedom of expression and access to information

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, Journalists for Human Rights, Canadian Communications Association Canadian Historical Association, International Association for Literary Journalism Studies,  Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

2014   

“Bolivia.” 2014 Britannica Book of the Year, p. 396.

“Ecuador.” 2013 Britannica Book of the Year, pp. 416-417.

2012

“Informing democracy: access strategies for citizens and journalists.” Deliberation, Diversity, and Dollars: Public Strategies for Journalism in the Canadian Media Ecology. McGill University/Concordia University, April 20.

2010

“News for the world.” Literary Review of Canada, vol. 18 no. 10 pp. 22-23 (review of Stephen J. A. Ward, Global Journalism Ethics).

2008

“What the journalist sees: the case of Haiti.” Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of British Columbia, June 7

2007  

(With Abby A. Goodrum) “Journalism education in Canada: size and scope.” World Journalism Education Congress, Singapore, June 28.

2001

(Principal author) Submission on Bill C-36 (Anti-Terrorism Act). Delivered by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, Ottawa.

2000 

“Canada at the United Nations: a Human Security Council?” in Maureen Appel Molot and Fen Osler Hampson, eds., Canada among nations 2000: vanishing borders. Toronto: Oxford University Press, pp. 303-320.