Canadian University Press is a non-profit co-operative and newswire service owned by more than 50[1] student newspapers at post-secondary schools in Canada.
This newswire continued as a private function until 2010 when it was turned into a competitive source for campus news in the form of an online public wire at cupwire.ca.
January 2011 will mark CUP's first fully bilingual national conference, in Montreal, hosted in part by the McGill Daily and Le Delit.
One of the delegates at CUP 22 was future Canadian Prime Minister, Joe Clark, representing the University of Alberta paper, The Gateway.
CUP formerly owned a multi-market ad placement agency, Canadian University Press Media Services Limited, which operates as Campus Plus, offering advertisers one-stop access to student newspapers.
In CUP's early days, the titles of president and secretary were awarded at a conference to a newspaper, which would then fill those roles from among staff members.
[6] Part-time editorial staff[7] consists of six regional bureau chiefs (British Columbia, Prairies and Northern, Ontario, Ottawa, Quebec and Atlantic) and at least four section editors (arts and features, opinions and humour, sports, and French).
While the staff was required to execute the will of members are agreed upon at plenary, many major decisions could be made by the national office on its own.
After the Agent Magazine problems, a movement spearheaded by staffers at the Ontarion drafted and approved a motion calling for the creation of a CUP Board of Directors.
The 2022 conference featured over 70 prominent journalists from across North America including Brian Stelter of CNN, Jesse Brown of CANADALAND, Anita Li of The Green Line, Jason Chiu of The New York Times (a former Graphics Bureau Chief for CUP), and many others.
In April 2013, CUP signed a three-year agreement with a new national advertising partner called FREE Media.
[11][12] The marketing group was co-founded as a division of the independent national advertising agency FREE by two CUP alumni, former Gateway business staffers Ashleigh Brown and Vikram Seth.
[13] CUP's previous national advertising representative was Campus Plus (officially Canadian University Press Media Services Ltd.) which was formed in 1980 and closed in June 2013 after declaring bankruptcy.
[4][14] Campus Plus' bankruptcy trustee MNP took charge of collections in the months that followed and issued payouts to member papers.
[15] CUP is partnered with CWA Canada, a division of Communications Workers of America, a union which "advances the economic interests of its members, improves their standard of living, and strives to guarantee equal job opportunities and human rights.
[18] In March 2014, CUP launched a 42-day fundraising campaign on the platform Indiegogo in an attempt to raise $50,000 toward its operating budget after finding itself in a financial crisis.
With all this having taken place in a relatively short period of time, CUP lost more than $70,000 in three years and ended up in financial and existential crisis with just more than $1,500 in the bank before the fundraising campaign.
In CUP's early days, the titles of president and secretary were awarded at a conference to a newspaper, which would then fill those roles from among staff members.