The magazine profiles personalities, issues and controversies in Canadian media.
Don Obe, who was chair of then-Ryerson's journalism school in mid-1983, began planning for a student-produced magazine project.
The first issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism was printed in April 1984.
The magazine has won a number of National Magazine Awards, as well as citations by Rolling Stone and Utne Reader and a number of awards from the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication.
The 2021 winter semester issue was published as [ ] Review of Journalism, using brackets to elide Ryerson's name from the title;[1] one day after a vigil was held on campus commemorating 215 suspected dead Indigenous children found at Kamloops Indian Residential School, the school announced plans to permanently rename the magazine.