#robyn doolittle

[canadianperson]

Crazy Town

Robyn Doolittle

2014

[laresearchette]

First of all, Damian Lewis? As Rob Ford? 

Secondly, why on Earth did they change the gender of the reporter? She’s pretty well known, at least here in Toronto. Did they already have “too many” women i the cast? Ugh.

[rabblelovesyou]

In the final chapter of the book Doolittle presents the reader with a sobering possibility for Toronto in the upcoming 2014 election: even after all the scandals, dysfunction at City Hall and all the sweeping lies, there's a very real chance that Rob Ford could be reelected.

'Crazy Town': Doolittle does a lot with Rob Ford's story by Heather Morgan

#RobFord #RobFord #RobFord #RobFord #RobFord #RobFord #RobFord

[karimkanji]

Book Review: Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story

Book Review: Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story

Robyn Doolittle

To say that I was glued to this Robyn Doolittle’s book until I was finished reading it would be an understatement. It’s taken me longer to start (and finish) blogging about the book than it took me to actually read it.

Crazy Townus the perfect title for this book. It’s not so much as Toronto being a crazy town as it is a play on the bubble that the Ford family has created for…

View On WordPress

[mediamattress]

The Story behind the Rob Ford Story

By Ivor Tossell, The Walrus (March 2014)

Robyn Doolittle could not sleep the night before the Toronto Starbroke the story about what happened at the Garrison Ball. Not that she was too busy; the article had already been put to bed. “It was like, oh my God, we’re running this story that says the mayor of Toronto has an issue with alcohol. This is going to be nuts,” she says. She found herself at home rereading the piece in her head over and over, wondering what the blowback would be.

Hardly anyone in Toronto knew it at the time, but a month earlier Mayor Rob Ford had turned up, visibly under the influence of who knows what, at a charity ball for injured veterans. The spectacle of the mayor intoxicated on the job would have been newsworthy on its own, but it gave Doolittle’s newspaper, the Star, an opening to tell a much bigger story—a story the reporter, a twenty-nine-year-old part-time competitive figure skater, had been chasing for a year. The Garrison Ball incident was no aberration; Toronto’s mayor had a substance abuse problem.

The revelation would light a fuse under the biggest scandal in the city’s history, and the mayor’s office knew it was coming. “My personal rule is that no one’s surprised at what goes in the paper the next day,” she explains. Officially, Ford’s staffers refused to talk to the Star about anything, but she kept in touch with them through back channels, pinging texts and Twitter messages back and forth. The newspaper gave Ford’s people one last chance to comment before the story ran. They declined.

The Star published the story on Tuesday, March 26, 2013. The response, the same day, came like a freight train. As it happened, Ford was scheduled to present a key to the city to an old family friend, the boxer George Chuvalo. A Canadian heavyweight champion in the 1960s and ’70s, he had lived a life marked by drugs and tragedy. He had lost three sons to drug addiction, and a wife to suicide. A forest of shoulder-mounted TV cameras jostled for position under the yawning dome of Toronto’s city council chamber; younger reporters crawled through them and sat cross legged on the floor at the cameramen’s feet. As soon as the presentation ended, a reporter asked the mayor about the story.

“You know what, guys? This is about George Chuvalo,” said Ford, but he pressed on nevertheless. “If you want to address this, number one, it’s an outright lie. It’s the Toronto Star going after me again, and again, and again. They’re relentless—that’s fine. I’ll go head to head with the Toronto Star any time. Let’s just wait, just let’s wait, let’s just wait till the election is, and then we’ll see what happens. It’s just lies after lies and lies.” Then, sputtering furiously, he issued a challenge: “I’ve called you pathological liars, and you are. So why don’t you take me to court? ”

The Walrus

[jasonchi]

If you have about 25 minutes watch this interview with Robyn Doolittle, the Toronto Star journalist who has extensively covered Rob Ford. Admittedly, I don't know much about Rob Ford and didn't realize he is associated a notorious Toronto gang leader and is rumored to have orchestrated prison beating.  It's a fascinating interview that covers Rob Ford's political power moves, the state of journalism, and the unhealthy attraction to disastrous behavior. 

[andrew-heard]

Robyn Doolittle: The Media and the Mayor via theagendatvo and youtube