Rob Ford and the media: what it was like covering the mayor

Loved by many, disliked by others, Rob Ford was riveting to an entire city and beyond with his unscripted exchanges with the media.

Ford's term as mayor of Toronto was a wild ride at city hall, and especially so for the journalists whose job it was to cover him. Robyn Doolittle is currently a reporter at the Globe and Mail, but she helped to break the story about Ford's crack use for the Toronto Star. She went on to write Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story, an account of the mayor's rocky rise to power.

• Timeline: Rob Ford's health troubles
• Joe Warmington recalls a mayor who loved the city
• Rob Ford: A look at his tumultuous tenure as Toronto mayor
• Rob Ford life and times

When she was first moved to the city hall beat in 2010, her preconceptions about what she would be reporting on were quickly dispelled. Her job became more investigative, even before she started looking into drug-use allegations.

"He didn't keep a schedule, so you were often using keyword searches on Twitter to figure out where the mayor was," Doolittle told Metro Morning.

Jamie Strashin, the CBC's city hall reporter, concurred. Strashin said it was like being an emergency-room doctor — being on-call for whatever the mayor was getting up to, at whatever hour.

But both reporters agreed Ford had a certain appeal.

"At the end of the day, Rob Ford just seemed authentic and people believed him," she said.

"But for people who just saw him through YouTube clips or the scandals, they missed seeing him in huge public spaces with quote-unquote regular people, and he was a really likeable, charming person."

Both reporters got negative feedback for their pursuit of Ford stories, even from their own families. But while audiences at the Star and the CBC complained about the coverage, the Ford stories always performed well online.

Returning phone calls

Doolittle said Ford's reputation when he arrived in the mayor's office was already built up from his previous 10 years as a councillor — specifically that he returned every single constituent phone call.

"Time and time again when you were out, speaking to people asking, 'why are you supporting Rob Ford?' That was what they always came back to," she said of the problem-solving attributes of Ford.

"It just speaks to how disenfranchised people are with their political leaders and how completely ignored they feel," she said.

Doolittle said she understood Ford's appeal better when she became a homeowner, and had to deal with the city on different property issues. She saw the red tape involved, and that Ford was offering people a way to cut through that tape, even if it was just on a personal level.

"You'd talk to people and they would say, 'I remember five years ago I had a problem and he fixed it,'" Doolittle said.

Strashin said the constituency work that Ford was committed to shouldn't be underestimated.

"The idea that a councillor or a mayor will come to your house — and people can debate till the end of time whether that was a good use of his time or whether he should've been up to his sleeves in policy — that was his calling card," said Strashin.

What will people remember?

Both reporters agreed that the former mayor's drug use is indeed a chapter in the Ford legacy. "It's [the famous video] certainly part of the Rob Ford story," said Doolittle.

"If you go out of the city, he'll be remembered as the crack-smoking mayor," said Doolittle. "But people here will remember him as a more fulsome person."

People saw Ford as an example of an ordinary person, she said.

But Ford also brought renewed attention to city hall.

"People are more engaged with the city. For better or for worse, I think he brought that," said Strashin.

The way that money is spent around the city has changed thanks to Ford, both reporters said. For instance, people in the city are now frequently called taxpayers as opposed to citizens.

Doolittle noted that Ford's frequent targeting of councillors' expense budgets may have a lasting effect on city hall.

"He shined the light on bureaucratic and politician spending," said Doolittle. "That conversation is going to continue."

But the pressure of the work got to him, said Strashin, and substance abuse became an issue.

"You can't speak about Rob Ford with that being a line — whether it's the first line in the biography or the second line," said Strashin.

As for their experiences, both reporters agreed it was an extraordinary time to be covering city hall for Toronto media. It was, and remains, quite a story.

"There will never be another one like it," said Doolittle.