How The Globe and Mail uncovered their own blogger’s conflict of interest and then took a month to acknowledge it. Oh, and Torontoist got mixed up in this, too.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009: A group of investors calling themselves Ink Truck Media assume ownership of Torontoist, having struck what amounts to a long-term lease with Torontoist’s original parent, Gothamist LLC.  The owners of Ink Truck Media are software developer turned ROB reporter (and onetime Torontoist contributor) Ken Hunt; ad executive Amanda Alvaro; and Liberal backroom boy / “energy consultant” / Globe political blogger Rob Silver.

Thursday, April 9: Silver, who blogs as the ostensibly Liberal half of the Liberal-Conservative duo Silver-Powers, writes that “Toronto desperately needs a new mayor. David Miller has been an unmitigated disaster for the city. The only way those of us who feel that Toronto needs new leadership is to get behind one, strong, credible candidate.  Good on Karen Stintz – a councilor who would make a fantastic mayor – for proposing a ‘convention’ to select the candidate to oppose Miller.”

Friday, April 10: Silver, writes that “Stintz has been one of the most effective critics of the fiscal irresponsibility at City Hall and the general incompetence of our current mayor – but that’s of course just a coincidence in [her billing of public-speaking lessons to her office budget] being front page Toronto Star news. I have no doubt that Stintz being rumoured as a likely (and very credible) opponent of David Miller is also just a coincidence here.”

Saturday, May 30: Torontoist and The Globe announce a partnership that sees Torontoist content consistently linked to from The Globe’s new Toronto “hub.”

Saturday, June 13: Globe City Hall reporter (and one of the most awesome people ever) Jeff Gray reveals that Silver is currently a driving force behind Stintz’s mayoral bid.  (As a matter of law, an actual campaign can’t begin, nor can any money be spent, until a candidate is registered, which can’t happen until the first business day of an election year.)  Stintz, Gray writes, “Has started assembling a team that includes Liberal operator Robert Silver, a lawyer who has worked for both Gerard Kennedy and Dalton McGuinty, to see if it is ‘feasible to launch a bid.’”  No mention of Silver’s associations with The Globe and Mail or Torontoist is made.  Virtually no one draws this connection.

Quick Google searches turn up several more instances of Silver bashing Miller on his Globe blog this spring.  (Due to what appears to be some back-end confusion in moving over to their new web layout, the date stamps on the Globe posts are suspect, and thus an accurate timeline of Silver’s writings is difficult to establish.)

Thursday, July 9: Silver takes some especially cheap shots in a post that calls Toronto “David Miller’s socialist paradise.”  He admits, however, that “yes, I am biased.”

Friday, July 10: Silver’s editor, Adam Radwanski, pens a rebuttal to Silver’s post from the day before.  We can also infer that he gives Silver a stern talking-to, as Silver’s next post suddenly includes the following caveats:

Before I get into Adam’s flawed argument, let me disclose two conflicts here so no clever commenter has an “aha” moment:

1. I own a house in Toronto. I own and run a business in Toronto. Earlier this year, I spent some of my own money buying a website all about Toronto so it wouldn’t be shut down. I care about Toronto, have put my money where my mouth is in that regard and I am distressed about the decline I have seen in the city over the last six-years.

2. If Karen Stintz runs for Mayor, as has been disclosed publicly previously, I will volunteer hundreds, more likely thousands of hours to help ensure she wins. I have never been paid to work on a political campaign before and won’t be this time but I want to make sure everyone knows exactly where my bias lies.

I am doing number two – helping Karen if she decides to run – because of number one (my concern about the city’s decline) and because I am convinced she is the only potential candidate who can bring real change to the city.

That’s my bias, for better or worse.

Can’t you just hear him groaning as he types that?  ”Ugh.  Must I be held to ethical standards?”

Saturday, August 1: The Globe’s Joe Friesen writes a column about Miller’s political “loneliness” and interviews “Rob Silver, an organizer for Ms. Stintz.”  No mention of Silver’s Globe affiliation. (The Google cache breaks up the piece into chunks.)

Friday, August 7: Torontoist publishes its interview with John Barber and is forced to acknowledge its semi-tenuous Stintz link for the first time.  (Although Torontoist had almost never mentioned Stintz by name prior to that in 2009, as a respectable and engaged city blog, there had necessarily been allusions to her.)  Torontoist repeated the disclaimer in a couple of subsequent news roundups.

Wednesday, September 24: Now Associate News Editor Enzo DiMatteo takes over City Hall duties from the recently laid-off Mike Smith, and proceeds to taunt Torontoist regarding the Stintz affiliation.  It’s funny, but also — as Stintz is no longer a likely mayoral challenger — a couple months too late to really be trenchant.

Thursday, September 25: blogTO also shows up fashionably late.

What’s been lost in all this, though, is the fact that Silver has about as much interest and involvement in Torontoist’s content as Torstar has in Eye Weekly’s.

And in the off-chance that Stintz does run, Silver will, God willing, just do for her career what he did for Gerard Kennedy’s.

From December 2006–June 2009, I was a contributor and then a contributing editor to Torontoist.  In one of the first things I wrote for the site, I named Stintz as the very worst city councillor, though I’ve since come to regret that and believe I was much too harsh; she’s more in the middle of the pack.