Coming soon: City Hall Watcher by Matt Elliott

It's a weekly newsletter about Toronto!

Toronto’s municipal government in nerdy detail. With charts.

Hey, I’m Matt. You might know me as GraphicMatt on Twitter. I’m the guy with the hair. This is my newsletter.

I’m an award-winning journalist. I’ve covered the stuff Toronto City Council does for eight years. I was the first person to start fact-checking Mayor Rob Ford’s claim to have saved Toronto $1 billion. I track council votes so you know what your city councillor is up to. My work appeared in Metro for six straight years. I currently contribute City Hall analysis to CBC Toronto. Now I also have a newsletter.

A newsletter called “City Hall Watcher”

City Hall Watcher will come your inbox (and the web) every Monday, right around 5 p.m. It will include deep dives into the reports on council’s agenda, providing much-needed context for whatever the hell it is politicians in this city are trying to do.

You’ll learn about evolving transit plans. You’ll stay informed about the city’s budget process. You’ll see so many charts you might literally email me and ask me to, please, stop sending you charts. You’ll be sick of the charts. But the charts will continue.

For a long time, I’ve wanted an outlet like this. There are so many important stories coming out of our city hall — policy stories and data stories and stories about numbers. I’m hoping this will be a good place for ‘em.

Free to start — then just five bucks a month

You can sign up for City Hall Watcher for free right now, on this very page. Your free subscription will get you access to the newsletter through the end of the month.

Starting in February, the newsletter will cost $5 a month — with a discount for signing up for a full year. I’ll provide more detail about that in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, you can sign up with no future obligation and get a taste of the kind of stuff I’m hoping to do.

So sign up. Do it. It’ll be fun.

The first issue will be released Monday, January 14.