Jeremy Klaszus

What we learned covering Calgary’s 2025 election | The Sprawl Can local journalism be joyful? You bet.

Can local journalism be... joyful? It's an odd question, but one I've been thinking about a lot since Calgary's election last month.

Me: The Sprawl needs a word game.

My wife: [exasperated sigh]

Me: And tote bags too!

Can't sleep. Keep seeing it. Baseball, man.

Time to introduce the more casual Jays fans to the words of former MLB commissioner Bartlett Giamatti:

That was the greatest baseball game I’ve ever seen.

Charlie Brown lying on the grass saying "I think I'll just lie here until the first snow comes and covers me up"

Baseball over

My 16yo says: "This is his villain origin story"

A letterpress print that says OK BLUE JAYS in blue ink

Let's! Play! Ball!

What is Calgary’s population, really? | The Sprawl A surprisingly vexing question.

Mayor Jeromy Farkas keeps saying Calgary will welcome its 2,000,000th resident in 2029. I used it as an excuse to dig into something that's been bugging me for awhile: why is it so difficult to pinpoint Calgary's exact population? #yyccc

Well, on the plus side, I have some artful baseball metaphors in tomorrow's Sprawl newsletter that will perhaps land with extra resonance between Game 6 and 7 😆

The government of Canada when they're asked to respond to a question by Friday

George Springer holding his hands up confused.

When my kids ask where all their Halloween candy went.

Patron-Supported Journalism Can’t Be the Future of News Writing about the failure of patron-supported journalism is itself a kind of...

"Who does the slow work? Who gets to spend three months on a story that might not go viral?"

[waves hands, points to @sprawlcalgary.bsky.social]

Seriously though, interesting piece here by @anamariecox.bsky.social on the challenges of patron-supported journalism in 2025.

UPDATE: Sharp has conceded. Does not mention Farkas. #yyccc www.instagram.com/reel/DQZwmin...

She did indicate last week that she was looking into pursuing a judicial recount. Hard to see when the second count put Farkas ahead by more votes than first count... but who knows!

It's been over a week since Calgary's municipal election. Mayoral votes have been counted twice now. Both counts have Jeromy Farkas defeating Sonya Sharp (by wider margin on 2nd count than 1st). But Sharp has yet to concede. Farkas and new council are sworn in tonight. #yyccc

I come home and there’s my faithful dog, listening to CKUA again.

Not for the recount itself (Elections Calgary covers that) but potentially for legal costs etc.

The Calgary mayoral recount is a big deal. Email went out from Farkas campaign this aft aiming to raise $25K for "costs of the recount: legal support, scrutineer training, and logistics, in addition to final campaign costs." Sharp campaign also looking at applying for a judicial recount. #yyccc

Calgary’s bizarre low-turnout, high-turnover election | The Sprawl Relatively few Calgarians made big changes.

My analysis of Calgary's very weird election. #yyccc

Writing my Calgary election analysis for tomorrow's Sprawl newsletter and it is a bit of a downer. Need to give it more pep. Alas I am out of pep. #yyccc

Maps view of Rogers Centre in Toronto

Maps view of Dodger stadium in LA

World Series - Stadium Edition.

*skydome forever.

Good grief, posted earlier that there was a recount happening in Ward 2 - by which I meant Ward 12. Dumb typo, need a break!

The truth about Calgary’s billion-dollar arena deal | The Sprawl Campaign accusations abound. Here are the facts.

In Sept I was chatting with a councillor candidate re: the arena deal. He was strongly opposed but said by now it was "water under the bridge"—a non-issue at the doors. But I wonder. It wasn't *the* ballot box issue by any means but I wonder to what extent it plagued both Gondek and Sharp. #yyccc

Exactly. It was very odd all around!

Going live on CJSW at 8pm for funding drive Sprawlcast with my pal Lauz! Tune in at 90.9 FM or cjsw dot com, and make sure to donate: fundingdrive.ca

Terry Wong holding a newspaper put out by election candidate Myke Atkinson

In retrospect, maybe waving around Myke Atkinson's campaign newspaper and talking about it on Instagram for 2+ hrs in a multipart two-day series was not the best campaign strategy for Terry Wong #yyccc

I don’t know if my math is 100% correct but I was guesstimating - will know when results are official

🤣 Don’t know if mic caught my question, but I pointed out that prob fewer than 1 in 10 Calgarians voted for him, so what would he say to those who voted against him or were unmotivated to vote at all?