"Prominent Journalist Chrystia Freeland in Surprise Canadian Political Bid" [View all]

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Prominent Journalist Chrystia Freeland in Surprise Canadian Political Bid

By Sam Gustin at Time

http://business.time.com/2013/07/29/prominent-journalist-chrystia-freeland-in-surprise-canadian-political-bid/

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Chrystia Freeland, a respected business journalist and author who has held senior positions at top global news organizations, is leaving journalism in a bid to win a seat in Canada‘s parliament, she confirmed to TIME on Monday. The move surprised many of her colleagues at Reuters, where Freeland was most recently Managing Director and Editor for consumer news, and raised eyebrows in the broader U.S. journalism community, which is not accustomed to seeing journalists run for elected office.



Freeland, who was born and raised in the Canadian province of Alberta, will seek the Liberal Party nomination for the downtown Toronto riding (a seat in Canada’s House of Commons) vacated by Bob Rae, who recently announced his resignation from Parliament. Freeland, who currently lives in New York with her family, will move to Toronto. A frequent guest on U.S. political chat shows and a ubiquitous presence at international conferences, Freeland has resigned her position at Reuters and will no longer contribute columns to The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.

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In recent years, Freeland’s work has focused on the growing global disparity between the rich and the poor. Last year, she published Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, which was awarded the 2013 Lionel Garber Prize, a top Canadian literary award. In her book, Freeland describes how an international super-elite is concentrating wealth and power at levels not seen since the Gilded Age era of “robber barons” like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

“Today’s conventional wisdom is deeply cynical about politics,” Freeland wrote in column published Monday. “We portray our elected officials as trivial buffoons at best and as scandal-ridden, self-dealing parasites at worst. What we have lost is our belief that our government represents us all, and that we, collectively, can use it to address the big challenges of our time.”


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