Tom Brodbeck

Columnist

When Tom first started covering politics in Manitoba, paper files, hand-held tape recorders and direct access to politicians were the norm at the Manitoba legislature and city hall.

While technology and public relations strategies have changed significantly since then, the task of getting the story behind the story and trying to make sense of it for readers hasn’t.

Tom has been doing that as a news reporter and a columnist since the early 1990s, covering city, provincial and federal politics with the enthusiasm of the most ardent political junkie.

Whether it’s dissecting budgets, exposing wasteful spending or doing deep dives into complex government policies, Tom approaches his job as a journalist with the rank-and-file reader in mind, always interested in how decisions made by politicians affect the average person on the street.

Tom has covered some of the biggest stories in recent Manitoba history, including the Tory vote-rigging scandal, the privatization of MTS, the 1997 Flood of the Century, the Crocus Investment Fund debacle and the NDP mutiny that led to one of the worst provincial government defeats in decades.

Born and raised in Montreal, Tom came to Manitoba in 1990 and graduated from the University of Manitoba with an economics degree. He is a long-time community centre volunteer, an ice-rink maker and an enthusiastic hockey and soccer dad. When he’s not pounding his keyboard, he’s usually behind a drum kit playing in one of several bands around the city.

Tom joined the Winnipeg Free Press news team in 2019.