Former Q star Jian Ghomeshi was “incredibly disappointed” with attempts by a Toronto magazine to contact former girlfriends of his in the summer of 2013 for a future article. So disappointed that his publicity team asked the magazine to stop its attempts and offered the publication access to Ghomeshi for a full profile.

“We feel this is a really unfair and absurd piece,” said Ghomeshi’s then-publicist Debra Goldblatt-Sadowski in an August 2013 email to a Toronto Life writer.

Behind the scenes, according to one of now 15 women who have made allegations against Ghomeshi, the radio host was very “nervous” that someone would be digging into his personal life.

In the publicist’s email, she writes:

“Surely we could work with Toronto Life on a more interesting story in the future (with our co-operation) vs. going behind an incredibly established and well-respected public broadcaster’s back looking for anonymous sources for women he has taken out.”

Toronto Life, which had been attempting to do a light feature on “15 women Jian Ghomeshi has dated,” killed the project in early September 2013, a year before allegations of violence were published by the Toronto Star. A full profile of Ghomeshi, was assigned in October 2013 and ran the following January. It was not entirely flattering.

These events took place months prior to the Star’s investigation into Ghomeshi and revelations that the CBC host was alleged to be a serial abuser of women he had dated. Ghomeshi has since been charged with four accounts of sex assault and one count of overcoming resistance — choking.

In the summer of 2013, Ryan Kohls, now at Al Jazeera in Washington, was the young journalist tapped by Toronto Life to do what the magazine refers to as a “front of the book” feature, typically a light, photo-dominated piece positioned in the opening pages of a magazine. Kohls, who had been a Q intern for six weeks, had previously written a first-person account of his work as a cleaner at Toronto’s landmark sports dome titled “What I learned working the graveyard shift at the Rogers Centre.”

His new assignment: “Here was a guy (Ghomeshi) who was 40 plus and single,” says Kohls. “Toronto Life offered to give me a piece to do on 15 women he had dated.”

Front of book editor Malcolm Johnston recalls the genesis of the assignment: “(Ghomeshi) seemed to be always out partying with a rotating cast of arm candy.” Johnston knew journalist Kohls had worked at Q, so he hired him. “I had no inkling of the allegations (Ghomeshi) is currently facing.

Kohls picks up the story. He was travelling in Kenya at the time, but set about working contacts and the Internet to develop a list. He found no shortage of red carpet photos of Ghomeshi and young women. He began contacting them by email. At the same time, he talked to people from his brief days at Q and ended up speaking to Kathryn Borel, the former Q producer who has recently publicly accused Ghomeshi of sexually harassing her on the job.

“(Borel) said, ‘Just so you know, Jian Ghomeshi is quite odious to date,’ ” Kohls recalls. Kohls said his early research revealed to him that “some women may want to tell you some things and some may not talk to you because it may not have been the best experience for them.”

Borel, now living in California, confirmed she spoke to Kohls.

“I called Jian odious because Jian is odious,” Borel told the Star. “It was less about sending him a message and more about my honest opinion of him.”

Kohls said despite his attempts that summer to contact women Ghomeshi had dated, “nobody got back to me.”

Ghomeshi girlfriends whom Kohls had tried to reach got back to Rock-it Promotions, the longtime publicist for Ghomeshi (Goldblatt-Sadowski dropped him as soon as the Star reported on allegations of violence in October).

According to emails to both Kohls and Toronto Life editor Sarah Fulford, Ghomeshi and his publicity team were not pleased.

In an interview by email (she would not talk to the Star on the telephone or in person because the case is a “criminal matter” and she wants a record of her communications), Goldblatt-Sadowski told the Star she was just doing “my job” as a public relations specialist.

She first complained to Toronto Life on Aug. 22, 2013, in an email to Fulford: “It has come to my attention that Toronto Life is planning a piece focusing on Jian Ghomeshi and his personal life, highlighting women he has dated over the past few years.”

The publicist said “Jian is upset by the idea of this type of a story. Not only would it not be an (sic) inappropriate representation of his personal life, but would also be unfair to those included in the story.” She asked Fulford to provide more information.

Four days later, on Aug. 26, the publicist again wrote Fulford and Kohls, the reporter: “A few people have already alerted me regarding this piece and I spoke to Sarah about it last week,” Goldblatt-Sadowski began. “I’d like to see these emails stopped.”

In the body of her email, the publicist said Ghomeshi is “extremely disappointed” in how the story is being approached. She suggested that Ghomeshi and his publicity team would co-operate with Toronto Life on a “more interesting story in the future.”

In an interview, Toronto Life editor Fulford said “absolutely no deal was made” to drop the first story in favour of a profile.

Fulford said that when she came up with the original story she thought it would be easy to do. “I had seen Jian with a different young woman on his arm at each party.” In reference to the current Ghomeshi allegations, Fulford describes that summer as “a much more innocent time.”

She said journalist Kohl’s research was “thin” and “we wouldn’t have had enough to make a page” in Toronto Life. “It was harder to pull off than anticipated.”

As to the publicist’s contact with Toronto Life expressing dismay, Fulford said that was not unusual in her line of work. “Publicists contact us all the time.”

“It would never occur to me to compromise our integrity to gain access,” Fulford told the Star. “We never made any agreement with Deb Goldblatt to kill one piece in favour of getting access.”

Fulford said neither she nor editor Johnston “ever got wind of any abusive behaviour” on Ghomeshi’s part.

Toronto Life paid Kohls a “kill fee” to drop the piece. Within a month, they assigned a former Toronto Life editor (of the front of book section) to do a full profile of Ghomeshi.

Courtney Shea was given her assignment to profile Ghomeshi in October 2013. Her story was completed by late November and ran in the January edition of Toronto Life.

During the time that first Kohls, and then Shea, were doing their research, one of the women who would first make allegations of violence was still dating Ghomeshi. The woman recalls how “nervous” Ghomeshi was.

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The publicist provided Shea with a list of about 10 people to speak to, including Ghomeshi’s assistant and his then agent, Jack Ross. Shea was not allowed to go to Ghomeshi’s house (he said he was in the process of moving), but she was invited to the Q studio, they went to a couple of events together and they had coffee and visited his parents.

“In no way was I pressured or instructed to not do my own reporting,” Shea told the Star.

While she was provided with the list of women Kohls had prepared, she did not try and contact them. In her mind, the profile was to focus on the CBC man who was redefining what a Canadian radio personality was — “his meteoric rise in Canada, picked up left, right and centre in the states (on the U.S. radio network PRI).

In retrospect, having spent a considerable amount of time with Ghomeshi and seeing nothing untoward, Shea said she is astounded at “how capable he was of this Jekyll and Hyde thing.”

Shea’s article chronicled Ghomeshi’s rise, discussed his problems with anxiety and revealed the existence of an Internet posting by a woman who had a date with a person she called “Keith,” widely believed to be Ghomeshi.

The section in Shea’s story reads:

“Last year, Ghomeshi was the subject of a blind item blog post on the website XOJane titled ‘I Accidentally Went on a Date with a Presumed-Gay Canadian C-List Celebrity Who Creepily Proved He Isn’t Gay.’ The writer is a Canadian journalist named Carla Ciccone, who offered a detailed account of a horrible date she had with a well-known Canadian radio host named ‘Keith.’ She says he was very handsy and incapable of taking a hint. Ciccone describes her outing as emotionally scarring. To me, it sounded more like something you would tell your girlfriends about with eye-rolling disgust. The post became a hot gossip story, the sort of Page Six item that generally doesn’t get reported in the Canadian media.”

Ghomeshi told Shea that he was aware of the posting but never read it.

The Star asked Goldblatt-Sadowski if her intention was to get the piece about ex-girlfriends killed in exchange for offering access for a profile piece. Goldblatt-Sadowski replied by email:

“Yes — and what’s your point? I did my job. As I’ve now said numerous times, I worked with them on a much larger piece.

“My former client didn’t like them doing a piece by going to women they thought he may have dated — the women didn’t appreciate it — that’s why I asked them to stop. But we were more than happy to co-operate with them.”

At the same time Toronto Life was working on the profile, Goldblatt-Sadowski was also in contact with one of the women who would eventually make allegations to the Star about Ghomeshi. The publicist said that Ghomeshi had told her the woman had been contacted by a journalist.

“(Ghomeshi) wanted more info (as any client would) and to find out who was writing it, so I could be in touch with the journalist,” Goldblatt-Sadowski recalls. She said she asked by email to speak to the woman, who declined.

Three months after the Toronto Life piece was published, Ghomeshi retained legal counsel and a crisis communication firm. Throughout the summer, as the Star contacted Ghomeshi with allegations and conducted interviews, Ghomeshi was on “high alert” according to a source among his advisers.

The day he was fired in October, Goldblatt-Sadowski said, Ghomeshi showed her his now-infamous Facebook posting in which he announced to the world that he was a victim of an ex-girlfriend and a practitioner of rough sex that was always consensual.

“Jian genuinely wrote it (as far as I know),” the publicist said in an email. “He did read it to me before he posted it live, but he had others advising him at this point as I don’t handle crisis communications and he had a firm advising him that did.”

Journalist Kohlsis now reflecting on the story that was in the shadows that summer.

“Look what we almost had,” he said.

Kevin Donovan can be reached at (416) 312-3503 or kdonovan@thestar.ca , @_kevindonovan

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