Food for thought over issues that will not go away
THE Journal has this week celebrated its 190th anniversary – how I recall the excitement in the office as our first edition hit the streets of Tyneside!
I jest, of course – I haven’t really worked here for 190 years. There are certain days when it feels like I have, but I haven’t really.
[As it happens, I know precisely how long I’ve worked here due to a strange section I came across in our internal HR system which tells me the exact number of days that I’ve worked here: 8,677. I have no idea why that is there and what use it serves but I find it strangely compelling and find myself looking at it often].
Looking back at our history this week reminded me that The Journal had slightly inauspicious beginnings, being set up by a group of Tory businessmen opposed to Earl Grey’s Reform Act. Being against moves to widen the vote and make the Parliamentary system fairer (even if in a limited way) is not great optics, as they probably didn’t say in 1832. I once told someone about The Journal’s establishment and joked that we’ve been proudly on the wrong side of history ever since. Maybe a better way of putting it is: we’re not shy of fighting lost causes when we think it’s the right thing to do.
The Journal’s first owner, John Hernaman, certainly suffered for his opinions. Two weeks after the publication of his first edition a gang hired by the then Earl of Durham burst into his office and roughed him up, and that wasn’t the only time he was assaulted before he sold the business in the 1850s. Getting beaten up for what’s in the paper isn’t too much of an occupational hazard for me, though our reporters can still, on thankfully rare occasions, face abuse in person and online.
The fact that I can wander the streets of Newcastle without fear of
“We’re not shy of fighting lost causes when we think it’s the right thing to do.
getting beaten up is progress, I suppose. But there’s a long way to go.
The front page story on the day of our anniversary concerned people asking food banks for meals that don’t need to be heated up, as they want to keep down their energy bills.
As one of my esteemed predecessors in The Journal’s editor’s chair pointed out, that story could have come from any time in the last 190 years, and we should probably be doing better than that.
There was a sad inevitability that, at pretty much the same time we were reporting that story, a Conservative MP was on his hind legs in the House of Commons saying that the cost of living crisis could be eased if only people could learn to cook better. Which is true except for the fact that (a) many local authorities used to have cookery classes but had to cancel them during austerity; (b) people on low incomes are generally working long and unpredictable hours and haven’t got this headspace for this stuff; and (c) it isn’t true.
I’m glad to say that The Journal grew out of blaming the poor for being poor not long into its history; maybe others could catch up. As we look towards our 200th anniversary, my hope is that The Journal continues to champion the cause of the North East – and those most in need of help especially – as much as the space in these pages allows.
I’d also like to be here (in about three-and-a-half years’ time if my maths is right), when my days at work gets to 10,000.
■ Graeme Whitfield is editor of The Journal.