EDITOR'S VIEW: Show us a parapet and the Gazette will stick its head above it... care to join us?
Gazette Editor Richard Ord has been out and about in South Tyneside and some issues have been flagged up! Quite literally.
On my rounds of South Tyneside it was a pleasure to meet up with actor and community campaigner Stephen Sullivan.
Stephen is involved in so many projects, groups and business activities in South Tyneside it’s hard to keep up, but he caught my attention with his role in the council Pride flag debate.
As well as setting up an online petition (1,000 signatures and rising) that called for the Pride flag to be raised over the town hall during the entirety of June he also helped organise a flag waving protest on the issue outside the council building.
As the editor of the Gazette, I think it’s important that we cover these events and stories without fear or favour. And that puts us in the firing line from all sides.
On some of our stories, particularly those put up on our Facebook page, hateful comments can appear.
It was something I brought up with Stephen, 39, to get his take on the situation.
The Gazette has been accused of trying to make money by deliberately stirring up hatred when reporting events and of goading people into making unpleasant comments. It is simply not the case, but then I would say that wouldn’t I?
My argument is that we could turn off comments on our Facebook pages, and that would end the hateful abuse there and then. But it would also end the positive and supportive comments our stories attract.
Stephen could see our point of view and shared it. He told me that he feels there has been a noticeable rise in intolerance from some quarters. Something that concerns him, but insists it’s an issue no-one should shy away from.
We don’t, and neither does he. It was a pleasure to be in Stephen’s company and learn from his experience and knowledge of our South Tyneside community.
While he would not say he’s an activist, I certainly got the impression that if there’s a parapet in the vicinity, Stephen will be sticking his head above it!
Old photograph serves up an ace!
A quip I made about a photograph of fresh faced youngsters lining up ahead of a tennis tournament in South Shields in the 1980s blew up in my face this week!
The black and white snap from the Shields Gazette archives featured yours truly alongside a bunch of other tennis hopefuls that, I joked, were unlikely to have made it to Wimbledon. Oh how wrong I was.
While I didn’t have the talent to go all the way, the youngster just two to my left (I’m bottom row, first left) in the photograph certainly did. He’s only gone and played at Wimbledon the FIVE times!
Graeme Foreman, now 56, spotted himself in the picture and dropped me an email to, quite politely, point out that he did grace those courts during his time as a rising star of the tennis circuit.
While he was modest about his achievements, I’m happy to do the trumpet-blowing for him, though there’s not enough space in the paper to list all his successes.
Graeme played at Wimbledon as a junior and university star player before going on to coach a star-studded list of amazing athletes in all sorts of sports, a career that has seen him travel the world and become a leading light in performance psychology while still, in his late 50s, playing competitive tennis as the county captain for Durham and Cleveland.
Why, he even sent me a picture of him with Sir Cliff Richard. Does it get any better than that?
Graeme has returned to his roots and now lives just an extravagant tennis lob from Readhead Park in South Shields.
And as for those junior tennis tournaments of days gone by? “Yes, I won it a few times,” says Graeme. “And the seniors too. My name’s on the winners board somewhere…”
He will also be gracing Centre Court at Wimbledon this weekend... as a spectator.
I wonder if that old photograph is going to serve up some more success stories or net more happy memories? Watch this space…