Eyes & Ears Extra 13.07.25

It's what you've been missing

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You might also want to read the article near the end of this newsletter and see what Martin Lewis has to say about journalism today.

We’re leading the way

North East music development agency Generator used an event in the heart of London to call for more devolved powers to help grow the creative industries outside the capital.

CEO Mick Ross told a packed audience at the prestigious Abbey Road Institute studios in Islington that for too long the music industry was built on the belief that success starts and stays in London.

“What’s now changed is the North is no longer waiting to be noticed, or waiting for help or permission,” he said. “We’re now leading the way.”

He called for a rebalancing of funding streams into the music industry and backed growing calls for a national £1 ticket levy to support grassroots venues.

He was joined at the event by North East mayor Kim McGuinness. She said: “Our region is absolutely bursting with talent and we’re encouraging that by creating opportunities for people who want to succeed in the creative industry.

“We’re telling young people making music, 'you can do it here'.”

Local hero

An exhibition featuring the work of Charlie Rogers opened at Gateshead Central Library yesterday. That is thanks, in no small measure, to Brian Rankin who has devoted much of his life over the last couple of years to Charlie’s work - along with a large part of his art gallery in Low Fell that used to be the family furniture business.

Writer David Whetstone has crafted a wonderful article for Cultured. North East on the artist who was friends with Norman Cornish and was on more than nodding terms with LS Lowry.

It’s a tale of a man who was largely unrecognised in the North East at the time of his death in a care home in 2020, aged 90, after contracting Covid - and who has left a treasure trove of sketches, drawings and paintings that are in growing demand.

In May last year, QT contributor Michael Chaplin penned a brilliant essay about Charlie which deserves to be read in its own right. I will send that out to you tomorrow. The World of Charlie Rogers is fascinating, especially when you hear it from a compelling storyteller

“It’s a brilliant story,” says Brian. “It would make a fabulous film.”

North East Screen, consider this a nudge.

Running dolphin

Hospital consultant Richard Hixson is a man on a mission – and he’s prepared to run around as a dolphin to make himself heard.

Since the start of the year, he has taken part in 15 North East park runs dressed in a dolphin costume to spread the word that we depend on the ocean – and it’s in decline.

“It’s a fun way of starting conversations based on one question that people always tend to ask: ‘Why are you dressed as a dolphin’, says Richard, consultant in anaesthesia and critical care at Darlington Memorial Hospital.

“I’m not asking for anything from them, just trying to inspire a greater understanding of how much we need the ocean and, ultimately, hoping it leads to actions.”

Richard told former Northern Echo editor Peter Barron that his passion for the environment started as a child when he collected wildlife cards through a kids' magazine. His most prized card and, therefore, his favourite animal was the Yangtze river dolphin.

In 2017, he decided to find out how the Yangtze river dolphin was doing and was “devastated” to discover it was extinct.

“That really hit me,” he recalls. “It underlined the urgency of the situation, and that's when I started asking questions at the hospital trust about sustainability.”

Paying up

Seven of the UK’s largest housebuilders - Barratt Redrow, Bellway, Berkeley Group, Bloor Homes, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Vistry - have agreed to pay £100m to affordable housing programmes after a Competitions and Markets Authority investigation into anti-competitive behaviour.

At the double

Reform UK have won their second council by-election in Hartlepool in two months. Ed Doyle won the Thurston seat in Thursday’s poll, beating the Labour candidate by 120 votes with the other parties a long way behind.

Fed extra

Gateshead councillors have approved plans for a £40m multi-storey golf and entertainment complex on the site of the old Federation Brewery. Topgolf UK say the development near the Metrocentre will create 300 construction jobs and up to 400 roles once the attraction is open.

‘Catastrophic’ affect

The mass-deaths of shellfish off the Teesside and North Yorkshire coast in 2021 has had a "catastrophic" impact on the mental health of the fishing community and has affected livelihoods as well as local tourism, a report has found.

Long delay

Adults are waiting on average 618 days for an ADHD assessment at an NHS trust, according to figures released to the BBC in a response to a Freedom of Information request.

‘Existential crisis’

Jim Waterson, former media editor of The Guardian, launched a subscription-based newsletter on Substack last year to deliver quality, in-depth reporting.

“One of the main reasons for setting up London Centric was the idea that the corporate model of doing local journalism on the internet is broken,” he says. “In my old job it was clear how the incentives to chase online clicks at all costs are destroying public trust in once-loved local newspapers.

“Just three companies — Reach, Newsquest, and National World — control almost all of the local newspapers in the UK. They retain some brilliant journalists doing great reporting in tough circumstances. But in many places their work is undermined by bosses setting click targets which encourage staff to publish false headlines while burying tiny morsels of factual information on ad-filled webpages.”

Martin Lewis, the boss of MoneySavingExpert, is one of their favourites. Every day dozens of journalists are commissioned to write about Lewis, a man The Guardian called the most trusted man in Britain, with some regional reporters listing “Martin Lewis” as their local reporting specialism.

London Centric published an interview with Martin Lewis this week. The TV presenter pulled no punches.

“What is going on with many of the clickbait outlets is just content theft. The people doing it are not journalists, they are content writers and search engine optimisers. This is going to kill — and is already killing — journalism.

“I work very hard and my website is MoneySavingExpert. I don’t write for any newspapers. When I put staff on a story my team and I will be on that for months to do the research and make sure it’s right. These people (on clickbait news sites) are writing 12 stories a day, nicking the content, writing it inaccurately, being misleading about what I say — and taking the traffic away.

“You talk to the proper journalists who work at Reach and they are in despair over this.

“I haven’t got an answer to the existential crisis facing journalism in this country. I just know it’s an existential crisis. There’s still a lot of good journalism being done out there, unfortunately it’s hidden in a swamp of muck and crap.”

‘Mind’ what you eat

If you worry about keeping your mind sharp as you get older, then perhaps it’s time to give the ‘Mind’ diet a try. This routine borrows its core tenets from the popular Mediterranean diet as well as the lesser-known ‘Dash’ diet, which was designed to reduce hypertension.

But the Mind diet, according to The Conversation, puts more emphasis on consuming foods rich in nutrients that promote brain health — such as leafy greens, dark chocolate, and oily fish.