Editorial: We will change Sunderland’s image forever, stop moaning and get behind us

Sunderland Global Media was created because we love Sunderland, and want to make a difference.

Our project was originally called “Sunderland Renaissance” before we rebranded it in 2019 to give it a more precise focus.

The goal has been to promote pride and awareness about Sunderland not only amongst its own residents, but also the world.

In the past two months we have made overwhelming progress in that area. We have expected our Facebook page to 32,000 followers, reached up to 80 million people, and also established our world service, which is steadily growing on twitter.

In conjunction with this, we are aggressively expanding the size of our Sunderland travel guide and demonstrating that our city does in fact a lot to offer.

It warmed our hearts just last week, when a man from Ohio, USA, commented on one of our posts saying he was now learning about Sunderland because of us.

But that does not mean there are challenges too. In promoting Sunderland, we have to fight off an existing image problem too.

That challenge becomes steeper when we have to confront a small cohort of residents who do nothing but put the place down 24/7.

Every time we post pages from our guide, there is a certain group of followers who always reply with something very negative and derogatory. It isn’t even constructive criticism, it’s just cynical moaning and put downs.

We also face the fact that people from Newcastle aren’t willing to give Sunderland the time of day, because their minds are entrenched in a football driven hatred and a mean set of stereotypes.

Whilst people from Sunderland are open minded and positive about Newcastle as a city, the feeling isn’t reciprocated.

But in the long run, none of this will stop us. We are confident that SGM is about to be the most ambitious and far-reaching promotion of Sunderland ever created.

And we’re in for the long fight. Irrespective of what you might think about local politics, we want you to love Sunderland and in turn, want you to fight for Sunderland too.

We urge you to stop moaning and to back us. If there are problems with the area (and everywhere has its problems) we urge you to confront them out of a love for the city, not out of a cynical and defeatist nihilism determined to put everything down, which does nothing.

This is your city, and your future. Let’s change Sunderland for the better.