Leader

Grocer, Nov 15, 2008 by Adam Leyland

Isn't it funny how journalists were never given credit in the boom times? Yet now, with recession, we get all the blame. The cause even has a leader: Robert Peston. That's right, the BBC journalist it was who not only called time on Northern Rock but lent all that money, devised those credit derivative swaps, set all those multiple valuations.

Just kidding, of course. But I don't deny we journalists like a bit of doom and gloom. We tend to focus on the negatives--red ink, job losses, profit warnings, receiverships.

Not this week, however. Not at The Grocer. We thought it about time someone pointed out the many positives in food and drink retailing. And so we present our Silver Lining Issue. For one week only, we're taking an avowedly positive tack. We've found 18 reasons to be cheerful. We're leading off stories with the good news, focusing first on the numbers that point up, not the ones that point down.

There's also our cover feature on some of the hope-inspiring innovations that emerged in previous recessions. We've an interview with Justin King, the Sainsbury's boss whose boyish optimism not only belies his age (he's 47) but is resoundingly vindicated in this week's results. We've also taken the unusual step of releasing early a few key findings from our Top Products Survey, to be published on 20 December, because the vast majority of categories are in value growth, and plenty also are growing volume-wise.

Send us your good news stories, too. We need to hear them. And here's a final reason to keep smiling. It's the change in sentiment towards wealth creation. For too long now as a nation, we've celebrated, deified the money men, while the real achievers--the people who managed and built and fixed real businesses--were treated with a sometimes barely concealed contempt. No more. You will be the heroes of this recession. The money men? They're just a bunch of, well, bankers.