The Sunderland Echo is a daily newspaper serving the Sunderland, South Tyneside and East Durham areas of North East England. The newspaper was founded by Samuel Storey, Edward Backhouse, Edward Temperley Gourley, Charles Palmer, Richard Ruddock, Thomas Glaholm and Thomas Scott Turnbull in 1873, as the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette. Designed to provide a platform for the Radical views held by Storey and his partners, it was also Sunderland's first local daily paper.
The inaugural edition of the Echo was printed in Press Lane, Sunderland on 22 December 1873; 1,000 copies were produced and sold for a halfpenny each. The Echo survived intense competition in its early years, as well as the depression of the 1930s and two World Wars. Sunderland was heavily bombed in World War II and, although the Echo building was undamaged, it was forced to print its competitor's paper under wartime rules. It was during this time that the paper's format changed, from a broadsheet to its current tabloid layout, because of national newsprint shortages.
The Echo is published Monday–Saturday and was formerly part of the Johnston Press group—one of the United Kingdom's largest publishers of local and regional newspapers. As of December 2022, the paper had an average daily circulation of 4,580 The Echo was based at Echo House, Pennywell Industrial Estate, Sunderland, from 1976 until April 2015. The Echo moved to Rainton Meadows Industrial Estate that year and then to the North East Business and Innovation (BIC) Centre at Wearfield, Sunderland, in 2019. In December 2020 it was announced that former Mirror Group chief executive David Montgomery's group National World had acquired JPI Media, which owned the Echo and other newspapers, for £10.2m.
General overview Facts and figures
+ Circulation and priceFootnote: These figures are a combination of ABC figures and details taken from old editions of the Sunderland Echo. Year Price Circulation 1873 1 halfpenny 1,000 1893 1 halfpenny 21,967 1939 1 penny 49,001 1953 3 halfpennies 56,412 1976 6 pence 65,145 1984 12 pence 70,100 1990 18 pence 68,525 2008 42 pence 44,198 2012 55 pence 29,366 2013 60 pence 22,686 2014 70 pence 18,876 2017 75 pence 11,075 2022 90 pence 4,580 The Sunderland Echo is an evening newspaper, published from Monday to Saturday each week. The paper has a daily circulation of 4,580. The news coverage provided by the Echo focuses mainly on local events, including human interest, crime and court stories, as well as reports on the local football team, Sunderland AFC.
Independent research carried out for the Echo in 2000 found readers spent an average of 33 minutes reading the paper. The same survey showed the Echo appealed to people across the range of demographics, with between 44 and 50% of people in each socio-economic grouping being regular readers.
Circulation and supplements
The Sunderland Echo covers a circulation area of in North East England, which includes parts of South Tyneside and County Durham, as well as the city of Sunderland. Whitburn, Marsden and The Boldons, all to the north of Sunderland, are among the South Tyneside communities covered. Peterlee, Horden, Seaham, Dawdon, Murton and Seaton, to the south of Sunderland, are the main towns and villages in the East Durham circulation area. The paper is also sold in Washington, Burnmoor and Durham, which are to the west of Sunderland. Villages on the outskirts of the city, including Houghton-le-Spring, Penshaw, Fencehouses, Ryhope and Hetton-le-Hole are included in the circulation area too. The main newspaper rivals in the Sunderland and County Durham area include The Northern Echo, The Journal, the Hartlepool Mail and the Evening Chronicle. The Sunderland Star, a free weekly newspaper printed by the Echo, is also distributed in the city. According to independent research conducted on behalf of the Echo in 2000, the "popularity of the Echo in Sunderland and East Durham is greater than that of all other regional newspapers put together".
In addition to the main newspaper, the Echo also produces a number of regular supplements and articles of specialist interest each week. These include sport and business supplements each Monday, a Down Your Way local news supplement on Tuesdays, jobs, junior football and nostalgia features on Wednesdays, an entertainment supplement, cars guide and nostalgia stories on Thursdays and a property pull-out on Fridays. The Saturday edition includes a leisure pull-out, featuring fashion, entertainment and restaurant reviews, while a local history nostalgia supplement, Retro, is published once a month. Nostalgia calendars, featuring old photographs of Sunderland and Seaham, are also produced.
Early years
Foundation The first edition of the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette was printed on 22 December 1873, on a flat-bed press in Press Lane, Sunderland. Five hundred copies of the four-page issue were produced at noon and 4 pm, and sold for a halfpenny each.Footnote reference: This version of halfpenny refers to the older currency, not the post-1971 decimal half-penny piece. According to the website Measuringworth.com, a halfpenny in 1873 had a current purchasing power of 14.5 pence
Samuel Storey, a former teacher and future Sunderland mayor and Member of Parliament, founded the paper to provide a platform for his political views and to fill a gap in the newspaper market. Although the 100,000-strong population of Sunderland was already served by two weekly newspapers—The Sunderland Times and The Sunderland Herald—neither reflected the radical views held by Storey and his partners and there were no daily papers in the town. Storey promised readers in the first edition that, if things went wrong, "the Echo would try its best to put them right". But he added: "Always with moderation and without esteeming all those who oppose us as fools and knaves." Early copies of the Echo included lengthy reports of Liberal meetings, and critical articles on Liberal opponents.
The Sunderland Echo was launched with an initial investment of £3,500, raised by donations of £500 each from Storey and his business partners.Footnote reference: According to the website Measuringworth.com, £3,500 in 1873 had a purchasing power equivalent to about £242,240.36 today. Those joining the venture were Quaker banker Edward Backhouse, shipbroker and MP Edward Temperley Gourley, shipbuilder and MP Sir Charles Palmer, newspaper editor Richard Ruddock, rope-maker Thomas Glaholm and draper Thomas Scott Turnbull. Lack of experience—only Ruddock had previous knowledge of newspaper management—and over-optimistic estimates of costs meant that the initial funds were quickly exhausted. Storey later admitted: "In our childlike, simple ways, we thought this might be sufficient, but in a few months all the money was gone, so we paid in another £3,500 and that soon went too." As the prospect of any great financial success receded, Ruddock, Gourley and Palmer withdrew from the project. Storey, however, remained dedicated to the idea, and took on their shares. A further £7,000 in investment from Storey enabled the remaining partners to abandon the "wheezing flat-bed press" and, in July 1876, the Echo moved to new premises at 14 Bridge Street, Sunderland.
Bridge Street
Bridge Street remained the home of the Echo for the next 100 years. Old buildings were demolished, new machine and composing rooms built on West Wear Street and two rotary presses installed just before the move, each capable of printing 24,000 copies an hour. These changes brought about increased circulation, but it took another seven years before the Echo made a profit. It was a time of intense competition; the Sunderland Times converted from a bi-weekly to a daily paper in the same month as the Echo moved to Bridge Street, and Tory supporters started a paper of their own, the Sunderland Daily Post. The Sunderland Times was the first to collapse, but the Post survived for the next quarter of a century, providing the Echo with an often bitter rival.
Following the deaths of two further partners, Backhouse in 1879 and Turnbull in 1880, Storey bought their shares to become the Echo'''s chief proprietor. A year later, in 1881, he met Scottish-born millionaire Andrew Carnegie, and formed a syndicate with him to set up new newspapers and buy up others. Among those purchased were the Wolverhampton Express and Star, the Northern Daily Mail in Hartlepool and the Portsmouth Evening News. An attempt to buy the Shields Gazette, the country's oldest daily newspaper, failed. The syndicate finally broke up in 1885, with Storey retaining control of the Echo, Hampshire Telegraph, Portsmouth News and the Northern Daily Mail. These papers formed the basis of a new company, Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers Ltd, formed in the 1930s. The 19th century ended with the rivalry between the Echo and the Sunderland Daily Post intensifying. The Silksworth Colliery strike of 1891 pitted the two papers against each other, with the Post attacking Storey for having exploited the strike for political gain. Storey successfully sued for libel.
20th century Consolidation The new century saw the Echo falling behind the times in its production methods. Established as a "leading daily newspaper", it was one of the last to still be setting type by hand in 1900. This changed in 1902, when Linotype lead-setting machines were brought in to set type mechanically. A landslide victory for the Liberal Party followed at the 1906 General Election, which heralded a new era for the Echo. The paper's old rival, the Sunderland Daily Post, was discontinued six months later, and the Football Echo was launched on 7 September 1907.
World War I brought its own difficulties for the Echo. Reporters went off to battle and, after the cost of newsprint soared, the paper was forced to double in price to a penny. The Echos 50th anniversary in 1923 was marked by a visit from company chairman Samuel Storey. Storey died two years later, three months after his eldest son Fred, and the chairmanship passed to another Samuel—Fred's elder son. In the same year, plans were laid to improve the Bridge Street premises. The work included enlarging the printing works and was completed by the end of the 1920s.
Depression years The depression of the 1930s brought mass unemployment to Sunderland. But, for the Echo, it was also a time of important structural changes in ownership. A new company controlling the three titles owned by the Storey family was formed in 1934—Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers Ltd. There was a change in name for the Echo too, when the word Daily was dropped from its title of Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette. The decade also, however, brought a fire which destroyed most of the bound files of archive copies of the Echo. Nineteenth-century editions of the Echo can only be accessed in Sunderland at the City Centre Library in Fawcett Street.
Second World War The Second World War brought havoc to Wearside, with Sunderland one of the seven most heavily bombed towns in the country. Despite the heavy shelling of the North East coast and River Wear, the Echo offices and printing plant escaped undamaged. The Shields Gazette, the Echo's nearest rival, was not as fortunate. Its premises in Chapter Row, South Shields, were bombed in September 1941 and, under an emergency wartime arrangement, the paper was printed on the Echo presses. The Echo continued to be published throughout the war, despite paper rationing, a lack of reporters and a strict censorship of photographs. The war did have one major impact on the Echo—in the form of its size. Wartime restrictions on newsprint reduced the former broadsheet to its present tabloid size, and this style has been retained ever since.
Post-war changes and centenary