The Northern Echo
A Northern Echo front page from 2007
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| Type | Regional daily |
|---|---|
| Format | Compact (Tabloid) |
| Owner(s) | Newsquest |
| Founder(s) | John Hyslop Bell and the Pease family |
| Editor | Andy Richardson |
| Founded | 1870 |
| Political alignment | Independent |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | Darlington, County Durham |
| Circulation | 25,290 (June 2016) |
| Sister newspapers | , The Advertiser |
| Website | http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk |
The Northern Echo is a regional daily morning newspaper, based in the town of Darlington in North East England; serving County Durham and Teesside. The paper covers national as well as regional news. According to its then-editor, it is one of the most famous provincial newspapers in the United Kingdom. Its first edition was published on 1 January 1870.
Its second editor was W. T. Stead, the early pioneer of British investigative journalism, who earned the paper accolades from the leading Liberals of the day, seeing it applauded as "the best paper in Europe." Harold Evans, one of the great campaigning journalists of all time, was editor of The Northern Echo in the 1960s and argued the case for cervical smear tests for women. Evans agreed with Stead that reporting was "a very good way of attacking the devil".
The Northern Echo was started by John Hyslop Bell with the backing of the Pease family, largely to counter the conservative outpourings of rival newspapers, the and the Darlington Mercury. The paper enjoyed early success under its second editor, W. T. Stead, an early pioneer of investigative journalism, who brought the paper international notoriety during the Bulgarian Atrocities agitation in 1876. Leading Liberals such as Gladstone and Joseph Chamberlain became great admirers, and the historian E. A. Freeman went so far as to declare the Northern Echo, as "the best paper in Europe."
However, the loss of Stead to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1880 and the resignation of founder Bell in 1889 took a heavy toll on the Echo and its sales slumped to a critical low for decades after. The collapse of the Pease dynasty and increased competition from rival newspapers added to the Echo's troubles and, by the time it limped into the twentieth century, it was on the verge of bankruptcy.
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