[3] Designed to provide a platform for the Radical views held by Storey and his partners, it was also Sunderland's first local daily paper.

[4][5] 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.

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.

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.

Peterlee, Horden, Seaham, Dawdon, Murton and Seaton, to the south of Sunderland, are the main towns and villages in the East Durham circulation area.

[2][18] The main newspaper rivals in the Sunderland and County Durham area include The Northern Echo, The Journal, the Hartlepool Mail and the Evening Chronicle.

[17] In addition to the main newspaper, the Echo also produces a number of regular supplements and articles of specialist interest each week.

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.

[3][24]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.

[3] 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.

[3][27] A further £7,000 in investment from Storey enabled the remaining partners to abandon the "wheezing flat-bed press"[23] and, in July 1876, the Echo moved to new premises at 14 Bridge Street, Sunderland.

[28] 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.

[6] The syndicate finally broke up in 1885, with Storey retaining control of the Echo, Hampshire Telegraph, Portsmouth News and the Northern Daily Mail.

[31] Despite the heavy shelling of the North East coast and River Wear, the Echo offices and printing plant escaped undamaged.

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.

A further title-piece redesign in 1972, however, dispensed with the words Shipping Gazette and introduced an illustration of Wearmouth Bridge alongside the title Echo Sunderland.

Lord Buckton, the chairman of Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers Ltd, announced his retirement at the event, and was succeeded by his son, The Honourable Richard Storey.

[4] The £4 million development saw the Echo become the first daily newspaper in the North East to be completely produced by photo-composition and web-offset printing.

The cartoon character had for years indicated the match results of Sunderland with a smile, a frown or a tear, while adorning the outside wall of the Bridge Street building.

The press was part of a multimillion-pound revamp, which also saw journalists making up full news pages on computer screens for the first time.

[6] A further £5 million was spent on updating the pre-press and press hall area in 2004, to improve printing quality and speed of production.

[39] The Echo was still part of Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers until the end of the 1990s, although printed by Northeast Press, a subsidiary of the main company.

The Sunderland Echo is still published by Northeast Press, although Johnston Press—the nation's second largest regional publisher—now owns the whole company.

[40] In September 2012 it was announced the multimillion-pound press hall was to close, with the loss of 81 jobs, and printing operations moved to Sheffield.

[10] The Echo has won numerous accolades, as well as government praise, for its campaigning journalism, specialist writing, community work, photographic images and appeals for good causes over the decades.

The gelding won races at Hamilton, Redcar, Newcastle upon Tyne and Haydock in the early 1990s, but had to be put down on 17 February 1996 after pulling up badly lame during a routine morning gallop.