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. 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