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 the Second World War 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 2021, the paper had an average daily circulation of 5.662. 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 The Sunderland Echo is an evening newspaper, published from Monday to Saturday each week. The paper has a daily circulation of 5,662. 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 League One 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