The Northern Echo

The Northern Echo
A Northern Echo front page from 2007
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatCompact (tabloid)
Owner(s)Newsquest
Founder(s)John Hyslop Bell and the Pease family
EditorGavin Foster
Founded1870
Political alignmentIndependent
LanguageEnglish
HeadquartersDarlington, County Durham
Circulation8,701 (as of 2023)
Sister newspapersDarlington & Stockton Times
The Advertiser
ISSN2043-0442
Websitethenorthernecho.co.uk

The Northern Echo is a regional daily morning newspaper based in the town of Darlington in North East England, serving mainly southern County Durham and northern Yorkshire. The paper covers national as well as regional news. In 2007, its then-editor claimed that it was 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".