Lincolnshire Echo

About Lincolnshire Echo

The Lincolnshire Echo is the county newspaper of Lincolnshire, published weekly every Thursday in the cathedral city of Lincoln. Its first edition appeared on Tuesday 31 January 1893, making it Lincolnshire's first daily evening paper — a gamble, in a sparsely populated rural county where no evening paper had ever been attempted. For the first 118 years of its existence it was a daily; since October 2011 it has been a weekly. Owned by Reach plc and anchored online by lincolnshirelive.co.uk, it serves one of the largest and most thinly populated counties in England.

History and Founding

The paper was founded by two young Lancashire newspapermen, the letterpress printer William Cottam and the journalist Samuel Burrows. Employed on a Lancashire newspaper, they had first considered starting an evening paper in Lincoln as early as 1883, but after meeting local prominent citizens decided to hold fire. Ten years later, with the necessary financial backing secured locally, they began publication from premises near the Midland railway yard at 142 High Street. They formed a limited company, the Lincolnshire Publishing Company, under the chairmanship of the manufacturer and former Liberal MP for Lincoln, Joseph Ruston, with Burrows as manager and Cottam as the first editor.

The first issue, on a cold January day in 1893, was a four-page broadsheet with mostly advertisements on the front page, priced at a halfpenny. Its first editorial promised impartial news columns and features, and opinions of its own on issues affecting the higher interests of the people — while backing the Liberal Party and "the greatest statesman of the age — Gladstone". The paper made a show of its modernity: readers were told that "the wonders of electricity light up the Echo premises including the entrance where the lightshow of 2,000 candle power can be seen nearly six miles away on a dark, clear night."

The Early Decades

The paper continued as a broadsheet for almost a century, converting to tabloid only in 1991 under the then editorship of Cliff Smith. In 1896 the Lincoln Gazette, an established weekly, was bought, and the Echo moved to St Benedict Square, where it was published for the best part of a century until the move to new premises in Brayford Wharf East in 1984. Only once in its history did printing take place elsewhere: during the Second World War, a nearby unexploded bomb forced the presses to stop, and printing was carried out at the Lincolnshire Chronicle works for a few days. As the paper's own history put it, only a bomb could stop the Echo.

Ownership and Publishing

The Echo was long owned by Northcliffe Media, part of the Daily Mail and General Trust. In 2012 Local World acquired Northcliffe Media, and in October 2015 Local World was bought in full by its part-shareholder Trinity Mirror, which rebranded as Reach plc in 2018 — making the Echo part of the UK's largest commercial news publisher. In April 2005 the daily Echo was named Regional Newspaper of the Year by the Newspaper Society, a mark of its standing among the country's evening papers.

The Switch to Weekly

Falling circulation prompted the historic switch from daily to weekly publication in 2011. The final daily edition was published on 14 October, with the weekly edition commencing on 20 October, published every Thursday. The daily had been a morning publication by then, and its conversion ended 118 years of daily journalism in the county. The paper's average circulation as a daily stood at 24,560 in June 2006; the weekly edition serves a county-wide readership across Lincolnshire's towns and villages.

Printing and Offices

The permanent closure of the printing plant in Lincoln was announced in 2006 and production moved to Grimsby; the paper is now printed at one of Reach plc's four UK printing sites. The Echo's building was sold in April 2009 to the University of Lincoln, and the paper moved slightly further down the same road to office space in Witham Wharf. It then moved to an office on Doddington Road in 2020, before its journalists switched to remote work later that year during the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper did not return to Doddington Road, and in 2022 a partnership was announced under which the Echo uses office space at the University of Lincoln, with the university's students receiving work experience and guidance from the paper in return.

Coverage Area and Readership

The Echo's distribution covers the whole of Lincolnshire — from the Wolds and the coast to the Fens, taking in Lincoln itself, Boston, Grantham, Gainsborough, Louth, Skegness, Sleaford, Stamford and the market towns in between. It is a vast, rural patch: RAF bases, farming communities, the food processing industry, seaside resorts and the cathedral city itself. Lincoln City Football Club — the Imps — command devoted coverage, as do Lincolnshire's agricultural shows, its historic churches and the county's military heritage.

Sister Titles and the Target Series

The paper's publisher also produces a series of Target free weekly newspapers carrying the previous week's Echo material for specific areas, including Boston, Gainsborough, Grantham, Lincoln, Louth and Skegness, alongside the paid-for weekly Retford Times for the Nottinghamshire border town. The Echo's website, lincolnshirelive.co.uk, breaks stories from the Echo as well as its sister weeklies, the Boston Target, the Sleaford Target and the East Coast Target, making it the digital hub for Reach's Lincolnshire journalism.

Editorial Content and Sections

The weekly Echo packs a county's worth of news into its Thursday edition: county council and district politics, the courts, policing, farming and rural affairs, education and health. The paper has always been strong on community journalism — village fetes and flower shows sit alongside investigations into rural crime and NHS provision. Sport covers Lincoln City, Boston United, Gainsborough Trinity and the county's non-league scene, plus cricket, rugby and equestrianism. The Saturday sports paper was closed in 2006, its coverage moving online, but the Echo's sports desk remains the authoritative voice on football across the county.

Digital Presence

LincolnshireLive is the paper's digital flagship, breaking news through the day and carrying live blogs for major incidents, court cases and Lincoln City matches. The site's audience extends far beyond the print edition's circulation, drawing readers from across the county and from Lincolnshire exiles around the world. Social media channels, newsletters and the paper's public-notice platform complete a digital operation that has become the primary way most readers encounter the Echo's journalism. The sports coverage that once filled a dedicated Saturday sports paper — closed in 2006 — now lives on the sportsecho website and LincolnshireLive's sport section, with live match coverage of Lincoln City and the county's non-league clubs.

Legacy and Place in Lincolnshire Life

For more than 130 years, the Lincolnshire Echo has been the county's paper of record — from the gas-driven presses of 1893 to the digital newsroom of today. It survived the scepticism of those who said an evening paper could never pay in so rural a county, outlived its Victorian rivals, and adapted from daily to weekly without losing its county-wide reach. In a county defined by distance, the Echo has always been the thread that stitches its scattered communities together — from the Humber to the Wash, and from the Wolds to the Fens.