Lincolnshire Echo

It was founded in 1893. (An earlier title, called successively The Louth Echo, The Lincolnshire Halfpenny Echo and finally The Lincolnshire Echo, has no connection.)

For the first 118 years of its history it was a daily title (with two geographical editions – City and County, and Gainsborough – and a Sports edition), but it switched to weekly publication, and a page count of 184, in October 2011. After complaints that the new format was too bulky and took too long to read, it split into two parts in May 2012 – the Echo 2 containing the motoring, home and garden, and property sections.

It’s published by Lincolnshire Media, part of Northcliffe Media (which in turn was the local and regional newspaper publishing wing of the Daily Mail & General Trust until the end of 2012, when it became the major constituent part of the new Local World media group). The editorial offices are in Lincoln.

There are several Target companion freesheets distributed in towns around the county, including Louth, Skegness, Boston and Sleaford. The Gainsborough Target and Lincoln Target ceased publication in mid-July 2012, concurrently with the launch of a new West Lincolnshire edition of the Echo.

Its web presence used to be through Northcliffe’s thisislincolnshire.co.uk website, which was latterly a portal website to which Northcliffe’s Lincolnshire websites merely contributed news. However, Local World decided soon after its creation that all former Northcliffe papers should have their own “publisher-branded” websites.

It won the Regional Newspaper of the Year award from the Newspaper Society in 2005. The fact that it played a major part in exposing the corrupt activities of Jim Speechley, former Conservative head of Lincolnshire County Council and subsequently imprisoned for 18 months, may have had something to do with this.

It comes out on Thursdays.