The Sunderland Echo was founded as an evening daily in Sunderland in 1873 by Samuel Storey and six other like-minded politicians and businessmen. Each pledged £500 to the project. Storey was a radical politician who served as Liberal MP for Sunderland from 1881 to 1895. He was also a prominent figure in local politics and elected Mayor of Sunderland. He viewed the Echo as a means to disseminate his views and further the cause of radical Liberalism.

The 4-page publication, priced at one halfpenny, comprised a mixture of local, national and foreign news. Considerable space was reserved for shipping and import and export news and the first page was given over to advertisements. By January 1878, the Echo was enticing prospective advertisers with its claims of guaranteed sales of between 50,000 and 60,000 copies per week in Sunderland alone.

By 1880, Storey was chief proprietor. He entered into a syndicate with Scots-American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, buying up newspapers with a view to furthering their political aims. By the end of 1884 the Syndicate owned a substantial number of daily and weekly papers and when it broke up in 1885, Storey retained a controlling interest in the Sunderland Echo, Portsmouth Evening News, and Northern Daily Mail. The papers were run by the Storey family as separate companies until 1934 when they came under the banner of Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers Ltd.