Short History - Ten Years of the Echo - Supporting Our Community - Echo Roll of Honour

A short history of red wine, coffee, laughter and spellling mystakes..

By editor Simon Thomsen

Sorry (see, it's not that hard to do...). It's probably the spelling mistakes which infuriate our readers the most. And there have been some howlers.

So we're sorry. Despite the best efforts of computer spell-checkers and proof readers, being a small team, mistakes happen. You should see the ones that don't get out of the office... The feedback we get from readers is one of the best parts of running a community newspaper. More about it later on.

But first, the story of how The Echo came to be (and sorry for any spelling mistakes).

It all began when the late Nicholas Shand was outraged by civil rights abuses by police during drug raids around Mullumbimby. Nick was the sort of bloke who preferred a good claret to the stuff behind the lantana (a tradition passed down through the editors). But the existing media weren't doing their job properly, so he rounded up some fellow travellers, David Lovejoy and Jeff Dawson, and they began the Brunswick Valley Echo. Now called the Byron Shire Echo, it notched up 15 years in print this week.

Lismore residents were interested in what The Echo was doing, and five years later journalist Jennie Dell, with Graham Askey, convinced the Byron team to try their hand inland.

From a tiny office above Magellan street, with only two phone lines, a team of eight helped create the first 28-page A4 Lismore Echo on Wednesday, June 7.

Jennie Dell was editor, joined by journalist Robin Osborne. Mac Nicholson, then a Lismore councillor, was part of a sales team that included Jeff Dawson, Samantha Mount and Megan Richardson. Patricia Strange was office manager and Graham Askey was responsible for delivering the 14,000 copies of The Echo to Lismore letterboxes.

Within a week, the city had two weekly newspapers, with The Northern Star launching the Lismore Happenings.

Some notable people joined the paper along the way. A few months later, Heather Williams signed on for advertising sales having left Sydney where she was working for major advertising agencies. She remains to this day - as one of three owners and directors of the paper - having raised a fledgling family and a newspaper.

Photographer Jacklyn Wagner took her first newspaper photograph for The Echo - of Lismore psychologist Harry Freeman. Matthew Eaton tried his hand at journalism and now reads the news on ABC youth network Triple J. Mungo MacCallum gave Paul Keating a serve discussing federal politics. Robin Osborne wrote about life on the farm.

Wanderlust took Jennie Dell around the globe and Nicholas Shand stepped into the editor's shoes, relishing the thrust and parry of telling the stories other media wouldn't touch. A bottle of red opened as they settled in for a long night and deadline.

Oh, and that legendary man of letters Jon Axtens, would proof the paper (except for the bits with spelling mistakes...)

When Lismore Council headed for the hills, The Echo moved into the old council chambers.

Heather, Jeff, Dee Tipping and Gwen Trimble filled in the space around the words, Nick and Matthew filled in the space around those ads, and a young sportswoman, Jane Crummy, was answering the phones and keeping the place running with Trish Strange. John McPherson wrote sport, along with Bill Kidd. David Lovejoy came over to put the paper together on Apple computers. In '92 Mac Nicolson fell in love, left Council and then The Echo.

On April fools day 1993, I started working for The Echo, having recently moved to the area from Sydney. I'd been living overseas for many years and was sick of big cities. Lismore reminded me of the south coast country town where my Nan grew up. Plus I was attracted by the innovation and energy that a university generates. It turned out to be the best move of my life.

The next big step for the paper came in June '93, when it moved to a B4 format (slightly smaller than a tabloid newspaper).

That full colour edition featured the Lismore Quilters on the front page.

But running two newspapers and commuting backwards and forwards between Mullumbimby and Lismore was beginning to take its toll on Nick and David. They decided to put the Lismore Echo up for sale to concentrate on Byron, where the Northern Star had just bought the other independent newspaper, The Byron News.

There were no takers and in a rash moment (perhaps inspired by the red wine), Nick declared he'd "rather sell the paper to the staff for $1 than see it close".

It set us thinking.

Over the summer of 93-94, Heather, Robin and I figured out what we could do. As staff, we weren't exactly wealthy. My grandparents paid me $200 to cut off my long hair, which helped a little bit.

Then Laurie Stubbs from Rosebank, then editor of the Village Journal, and a passionate believer in independent media, came to our rescue and bankrolled the paper.

By then Nicholas had put a few more noughts on that $1. But a 16 page staff-owned Lismore Echo hit the streets just after Australia Day in 1994.

Robin was editor, Heather sold ads, Graham Askey was still making sure the paper made it into the letterboxes, Jane answered the phones and I got to write, sell ads and take pictures. The enormously talented Jacklyn Wagner went on to share her photos with readers at The Star. Robin and I took turns buying the red wine.

It wasn't long before philanthropist and GP Dr Andrew Binns turned up to offer his support. He's an enthusiastic supporter of the community, from NORPA to The Echo.

In 1995, we moved to a tabloid format, printing 18,000 copies. It jumped to 21,000 copies when we began delivering to homes in Alstonville and Casino.

We needed more space and moved across the road to the old government building - our home to this day.

Irene Johnson was keeping customers happy as accounts manager, and started writing the community noticeboard Around Town.

In July '95, we pioneered colour printing on the front page and it has remained colourful ever since.

At the end of 1996, Robin Osborne resigned as editor and a director of The Echo to take up a position at the University. With encouragement from Andrew and Heather, this opinionated young man took over as editor.

Robin and I both had our idiosyncracies. He never had a sports section. I put art on the back page, and Greg Martin, a sports journo from the old school, joined us to deliver great sports coverage. Harpo, as he was known, is a character. He picked the Melbourne Cup trifecta one year, but didn't bet on it. Greg's work was so good, The Star offered him a job in 2000. Now Rudi Maxwell gives great sport - and has boosted the coverage of women's sport.

The Echo has had some brilliant people working for it. Alex Clarke, our computer boffin and layup maestro, comes and goes, but can't seem to get the place out of his system.

The delightful Brain Slapp, who was always happy to help out, offered a weekly cartoon. Slapp made us laugh with things like the 74 flood theme roundabout - a house underwater. He also produced our Christmas front page cartoon - every year Santa dealt with a topical issue. Slapp died suddenly earlier this year and we miss him greatly.

Lynda Gilfeather had never written for a newspaper before when she started writing a craft column. Pretty soon it blossomed into a range of stories.

My favourite was A Favourite Place, which talked to a local each week, telling their story in their favourite place. In 1998, Lynda also wrote an amazing in-depth series exploring the issues around domestic violence. It remains a high water mark in the issues this newspaper has tackled.

In 1997, we looked at acid sulfate soils in a series of major articles by Fiona Martin. In some ways we were well ahead of an issue that continues to dominate local debate.

The Echo has given many locals their chance to have a voice, from Lilith, who has been writing stars for us from the beginning, to book reviewer Jeremy Fenton, movie gal Evelyn Gough, the SES, Friends of the Koala, local GPs, barrister Brian Kinsella, psychologist Stewart Hase, and of course the world's only gossip dog, Shaggy, my four legged partner in crime.

And in case you're wondering, Shaggy's real name is Holly. Sadly, she died, but now channels her column, Doris Stokes style, through the editor every week.

In 1997, a young woman, Terra Sword, aged 16, came in for a week's work experience. She produced an amazing story on Angela Wood, mother of Anna, who died after taking ecstasy.

Terra liked journalism so much, she stayed and became a cadet. Giving young people a voice has been important to us. Terra has done a great job and I know the hundreds of people who've met her know what an ambassador she is for young people.

There have been many, many others who have been part of the team - thank you to you all.

Currently we employ more than 17 people, plus our fantastic walkers, who distribute the paper each week, come hell or high water (especially the water!). We shop locally, live locally and love it.

We work long hours. But we have fun, drink lots of coffee (thanks Bill & Vicki & Caddies!), plus the odd wine and beer (thanks Pete!).

The technology has come a long way. It started out with ads being laid up on computer, then printed out for a cut and paste. The A4 paper was printed locally, but when we got bigger, the printing moved to PMP in Wacol, outside Brisbane (we tried to print locally for a while, but things got a bit difficult...).

We used to glue the paper together, then put in on a Kirklands bus to Brisbane for a taxi ride to the printers. If we missed deadline and the bus, we used to drive the paper up ourselves.

Nowadays the whole paper is made up electronically, then turned into a PDF (a small computer file) and placed on our website, where the printers collects it online.

We used to make bromides of photos for print. Now we use digital cameras. (And for the tech-heads, the paper is laid up using Quark Xpress with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, on Apple G4 computers.)

Since 1997, we've also been putting the weekly paper online. Close to 3000 people a week read The Echo on the Internet.

Like our name, we're a reflection of our readers. Thank you to all who take the time to write or ring with praise or brickbats. And thanks most of all to our advertisers. Without their belief in the power of The Echo, there would be no free newspaper.

After a decade, the paper is crammed with more news than ever before, and the print run is at a high of 20,600 copies. It seems many people enjoy reading The Northern Rivers Echo.

We plan to be around for a long time as your independent, locally-owned community newspaper. Thank you for your support, through thick and thin, over the past 10 years.

I like to describe The Echo as the conversation we used to have over the back fence. If you don't know your neighbours, we hope The Echo tells you about them and encourages you to go and say hello. Community is important and a powerful tool to change things.

The Echo teams sees its role as providing responsible leadership through an informative and entertaining quality newspaper that positively reflects and amplifies this community's diversity with integrity, humour and intelligence.

This is a great community to write about. We should all be proud of what it achieves and we're thrilled to be there to record it. And tackle the hard issues when someone needs to speak out.

But sorry about the spelling mistakes. I blame the wine. Or maybe it was the coffee.

Short History - Ten Years of the Echo - Supporting Our Community - Echo Roll of Honour