THE Northern Echo has always been my local paper. Growing up on my family’s dairy farm near Northallerton, we got the Echo every day and the Darlington and Stockton Times on a Friday.

If any of the family were lucky enough to feature in either paper we would save the clipping – my brother in a school nativity play, cross legged in his costume on the front row, or my mam, pictured after speaking passionately at a public inquiry into plans for a new line of giant pylons right through our farm.

Other than as readers, I thought these fading scraps of paper were the sum total of our links with the Echo, before I started work here. But a few months ago, searching through the archives on the top floor of our Priestgate headquarters in Darlington, I found a picture that told me more.

As I sorted through a file looking for old images of Northallerton Prison, two boys in matching Thomas the Tank Engine sweaters caught my eye. My two big brothers! And there was mam. And me! Mop haired, aged about three and seemingly quite unimpressed about the whole situation.

Giddy to have found it, I showed absolutely everyone in the office. Understandably, they were not as excited about a picture of some children looking at geese in Northallerton in the mid-1980s as I was.

No-one in the family seemed to remember having it taken or why, but I just loved the fact that it has been sitting up in our files, undiscovered for all that time, waiting for me to find it.

Fast forward 15 years from that picture being taken. I was 18, and in need of a life plan after finishing my A-Levels. My dad saw an advert in The Northern Echo for journalism courses at Darlington College. I applied, got a place and was hooked. Thanks to the Echo again.

After a year at college followed by a year on weekly paper The Holderness Gazette based in Withernsea, near Hull, a reporting job came up in the Echo’s Northallerton office. Despite being late for the interview because the brakes failed on my Vauxhall Nova on the way, Peter Barron gave me the job.

As first days go, my first day at the Echo was quite eventful, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot in the last few weeks. In the morning, I went to a Hambleton District Council planning meeting and filed a page lead about a local wrangle. So far, so straightforward.

Then the phone rang with news of a tragedy in the Yorkshire Dales – the death of a young child. I was sent out to find the family and get what I could from people in the area.

I felt sick. It was a beautiful, crisp autumnal day, with a brilliant blue sky overhead. For once I paid no attention to the scenery as I drove up Swaledale. By chance I found a friend of the family who knew what had happened, and he called ahead to let them know I was coming.

I will never forget how kind those people were to me that day. In the midst of their grief, they recognised I was just doing my job and invited me into their home to talk about the loss of their child.

We splashed on their story the next day, and after filing my copy at 9pm, I sat in my car in the Town Hall car park in Darlington and cried. Partly with relief at getting the story, but mainly because I was so humbled by the dignity of the family involved.

NOTHING about that day almost 15 years ago made me think I could ever become the editor. The paper is a completely different beast now, not least in its compact format.

It’s no secret that local newspapers are going through difficult times, and the challenge we face now is trying to deliver the best news, sport and information service we can – both in print and online – with the resources at our disposal. It’s a challenge I, and the dedicated team I lead, am more than up for. In my time as editor I’ll do my best to uphold the fine traditions of The Northern Echo – the great daily of the north – that you, our loyal readers, quite rightly expect.