Lincolnshire Echo editor Mike Sassi is to leave the title to become editor-in-chief of Sentinel Newspapers.

His move will follow the retirement of Sean Dooley on November 30.

Sean, (right), has been at The Sentinel 18 years.

During his time at the title he and his staff have won numerous awards, most recently with Sentinel Sunday being named as the Newspaper of the Year at the Midlands Media Awards this year. The same team was crowned the best in Europe for its design work on the weekly broadsheet, and The Sentinel was West Midlands Newspaper of the Year and also won the Sunday/Daily Newspaper of the Year award at the Press Gazette awards.

He took The Sentinel tabloid shortly after his arrival and led the team that launched Sentinel Sunday in 2000, after the company realised there was a gap in the market for a “top-class regional Sunday newspaper”.

Sean began his career in journalism with the Mercury Press Agency on Merseyside and worked for weekly and daily papers in Liverpool and Manchester before editing a current affairs magazine.

He joined Northcliffe as news editor of the Lincolnshire Echo, was deputy editor of the South Wales Evening Post, and editor of the Gloucestershire Echo at Cheltenham before being appointed editor of The Sentinel.

Mike Sassi, (40), has been at the Echo since June 1999 and is looking forward to the challenges of his new role.

He said: “It’s a bigger organisation and Sean has won a string of awards for the newspapers he produces.

“If I can be anywhere near as successful during my time there I’ll be more than happy.”

Mike, (right), began his career at the Derby Evening Telegraph in 1988 under the editorship of Neil Fowler and spent four years there before leaving to become news editor at the Express & Echo in Exeter.

He moved on to be news editor and then assistant editor at the South Wales Echo in Cardiff, leaving in 1997 to become deputy editor of the Derby Evening Telegraph, where he remained until taking up his first editorship.

The Echo is the Newspaper Society’s Newspaper of the Year.

Northcliffe Newspapers managing director Michael Pelosi said in a memo to staff: “We are grateful to Sean for the enormous contribution which he has made to our group.

“I take this opportunity to wish him a long and happy retirement.

“I hope you will all join with me in wishing Mike continued success in his career.”

The Sentinel sells almost 75,000 copies and is a seven-day operation centred on Stoke-on-Trent, taking in The Sentinel and Sentinel Sunday and their associated weekly newspapers. The Lincolnshire Echo sells more than 25,000 copies.