National newspaper spending a million on taking control of Northern Echo mistakenly (2,5)
I believe the answer is:
in error
'spending a million on taking control of northern echo mistakenly' is the definition.
I know nothing about this answer so I can't judge whether it can be defined by this definition.
'national newspaper' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'national' could be 'n' (abbreviation listed in Chambers) and 'n' is located in the answer.
'newspaper' could be 'i' (UK newspaper) and 'i' is found in the answer.
The remaining letters 'error' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for in error that I've seen before include "Wrong" , "Mistaken" .)