History of the New Milton Talking Newspaper

The History of the New Milton Talking Newspaper may be summarised as follows:

* Founded in 1999 by Joan Mulkern, Geoffrey Briddon and Valerie Raymond.

* The Founders consulted other Talking Newspapers in the area as to their methods of working.

* First recording took place in June 1999 in a small studio in the Memorial Hall, Whitefield Road, New Milton.

* After some years the Newspaper was offered free accommodation in a small building within the grounds of Durlston Court School, Becton Lane, Barton-on-Sea courtesy of the Headmaster Mr David Wansey and the board of Governors. It remains at this venue to this day.

* Production takes place every Friday morning between 8.30am and 12 noon, when it is recorded, returned wallets are emptied, registered and refilled with either memory stick or cassette tape or compact disk, before being taken to the Post Office in New Milton. They are both collected and delivered free of charge to listeners, by courtesy of the Royal Mail.

* No subscription charge is made for the service to listeners. All they are required to do is to reverse the address label on the wallet and post it back to the studio.

* Two free copies of the New Milton Advertiser and Lymington Times are made available to us by courtesy of Mr Charles Curry, the owner of the paper. These are collected early on a Thursday afternoon by a member of our Paper Collectors team and delivered to the home of the Editor for the week. who then selects suitable items for the recording the following morning.

* Items for recording are selected from the pages of the Advertiser and Times, the New Forest Post and the Bournemouth Daily Echo.

* There are approximately 35 volunteers in all - Paper Collectors,  Editors, Studio Dircetors, Sound Technicians, Registrars and 'Bagmen' , who join in on copying the items then delivering the sacks of filled wallets to the Post Office for onward delivery. All the volunteers work on a rota basis with a different team each week.

* Recording is fully digital - thanks to a Lottery grant.

* One of the other major changes in the Talking Newspaper History is the ongoing drive to switch listeners so that they receive recordings on memory sticks, which are easier to record and copy than cassette tapes and incur less expense for the Talking Newspaper than compact disks.

* Listeners who receive recordings on memory sticks may choose to buy a "boom box", a small portable player, for just £14 and a volunteer explains the simple but effective operation of the player to each new listener.

* The New Milton Talking Newspaper is proud of the fact that production has only been cancelled on one occasion - and that was last winter in exceptional weather conditions.

Colin Bower
4 March 2012

New Milton Talking Newspaper - Index