Kings Lynn Talking Newspaper Association
Visionlink
Registered Charity No 1048633
President :- Elizabeth Harrison, Chairman :- Keith Leedell , Vice Chair:- Louise Smith, Secretary:- John Dawson, Treasurer:- Linda Overton
News Editor:- Helena Clarke
The Kings Lynn Talking Newspaper was started some years ago, in December 1979, as a joint venture between Kings Lynn Lions Club and Hospital Radio Kings Lynn.
The first edition recorded around Christmas had news and carols on it. This was recorded on an old reel to reel tape recorder and any mistakes had to be cut out by the sound recordist John Greyson.
At this time Talking Newspapers were being started all over the country and some 700 were launched. Unfortunately with the advances in surgery particularly cataracts and with young blind and partially sighted people using computers, the number of listeners has dropped so has the number of talking Newspapers.
In the last few years Chinwag at Downham Market has folded as has The Beacon from Hunstanton, their listeners transferring to us.
At Kings Lynn we used to have 200 listeners but are now down to about 100.
The first editors of the paper were drawn from the Lions Club and the paper was issued monthly to about 40 listeners. At this stage tape recording machines were available which enabled mistakes to be recorded over , which made life a lot more simple.
In 1983 the Lions club realised that if Lion David Gifford gave up being editor there was one left to take it on and so decided to see if they could hand the newspaper over to the community.
After several meetings the Kings Lynn Talking Newspaper Association was formed and moved to recording twice a month.
Michael Forster was appointed Chairman, David Gifford Secretary and a small committee formed.
We realised that if we wanted to move to a weekly tape we would have to get our own equipment as there was no spare time at Hospital radio - this was done through lottery grants and donations from a Radio Norfolk Charity fund.
Volunteers were drawn from the community to record the tape and checking was done by the Round Table, Soroptimists, Probus and the Lioness club for many years.
One of the main disadvantages of tapes is that they can vary in recorded sound level and can suffer mechanicla wear, hence the need to check every one.
We needed a home and a name. We were fortunate to use St Edmunds School in North Lynn for many years where the Head Master and Caretaker were so supportive.
Unfortunately the new Head master wanted to charge us £40 each night, £80 a week – so we had to move from there and moved to Highgate Community Centre (owned by the council).
The building is used during the day by a Children’s Play School. We used it in the evening but this often involved moving equipment and furniture so it was not ideal.
We have always had a close association with the Norfolk and Norwich Association for the Blind, NNAB, we get most of our referrals from them, so it was a very happy marriage to move into the Equipment centre at North Lynn, in 2004, to record and copy our tapes. The staff there have been absolutely brilliant.
We ran a competition in the Citizen to find a name and choose VISION LINK.
We had several teams of Controllers and readers who did their work on a Monday Night, while the copiers and checkers worked Tuesday night. There was another set of teams who cleaned the tapes and got address labels ready on a Monday night.
The equipment for copying tapes was over 20 years old and there were very few people who could repair them. The nearest lived near Soham. However the last service on our 4 machines cost £8,000.
We needed to change – and looked at what other bigger and better Talking Newspapers were doing. Some had moved to CD’s but the majority had moved to digital recording and copying on to a memory stick.
Our friends at Wymondham were very helpful in showing us how the equipment works, so we took the bull by the horns and in 2013 moved to digital recording, copying onto a memory stick and giving each of our listeners a boom box to play the memory stick.
The sound reproduction is brilliant and the machine that copies the sticks is so consistent that we now no longer need a team of checkers.
But how do you get the message across about using a Boom box to our listeners. The NNAB were very helpful in dealing with everyone who lived outside Kings Lynn, their community workers showing them how to use it. Whilst David dealt with everyone living in Kings Lynn.
There were some teething problems, like people forgetting to plug the Boom box in and letting the internal battery run down, but by and large the move has been a tremendous success. We were lucky that one of our more technically minded people (Keith Leedell) retired in 2012 and took over the change as a project.The total cost to us was in the order of £8,000.
So we are now the only Talking Newspaper in West Norfolk having absorbed Downham and Hunstanton, and are well set up for the future.
How much longer have we got 5 years, 10 years who knows. It would be nice to put ourselves out of business, but whilst there are people who are blind or who have failing sight, we will be there to help them.
Visionlink
Registered Charity No 1048633
President :- Elizabeth Harrison, Chairman :- Keith Leedell , Vice Chair:- Louise Smith, Secretary:- John Dawson, Treasurer:- Linda Overton
News Editor:- Helena Clarke
The Kings Lynn Talking Newspaper was started some years ago, in December 1979, as a joint venture between Kings Lynn Lions Club and Hospital Radio Kings Lynn.
The first edition recorded around Christmas had news and carols on it. This was recorded on an old reel to reel tape recorder and any mistakes had to be cut out by the sound recordist John Greyson.
At this time Talking Newspapers were being started all over the country and some 700 were launched. Unfortunately with the advances in surgery particularly cataracts and with young blind and partially sighted people using computers, the number of listeners has dropped so has the number of talking Newspapers.
In the last few years Chinwag at Downham Market has folded as has The Beacon from Hunstanton, their listeners transferring to us.
At Kings Lynn we used to have 200 listeners but are now down to about 100.
The first editors of the paper were drawn from the Lions Club and the paper was issued monthly to about 40 listeners. At this stage tape recording machines were available which enabled mistakes to be recorded over , which made life a lot more simple.
In 1983 the Lions club realised that if Lion David Gifford gave up being editor there was one left to take it on and so decided to see if they could hand the newspaper over to the community.
After several meetings the Kings Lynn Talking Newspaper Association was formed and moved to recording twice a month.
Michael Forster was appointed Chairman, David Gifford Secretary and a small committee formed.
We realised that if we wanted to move to a weekly tape we would have to get our own equipment as there was no spare time at Hospital radio - this was done through lottery grants and donations from a Radio Norfolk Charity fund.
Volunteers were drawn from the community to record the tape and checking was done by the Round Table, Soroptimists, Probus and the Lioness club for many years.
One of the main disadvantages of tapes is that they can vary in recorded sound level and can suffer mechanicla wear, hence the need to check every one.
We needed a home and a name. We were fortunate to use St Edmunds School in North Lynn for many years where the Head Master and Caretaker were so supportive.
Unfortunately the new Head master wanted to charge us £40 each night, £80 a week – so we had to move from there and moved to Highgate Community Centre (owned by the council).
The building is used during the day by a Children’s Play School. We used it in the evening but this often involved moving equipment and furniture so it was not ideal.
We have always had a close association with the Norfolk and Norwich Association for the Blind, NNAB, we get most of our referrals from them, so it was a very happy marriage to move into the Equipment centre at North Lynn, in 2004, to record and copy our tapes. The staff there have been absolutely brilliant.
We ran a competition in the Citizen to find a name and choose VISION LINK.
We had several teams of Controllers and readers who did their work on a Monday Night, while the copiers and checkers worked Tuesday night. There was another set of teams who cleaned the tapes and got address labels ready on a Monday night.
The equipment for copying tapes was over 20 years old and there were very few people who could repair them. The nearest lived near Soham. However the last service on our 4 machines cost £8,000.
We needed to change – and looked at what other bigger and better Talking Newspapers were doing. Some had moved to CD’s but the majority had moved to digital recording and copying on to a memory stick.
Our friends at Wymondham were very helpful in showing us how the equipment works, so we took the bull by the horns and in 2013 moved to digital recording, copying onto a memory stick and giving each of our listeners a boom box to play the memory stick.
The sound reproduction is brilliant and the machine that copies the sticks is so consistent that we now no longer need a team of checkers.
But how do you get the message across about using a Boom box to our listeners. The NNAB were very helpful in dealing with everyone who lived outside Kings Lynn, their community workers showing them how to use it. Whilst David dealt with everyone living in Kings Lynn.
There were some teething problems, like people forgetting to plug the Boom box in and letting the internal battery run down, but by and large the move has been a tremendous success. We were lucky that one of our more technically minded people (Keith Leedell) retired in 2012 and took over the change as a project.The total cost to us was in the order of £8,000.
So we are now the only Talking Newspaper in West Norfolk having absorbed Downham and Hunstanton, and are well set up for the future.
How much longer have we got 5 years, 10 years who knows. It would be nice to put ourselves out of business, but whilst there are people who are blind or who have failing sight, we will be there to help them.
