The New Milton and New Forest Talking Newspaper is a Registered Charity No 1076207.

We are part of a network of Talking Newspapers and a member of the Talking News Federation.

Our primary aim is to provide a free weekly Talking Newspaper to visually-impaired listeners who live in the New Forest area from the outskirts of Bournemouth to the outskirts of Southampton taking in the coastal towns and villages from Christchurch via Lymington to Hythe.

To do this, we create USB sticks and CDs which are distributed to our listeners via the Royal Mail free postal service for the visually impaired.  We also make the Talking News and its sister magazine available on this website for convenient listening by those who have speakers or headphones on which to listen.

We are happy to service listeners who have moved out of the area but wish to continue to receive the Talking Newspaper.

The current edition of the Talking Newspaper may also be obtained on memory stick at libraries in the New Forest.

Management

The Talking Newspaper is managed by a Committee comprising:

Chairman, Vice Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer, with representatives of our volunteers and listeners.

Everyone is invited to the annual AGM.

Our Volunteers

There are approximately 40 volunteers in all:

Paper Collectors,  Editors, Studio Directors, Sound Technicians, Registrars and ‘Bagmen’ (who join in on copying the items then delivering the sacks of filled wallets to the Sorting Office for onward delivery).

All the volunteers work on a rota basis with a different team each week. If possible our volunteers work one week in four.

Attendance is supervised by 5 coordinators who check availability each week and arrange swaps where necessary.

New volunteers are welcome – please see Volunteering.

Operations

Just to give you a taste of what do every week (except Christmas):

• Items for recording are selected mainly from the pages of the New Milton Advertiser and Lymington Times (the A & T) with a few articles from the Bournemouth Daily Echo, New Forest Post, Southern Daily Echo, the magazine “Yours” and Hampshire Life.
• The editor selects suitable items for the recording of the edition, lasting approx 50-60 minutes.
• Production takes place every Friday morning between 8.30am and 11.30. The first team of Sound Technician and 3 Readers record the edition under the management of a Studio Director who also supervises the copying of the edition.
• The Sound Technician uploads the new edition to the website.
• Returned wallets from our listeners are emptied, registered and refilled with either memory sticks or compact disks (CDs) by a second team of 3 Registrars , before being taken to the Sorting Office in New Milton by the Bagman.
• The wallets are delivered to listeners and returned to the studio by first class post and free of charge, by courtesy of Royal Mail.
• All this is free to listeners, all they do is to reverse the address label on the wallet and post it back free of charge.