The Long Eaton & District Talking Newspaper for the Blind & Partially was founded in 1978 (40 years ago) and is a registered charity.
It provides over an hour of local news, current affairs, matters of local interest and also offers 13 magazines such as Peoples' Friend, Women's Weekly, Derbyshire Life and Countryside and many others every fortnight for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
The Newspaper gives it listeners Memory Stick players that are simple to use and FREE of CHARGE and helps keep people in touch with the life of towns and villages, since many have strong associations with the area.
The current team of volunteer’s at the Talking Newspaper consists of thirty two people, who are divided into 4 teams. Each team has a team leader cum editor; up to five newsreaders, a technician, and a back room administration team.
Once a fortnight, one of these four teams meets at the LETN studio where some 40 local stories are read and recorded onto a laptop.
Stories are from within the geographical area of Long Eaton to Beeston; Breaston to Draycott; Sandiacre to Stapleford; Ockbrook to Borrowash; Castle Donington to Ilkeston and beyond, which are then saved from the laptop onto a master memory stick that already contains the 13 magazines mentioned above.
Everything on the master, (using duplicating equipment) is then copied onto 125 memory sticks that are then placed inside yellow pouches (one memory stick per pouch) that have a label with listeners contact details on one side and a return address on the other. These are then posted (paid for by the Royal Mail) to each listener.
When they have listened to everything on the stick, they simply place this back in the pouch, turn the address label over, to show the return address and post it back (again, postage paid by the Royal Mail) for the next recording.
President is Ilkestonian, accomplished actor Robert Lindsay. For more details, visit www.longeatontn.org.uk or call Martin Sykes on 07970 914930.