Last Wednesday Anne Marie met with Dyron's Journal to congratulate them on their achievement of reaching a impressive milestone - its 2,000th edition! Chairman, Brian Smith talked to Anne Marie about the history of the Journal, which allows those that are visually impaired to enjoy the Mid-Devon Advertiser, which we have put down below for those that want to find out more about the service.
Congratulations to Brian and the team on their 2,000th edition!
The Talking Newspaper movement started in the early 1970’s soon after the familiar cassette tape and small cassette players became widely available to domestic users. I believe that the first Talking Newspaper in England was the Farnham and Alton Talking Newspaper which I was involved with before moving to Devon. It was founded in 1972 by a visually impaired lady called Letitia Stokes but there is some debate about whether it was actually the first.
The talking newspaper concept spread rapidly across the UK and in February 1977 a TN was started in Newton Abbot. Because it was based at what used to be the Dyrons Youth Club – where the Leisure Centre is now – it has always been known as Dyrons Journal – though we now add the sub-title “The Teignbridge Talking Newspaper”. The first edition had just 6 listeners.
At the beginning the TN was dependent on young people from the Youth Club giving up their Friday afternoons and evenings, with the tapes going out on the Saturday post. However, for most of its life the TN used two readers to record the Mid-Devon Advertiser in their homes on a Friday morning. At midday the tape and the recorder would be taken to the youth centre, known as The Junction, at the back of the Leisure Centre. At the same time someone would collect a sack of returned tapes from the local Sorting Office and take them to The Junction. Since this is the local hub for the Devon County Youth service we had only about an hour over lunch to note which tapes had been returned, produce new copies for the current week and prepare them for dispatch. The new sack of wallets would then be taken back to the Sorting Office.
Although cumbersome, this system served the visually impaired community until very recently. However, apart from being fairly inefficient, the system was starting creak. The old tape equipment was starting to fail and there were changes in the Youth Service which meant that The Junction was becoming more difficult for us to use. We started to look for a more permanent home where we could do both recording and dispatch. Our saviour turned out to be The Mid-Devon Advertiser itself and on Friday mornings since July 2014 we have had the use of the boardroom at The Old Manor House in Wolborough Street which is the headquarters of the MDA.
However, it wasn’t just the logistics which were starting to creak. Cassette technology has been obsolescent since the late 90’s and the majority of TNs – of which there are about 400 across the UK - have moved to digital technology, recording onto a computer and then putting the output either onto CDs or USB memory sticks. Such a move was long overdue for Dyrons Journal but we had to wait until we had a recording base and enough money to buy the necessary equipment. During 2015 we raised nearly £6,000 - from local Councillors, from Rotary Clubs, from a Devon-based grant making Trust and from a superb local fund-raising event in Buckfastleigh. This alone raised £2,600!
This meant that on May 23rd this year we were able to go digital. We bought a laptop, a sound mixer, bespoke software, microphones and enough digital players to supply those listeners who needed them. The transition has been fairly painless with even the oldest listeners converting easily to the new medium. What’s more the number of listeners has increased from less than 50 to the current figure of 60.
The service is run entirely by volunteers and is free to recipients. Our income is wholly from donations but our running costs are small.