The Kings Lynn Talking Newspaper association was formed in December 1979 as a joint venture between the Queen Elizabeth hospital radio and the Kings Lynn Lions club and it became independent a year later. For many years the recording and duplicating of audio cassettes was done in local school rooms in the evening when space was available. Fortunately in 1985 the Norfolk and Norwich Association for the Blind, with whom we shared a common interest, allowed us to use a spare room in their equipment centre for recording and distribution. We still use that today. The Talking newspaper was registered as a charity,1048633, in 1992.
With improvements in technology it was possible to make digital recordings and copy this to USB flash drives which was superior in quality and less time consuming to audio cassettes. We also provided the necessary players for each listener with some sponsorship as this was a large investment.
At the peak we had 200 listeners receiving a recording each week. We now have up to 120. This does include some from neighbouring towns as the Hunstanton Beacon and Downham Market Chinwag talking newspapers closed in the early 2000’s. So now we cover all of West Norfolk. After a short break in production due to the pandemic we now produce an edition every two weeks but this allows more time to source news and magazine articles and the listeners continue to enjoy our productions.