About Us

Wickford & District Talking Newspaper has been providing weekly local news, and monthly information and magazine tapes to sight impaired people for over 30 years. The service is aimed at blind and partially sighted people, severely physically handicapped and others who find reading a strain.

We are a registered charity - number 273685, operating with volunteers, there are no paid members of our organisation. Wickford & District Talking Newspaper is a member of the Talking News Federation.

During 2007 we amalgamated with the Basildon Talking Newspaper which increased our circulation to close on 200 tapes each week. 

We have 5 teams that record news articles on a Friday each week of the year and additionally, we have 2 teams who send out a monthly magazine recording "Insight" and a monthly Information recording "The Informant". There is also a team that do special projects recording.

Each team is headed by an Editor with up to 5 readers, the teams working on a rota system. The Editor is responsible for the selection of articles for his/her week.

Articles for the magazine and for the Information recordings can be collected by us all if we think they could be of interest to our listeners although the team's Editor's choice is final!

There is a weekly job for our Administrator who registers the returned tapes and oher media, changes the address label round and maintains the media. This task is usually done on a Thursday prior to the recording on a Friday.