Listen to your favourite paper (From Cotswold Journal)

Listen to your favourite paper

11:00am Saturday 14th July 2012 in News By Freya Leng

NEWS from the Cotswold Journal will soon be reaching even more people when it hits the airwaves.

The Cotswold Listener Talking Newspaper, a free service for people in Gloucestershire, is extending its news coverage in the Cotswolds.

Blind and visually impaired people will now be able to get the latest news from the Cotswold Journal as well as other articles.

Volunteers record 45 minutes of news read from the papers including the Journal and 30 minutes of other articles every week.

The recordings are sent out to their 171 listeners on CD or memory sticks free of charge under the Royal Mail’s Articles for the Blind scheme.

Chairman John Webb said up until recently they got their news from other local publications but felt they should broaden their horizons.

He said: “We are conscious that the Cotswold Journal also has much of interest to our listeners.”

“It’s a means of keeping people up to date in their local community. They wouldn’t be able to do that as they can no longer read.

“People are very grateful for it – most of our listeners are aged. Because they have grown up in the local community they really love to keep up with what’s going on.”

As well as a successful drive to get more listeners over the last 18 months, the charity is also planning to put their recordings online on a new website.

New listeners are welcome.

For more details, call 01242 252072 or e-mail admin@ cotswoldlistener.co.uk.

􀁥 Last year, the Evesham Talking Newspaper, which includes news from the Evesham Journal, went digital with a state-of-the-art speaker device which plays sound recorded on to a memory stick.