About Us

WHATnews! Welwyn Hatfield Talking Newspaper was formed in 1977 to provide a talking newspaper for the blind and partially-sighted of Welwyn, Welwyn Garden City, Hatfield and the surrounding area. The first talking newspaper in the UK was launched in January 1970 in Cardiganshire, following an approach by Ronald Sturt [our older listeners may remember him, he was our librarian first], of Aberystwyth Round Table as to how they could help the local community.

A public meeting was held on 9 November 1977 in the Campus West Library, Welwyn Garden City. It was chaired by the chairman of the Hatfield Round Table, Robin Sedley, who explained how a talking newspaper worked and tried to gauge the local interest. WHATnews! was born. The first edition was published on Saturday 4 February 1978 and it has continued to be published on a fortnightly basis ever since.

The audio-newspaper is put together by a team of volunteers. In fact there are 4 teams of readers, editors, recordists, and copiers. Each team produces the newspaper using articles printed in The Welwyn and Hatfield Times, which freely gave permission for this.

Since the concerns of social distancing and Covid-19, we have produced WHATnews by editing and compiling articles recorded by our readers in their homes. WHATnews is then copied to CDs and distributed on the Thursday following publication of the Welwyn Hatfield Times, to our listeners, free, by courtesy of Royal Mail. On the same day, we also upload each edition to YouTube for the convenience of our on-line listeners. Nowadays, prompted by the Coronavirus pandemic, our use of the internet enables distribution of WHATnews within 36 hours of publication of the Welwyn Hatfield Times.

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