Sussex Coast Talking News
Director’s Report December 2019
Regional newspapers
We, who live here in Sussex are lucky to have a range of local newspapers to choose from. There are some TNs that have none and rely entirely on finding local stories from the internet. I was interested to read a piece in the Sunday Observer 2 months ago. Here are a couple extracts:
From 2005 to the end of 2018, there was a net loss of 245 local news titles. An estimated 58% of the country is now served by no regional newspaper.
A local newspaper, at its best, reflects the place in which you live in all its minute complexity – its celebrations and its commiserations and its incarcerations; it not only holds powerful local figures to account, it shapes shared feelings of hope and of anger and helps to piece together the serial story of where you are.
A 2016 study by King’s College London, found UK towns whose local newspapers had suffered closure showed a “democracy deficit” that resulted in measurably reduced community engagement by local people and a heightened distrust of public institutions.
We support our local news and our listeners appreciate that. I say that with confidence following a survey of our listeners that we conducted last year.
The survey
Earlier this year we conducted a survey of our listeners and here are some of the main findings:
65% of the listeners who replied were over 80 years of age.
About 30% of the listeners who replied use a PC, tablet or smartphone.
94% rated the sound quality on their recording as good or very good.
85% rate the quality of reading the news as good or very good.
Their favourite items on the recordings were; local news (over 60%), interviews, What’s On, the magazine, poetry and music. And most said that there wasn’t anything they did not like.
When asked to comment on the service we provide, the response was overwhelmingly positive, with comments such as:
Excellent and it’s free!
It is an excellent service to keep the poorly sighted in touch
Well-balanced and the format is good
Very good it keeps me in touch with the visionary world
Very good to have such a service & I appreciate the work of volunteers
So, I think you’ll agree that the responses from our listeners is a very positive one where they highly value what we provide. Many thanks for all you do to contribute to our success.
Listeners
This year so far, we have picked up 23 new listeners (last year 30) but in turn 26 listeners have left us (last year 42). Currently, we have 123 listeners. We’ll need to keep up our efforts to recruit more listeners.
Concerning those figures, you might be interested to know that nationwide there are approx. 2 million people who have sight loss, which the RNIB define as severe enough to impact on daily life. In West Sussex there are approx. 34,000 who have sight loss and there are over 5000 who are registered blind or partially sighted a figure which is higher than the UK average. This probably reflects West Sussex’s ageing demographic. For example, in the UK there are only 5,400 in the 18-64 age bracket who are registered blind or VIP but 12,500 in the 85+ bracket.
We now have two critical listeners, Graham Forshaw and Jan Holland who give us very useful feedback on our recordings.
Website improvement
Many of you will have noticed our much-improved website and my thanks go to Lionel for doing that work so quickly, so effectively and so willingly, and for continuing to make changes.
Our Facebook presence continues and I would ask you to continue to like our posts because all of this will raise our presence in this and the wider community in our bid to gain more listeners. And my thanks go to Lucy Brooks who was instrumental in setting it up and supporting it.
Outreach
We now have another set of new leaflets designed by relatively new volunteer editor Mike Purdie. which will be distributed to eye clinics, surgeries, opticians etc across our area.
British Wireless for the Blind Fund
We continue to make our recordings accessible to a much larger UK audience through British Wireless for the Blind Fund (BWBF). This is great for SCTN as it spreads the word about what we do, to a much larger audience, even those who don’t live in our catchment but who might like to hear news from an area they once lived in. BWBF have recently developed a new app for smart phones which means anyone can listen to our or other TNs from their phone.
Volunteers
We have recruited two new editors, have added young Ben and Dylan to our techie team and have also increased the number of volunteers willing to compile a magazine. We have a healthy number of readers with a strong reserve list.
This year, we have again conducted meetings with our Reading Team and the Editing Team in order to see how we can improve what we do and we intend to repeat those meetings next year.
Finally, I’d like to thank all of you for your contributions and support and would ask you that if you have any ideas as to how we can improve our service or recruit new listeners to contact me.