Episode: 3574
Title: HPR3574: Local Talking Newspapers
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3574/hpr3574.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 01:36:18

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3574 for Thursday the 14th of April 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Local Talking Newspapers.
It is part of the series' accessibility.
It is the first show by New Hostly and is about seven minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, recordings of local news for the blind and visually impaired.
Hi, Emily.
When I'm self-isolated with COVID, I thought I'd record myself for a change,
so I can learn that it's not as easy speaking to a mic as the reader said,
the studio, I make it look.
Talking newspapers support blind and partially sighted people by providing
an all-gen recording of their local newspaper.
All-gen recordings of articles of interest from local national magazines
and local information on events.
Each week, 30 minutes of local news is recorded onto CDs,
memory sticks and internet radio.
There are many talking newspapers in different towns in the United Kingdom.
The one near me is a charity which rents,
building at the edge of a park from the council and uses three upstairs rooms.
The first room is a recording room with two professional microphones on stands,
a screen with a speaker and a webcam.
The second room has a couple of PCs, a mixing desk and some memory stick
and CD duplicators and some players for testing memory sticks and CDs.
The third room is an office with a table where recorded media is placed into
especially designed pouches to be mowed out.
Every Thursday afternoon volunteers come into the studio
a presenter provides them with material to read.
The recording technician operates a PC with X of Ubuntu Linux
and Audacity Orger recording software.
The whole recording is done in one take,
volunteers take turns to read their articles.
As there are two microphones used alternately,
the recording technician swaps the input feed on the fly using the mixing desk.
Between each reader the technician adds a label in Audacity
to mark the end of one section in the beginning of the next.
If a reader coughs or makes a mistake they pause for a few seconds
then resume from the start of the sentence.
The recording technician keeps note of the time index of any part of the recording
that we'll need editing later.
While recording is ongoing a red light is lit to warn anyone who might turn up
not to interrupt.
The windows need to be closed during recording as there are often people playing basketball
tennis in the park outside.
During the recording the readers have a display of an analogue clock
showing the current time and a digital timer showing how long the recording has progressed.
If the technician needs to communicate to the readers during the recording
they can using a separate microphone which is relayed into the recording room.
The technician can see what is going on in the room through a webcam.
After the recording the technician saves a backup copy
then edits starting from the end and working backwards.
This makes sure that the timings they noted down do not change as clips are cut out during
the editing process.
Some intro and outro music is pasted into Audacity.
This is royalty-free music from Ben Sound and is attributed on the charity's website.
A master CD and master memory stick is produced.
These are tested, duplicated, the duplicates tested and finally put into pouches
to be sent to the listeners.
The listeners either have a CD player or a memory stick MP3 player.
When they've finished with the media they just need to put it back in the pouch and leave
it for the postman to pick up so it'll be returned to the studio.
In addition to the news there is a 30 minute recording of the magazine type program
with articles of specific interest for the blind together with items of more general interest.
Different presenters take turns to produce this section each week.
Some weeks this is a reading of the newsletter of a local charity for people who are blind or
partially sighted. Another week it could be an interview that a presenter is conducted with
someone local. Other weeks it could be articles from national newspapers in the internet
and sometimes it's a selection of articles that a presenter has specially researched and
written themselves. Weekly and monthly magazine or Jeff files from the Royal National Institute
of the Blind News Agent are also included for those who receive a memory stick.
The weekly recording is also made available in various ways online including through an app
and through Amazon's voice assistant. I'll mention some of the technical aspects of recording.
The microphones are connected via XLR leads through patch panels from one room to the next
and into a sound craft M4 mixer. This feeds into a dedicated sound card in the back of the PC.
A second PC is set up also running XIV-2. If the first PC failed this would act as a standby.
It's normally used just to display the webcam feed and also keeps a copy of recordings
which is kept synchronised with SyncThink. XIV-2 is still at the long term support release 18
and Audacity is still a major version too. To keep things as reliable as possible major upgrades
are planned before they carry it out. Patches are usually installed at least once a week.
I've told this setup is a lot more reliable than the old days when Windows and Adobe Audition
was used. About the file formats, everything is recorded in Bono rather than stereo. The
output is to a high quality MP3 for memory stick. The size for memory stick is 4 or 8 gigabytes
so there's room for many hours on a single stick. When it comes to CDs which limited to 60 or 70
minutes or Dusty outputs the tracks are separate WAV files which are burned to the master using
a program called XF Burn. A practical aspect of recording is having everyone in the same place
at the same time so all the volunteers can be coordinated together. The first day afternoon
sessions have to be recorded, edited and distributed all within a few hours. It can get hectic especially
if things go wrong. Things that can go wrong include running over time, sound problems, computer
problems, duplication problems or just forgetting to do everything in the right order.
The magazine style recordings are more leisurely and can be done in advance on another day of the week.
Something that is a bit harder now is keeping track of who's actually listening. In the old days
everyone got sent a cassette and those people were the audience. Now with things online there are
various ways of monitoring downloads but some of the data is curious as their pit to be
odd downloads from every corner of the globe which seems strange for a program that has made
you local interest. I'm mainly aware of talking newspapers in the United Kingdom but I'm sure
there are organisations in other parts of the globe which provide this type of service for the blind
and visually impaired. This concludes my description of local talking newspapers. Thank you for listening.
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