Smart speakers such as Alexa have been blamed for a local talking newspaper for the blind’s decision to shut after almost half a century.

Brighton Talking Newspaper has announced its closure after 47 years of providing news to partially-sighted people across the city using clippings from Brighton daily The Argus.

The whole show was produced free of charge to the listeners, and relied solely on donations to keep it running.

The charity made its final weekly recording on 23 March.

Chairman Mark Linford told the Argus: “It was an emotional day for me and everyone else. Really, the arrival of the internet and home computers affected us. From that peak of about 500 listeners, that number gradually declined.

“There are so many other ways they can get their news now, from Alexa to text to speech readers.”

At the time of the final recording, 25 listeners received the show.

A rotating team of five produced the show each week, comprising three “readers”, one editor, who picked the stories, and an engineer who operated the microphone and technical aspects.

Mark added: “After doing this for over seven years now, you start to notice how the little stories really are the life of the city.

“The big, flashy events are great, but it’s the little trivial things which are the heartbeat of Brighton.

“We would read extracts from the letters page, and it’s almost like you can hear the city breathing when you can hear these concerns rolling through week after week.

“It was really sad to finish up the recordings, put them into the wallets, and turn off the lights for one last time.”

Volunteer Marjorie Jones said: “Over the years I have been really proud of what I’ve achieved, by keeping people in touch with what’s going on. I certainly had my tissues out for today’s recording.

“No reader is the same, we like to put little comments in here and there to make it a bit more human. I always got two papers every day, as we get stuff on the back of the pages – and we cut out the stories to read.”