MEMBERS of Crediton Probus Club returned to Downes Crediton Golf Club for their meeting this month on Wednesday, July 5. Nineteen members were present and two new members were welcomed.

This meeting was the first for our newly elected president, Mike Reid, and we continued with our new arrangement where the meeting starts with the speaker before lunch and the other business.

We were lucky to have as our speaker The Editor of the "Crediton Courier", Alan Quick, who talked to us about the history of the newspaper and his long involvement with it.

He explained how the paper had evolved and is continuing to keep abreast of improvements in the information technology world.

He stressed that the paper had started as a local monthly newspaper in 1974 and was continuing to concentrate on local news even though it is now weekly and part of a larger group of local papers and has readers and subscribers around the world who are able to appreciate the news from Crediton in digital form as well as in the paper-and-ink version.

We were all aware of the traditional format of the paper but some of us were fascinated to learn how much of the news was now collected via the internet and, indeed, how much was published by the paper via the same electronic medium.

Alan told us that the use of the Web enabled him to check which stories attracted the most interest among the readers and that although he could not tell who was reading or listening to particular items he could tell fairly accurately how many people were reading or listening.

Alan produced for us copies of the first issue of the "Crediton Courier" and of various subsequent issues that recorded significant historical events and he proved that, as a good newsman, he rarely goes anywhere without his smart mobile phone and his camera to record stories and keep him in touch with what is going on around him.

Richard Adams