NEWSLINE

Growing up, Jim Salas loved reading newspapers. It is a love that he inherited from his parents, who had both the Albuquerque Journal and Tribune delivered to their house every day.

“(My parents) were really newspaper readers,” he said. “So I used to read the newspaper everyday.”

But Salas’ eyesight progressively got worse from age 6 onward and deteriorated during the early 1980s to the point he was not able to read the words on a newspaper page. He started to rely on his then-girlfriend, and now wife, to read the articles to him. But he quickly found this arrangement would not work.

“She would kind of skim through the article and try to tell me what was important and I said, ‘No, I don’t want your brain filtering, I’d rather you read it and then I can decide what’s important,’” Salas said.

Without anyone to read him the news the way he’d like, Salas said he missed out on a lot of news during the 1980s. Then, in 1990, his life changed.

The New Mexico Commission for the Blind launched the New Mexico NEWSLINE For The Blind program. A free, statewide, telephone-based

Gino Gutierrez

system that is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and allows people who are blind to access voice recordings of news articles from a variety of newspapers and publications.

“Holy mackerel,” Salas said. “I was back in action!”

Now 66, Salas is deputy director at the New Mexico Commission For The Blind. He listens to volunteers for NEWSLINE For The Blind read sections of the Albuquerque Journal during his lunch break every day. Always starting with the sports section, then moving on to local news and state news.

“It’s fantastic,” he said. Salas is among more than 1,500 registered readers who tune into NEWSLINE each month. Now in its 34th year of operation, NEWSLINE has roughly 71 volunteers who read local publications like the Journal, Santa Fe New Mexican, Alamogordo Daily News and Gallup Independent daily, the Navajo Times weekly and New Mexico Magazine once a month. Readers who call into NEWSLINE, which is supported through a mix of state and federal funding, use a telephone-based menu to select which publication, section and article they want read.

“I absolutely fell in love with the program because I love working with volunteers,” said Krista Mireles, NEWSLINE coordinator at the commission. Mireles, who used to read the newspaper to her blind grandmother, has spend the past 14 years as the coordinator at NEWSLINE, where she oversees the program, organizes the volunteers and ensures that her readers get the content they care about.

Mireles normally gets to the office about 5 a.m. and makes sure that day’s Journal has been delivered. She then breaks the paper down into sections, marking each with a specific number in red ink. That number corresponds with the section under which readers will find the article and is also used to assign that article to a the volunteer who will read it.

“Volunteers start calling in at 6:30 in the morning for their assignments. We give them their assignments and they begin,” Mireles said.

Volunteers record their articles in one of four recording booths at the Commission for the Blind offices or at their homes.

One volunteer recording on Thursday morning was Susanne Parks. Born in Germany, Parks reads and records certain articles for NEWSLINE in Spanish. Parks said she was inspired to start volunteering for NEWSLINE by a friend she met at her local community center.

“We were talking because she’s also from Germany and she mentioned ‘I was reading for the blind,’ and I said, ‘You read for the blind?’” Parks said. “That sounds very interesting, I want to do that too.”

She has been a volunteer reader for NEWSLINE since 2012.

Mireles said volunteers come from all walks of life to read. From retired lawyers to individuals currently undergoing chemotherapy, every one is eager to put on a headset and record the next article.

“I just think the whole community really comes around this type of program,” Mireles said. “It’s a blessing to work with people who are that willing to give.”

Gino Gutierrez is the good news reporter at the Albuquerque Journal. If you have an idea for a good news story, you can contact him at goodnews@abqjournal. com or at 505-823-3940.