An improved method and apparatus for distributing news items to the users of a computerized voice mail system. The news items are stored on disk. A news item memory table is stored in active memory. The news items memory table has (a) message descriptors of a limited number of the latest news items and (b) time stamps showing the newest news item not referenced in said shadow table and the last time a news item not listed in the shadow table was changed. Each time a user interrogates an assigned mailbox, the system checks the news item memory table to determine if any items have been added or deleted since the last time the particular mailbox was interrogated. If there are new bulletins, these are read into the mailbox and if some items already in the mailbox have been obsoleted, the obsoleted items are deleted from the mailbox.