Today I did a lot of interviewing for an article that I have due for J800 next week. I was pretty unsure about the topic, funding for addiction research, but now that I’ve spoken to several people I am much more confident that I can make it really interesting. I have all of the materials that I need to write it now too, which always makes me happy because then I have time to write the article and re-work it over the course of several days without waiting for sources down to the wire.
In the course of my interviewing, I had to track down someone from NIDA the National Institute on Drug Abuse. I considered just cold calling numbers I found on the NIDA website, but I decided that even if it took me a couple of days I stood a much better chance if I actually went through the media office. So thats what I did, and I think it worked out really well because I got the material I needed from an official source and didn’t really waste a lot of time calling around and getting re-directed. So lesson definitely learned, when dealing with the government go right for the PR people, they pull the strings.