I use a website in my writing called Help a Reporter Out. If I need experts or anecdotes, I can place the equivalent of a personal ad and it's sent to thousands of people who have volunteered to be interviewed. For example, when I was writing an article about skin care for recreational divers, I asked for a dermotologist who was a recreational diver and voila -- they contact you eager for the publicity.
Anyway, I also get three emails a day with the requests and a few days ago I responded to one -- a writer looking for people who had been kept awake by noisy guests in a hotel.
I sent her my story, which she only used in part. The best part, which she did not use, is that this party turned out to be a collection of strippers and their companions who were in town (in this case Cincinnati) to take part in an event called the Pole-lympics or Polympics or something -- a competition as to who could work the pole the best. Check it out here.
It was a full-fledged party in the hallway and I was pissed off and bleary eyed the next day. My client who I was visiting... well, they all thought it was hilarious and said I should have taken advantage of the situation by getting a few pole lessons.
I heard from my Cincinnati client about five minutes after I got the link -- someone there happened to be reading MSNBC and then I heard from one other friend who saw it.
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