How news happens, maybe?

A recent Washington Post story about disability in Russia may be linked to an email I forwarded in May. I am currently working as a consultant for a journalism department at a university in Russia, which plans to start a regional training center to instruct journalists on how to cover disability issues there.

In May, I forwarded a story from Radio Free Europe to my English-speaking contact person in Russia who works for the project. I didn't know she had worked at The Washington Post. She forwarded it to a former colleague there, and voila, a month later The Post does a story on the same topic.

Coincidence? Maybe. But however the story happened, I think it's a good lesson to all of us to let all our media contacts know about interesting story ideas about disability whenever we can.