Its important to establish relationships with key commentators whether they are national or specialist, and to meet and talk to them as they have the space and luxury of telling it their way - often even if they are not on song with their paper's editorial viewpoint. I've worked with many commentators, sometimes because they ring up and often because they are the result of a long process of keeping in touch, informing them and persuasion. Its not possible to persaude them against their views, but you can help to get useful accuracy and suggest valid angles.

I've had good results in many places, trade papers, specialist papers, and in numerous nationals. I could not tell you some of them for fear of upsetting the writers or their readers and editors. Here is an example of a comment piece by Camilla Cavendish of The Times who wrote this after many long phone conversations. Camilla's views were largely supportive of the organisation I worked for the important thing for me was ensuring she had good information and did not misunderstand anything. Similarly, Minette Marin (Sunday Times) and Polly Toynbee (Guardian) also wrote about the assisted dying issue and were good at researching and listening.