Dear Samantha,
I am a long time caver and working journalist. Let me give you a few tips:
You say you are at Indiana University. Have you contacted Bloomington Grotto? It meets on your campus in the geology building. Go to
www.caves.org (our parent page) and look up the contact info. I'm sure, since you are a student, they will be welcoming to you, as long as you don't storm in and say "I am a journalist and I'm here to help save you from obscurity!" I bet they could come up with a bit of the adventure slant you seek.
If you are indeed contemplating a career in journalism, the first thing you need to do when seeking interviews is to give people your full name, the name of your publication, or places you have had articles published, or that you are a freelance (with or without assignment) and an email or phone number for directly contacting you. Making a 'fishing trip' on an open board, without giving your whole name or contact info and saying "just post responses here" brands you as non-professional. You have to give some information to get some, and to get people to trust you.
You could do a much better service to the caving community to educate yourself on WNS, and interview some cavers, and make that the crux of your article, to counteract the hordes of poor journalists out there who are jumping to conclusions on the basis of news releases. It's a very timely issue, much more than "caving is adventurous." Cavers may ask to read any article you write before you submit it. While prior vetting is not standard procedure in much of journalism, if you aren't familiar with the topic at hand, getting one or two of the interviewees to look your work over for factual errors makes you look good, as well as responsible in cavers' eyes. Do a good job, and others will recommend you and may even seek you out with stories. Mess up bigtime, by being sloppy or promote caving as an X-Treme sport and you are toast to the cavers.
If you wish to continue this discussion, PM me, and I will give you off-board contact information. The journalism world out there is a jungle of razorwire out there right now. Be careful.
Teresa
P.S. Wyandotte, I'm working on a WNS article right now, for distribution outside the org caving community, in an effort to rehabilitate cavers and caver behavior as well as educate caving independents.