And thank you, readers, newshawks, editors, FOCUS Alert specialists,
funders, webmasters, listmasters, and everyone else who participates in
this project!

August was another record month for news items, with a total of 1596
posted, up from the 1416 record set in March when the Institute of Medicine
report came out. The average per day for the month was 51.5. The average
for the first 15 days was 40.7 items per day. The average per day jumped to
63.5 during the last 15 days of August.

August, the media says, is a slow news month. It was a slow news month for
us during August of 1998. The words of our two governors from Texas and New
Mexico caused the increase of news for us, as the media covered and
responded to their statements. DrugSense sent out FOCUS Alerts, and we
created topical news shortcuts to allow readers to review the latest
stories more easily:

For the stories resulting from Gov. Johnson's efforts:
http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0120.html
http://www.mapinc.org/johnson.htm

And for Gov. Bush:
http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0121.html
http://www.mapinc.org/bush.htm

And the news items keep arriving at editor@mapinc.org along with a
significant increase of PUB LTEs archived at the Published Letters Archive
http://www.mapinc.org/lte/

All this, while not overwhelming the volunteer team that edits and posts
the items, has, at times, left us hard pressed to keep up. (For me, it
means I have email from some of you than needs to be answered - I look
forward to the long weekend in front of this computer!)

The average time from receipt at editor@mapinc.org has gone from 11 hours
in July to 14 hours in August.

This does not mean, newshawks, that you should slow down your efforts. We
apologize, newshawks, if some of your posts did not make it out as fast as
usual! Keep sending the items! By the weekend we will start working with
some new volunteer editors - and will work to bring our timeliness back up!

The governors may well have helped increase the news in our area of
interest, but it is you all who are making the MAP/DrugSense effort such a
growing success! Thank You!

Richard Lake
Sr. Editor; MAPnews, MAPnews-Digest and DrugNews-Digest

More than 26,000 Drug-Related News Clippings
in a SEARCHABLE database!
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/

For subscription information see:
http://www.MAPinc.org/lists/

Quick sign up for DrugNews-Digest, Focus Alerts or Weekly:
http://www.DrugSense.org/hurry.htm