When digital outreach fails, try pen and paper 

Letter-writing was one of my favorite hobbies as a child. My mother taught me to write thank-you notes for gifts, and I delighted in doing so. By age 8, I had my very own stationery stash, filled with colorful cards that I decorated with stickers and doodles. I saw my own handwriting as a form of decoration, too, and would fill every last inch of space with swoopy cursive.   

I continued to write letters into adolescence, and especially after my mother died from breast cancer when I was 11. They became a way to keep her memory alive, as well as a way for my father and me to communicate hard truths about life after loss; we often felt more comfortable expressing ourselves with handwritten words instead of spoken ones. 

But like many of us, I drifted away from the practice as an adult. Email became my go-to, a busy schedule my excuse. I would write the occasional letter, only to find it sitting on my desk a month later because I hadn’t made time to buy stamps. After a while, the letter felt too dated to send and would land in the trash.  

Over the past year, though, I’ve started putting pen to stationery again. While reporting my forthcoming memoir, I found myself poring over the letters my father and I had exchanged. They were valuable source material and sparked a new idea: Maybe letters were a better way to engage with some of the people I was interviewing for my book.  

Lest you think I’m low-tech and never on deadline, I contacted most sources for my book via email and conducted some 170 interviews via videoconference, often under time constraints. But in a few instances, I turned to more personal letters when I couldn’t reach a source through digital channels, or when asking about sensitive topics. It worked every time, resulting in interviews I may not have gotten otherwise.  

Letter-writing is more than a lost art: it’s a missed opportunity for journalists who may dismiss it as antiquated and a waste of time. With this in mind, I’ve compiled a few lessons from my own experiences and from a handful of other journalists who have discovered the value of handwritten notes. 

While reporting my book, which explores my struggles with an eating disorder, I tried tracking down several girls I was in treatment with in the 1990s. I wanted to check my memories and get a sense of others’ recovery processes. In many cases, my efforts resulted in meaningful interviews. But others led to something I hadn’t expected: obituaries.  

My heart ached as I read about two young women, Lily and Tracy, whom I knew from our time in treatment. Both died in early adulthood. Lily’s obituary stated the cause of death: anorexia nervosa. Tracy’s obit did not list a cause.  

I assumed that she, too, had lost the battle with anorexia but wanted to know for sure. I pored through the comments on her online obituary and tried contacting a few of her relatives via Facebook — to no avail. Then I found her parents’ mailing address and phone number online. For months I debated whether to reach out. It didn’t feel right to cold-call, and I worried that mailing a letter might raise uncomfortable questions. Would they wonder how I had gotten their home address? Would they distrust my motives? 

As my book deadline loomed, I bought some stationery. With my still-swoopy cursive, I wrote to Tracy’s mother, expressing condolences for her loss. The personal nature of the medium led to more emotional writing. I wrote not so much as a journalist but as someone who once knew her daughter and now wanted to honor her memory. This made the outreach feel more intimate than invasive, more amicable than abrasive.  

At the end of the letter, I left my phone number and asked her to text or call if she felt comfortable doing so. Several weeks passed, and I had all but given up hope until one day I received a text from a number I didn’t recognize: it was Tracy’s mother. I called her that day, and we had a hard and heartfelt interview about her daughter, who had, indeed, died from complications due to anorexia. After we got off the call, I texted her a picture of a letter Tracy had written me when we were in treatment together. All these years later, I still hold it dear.   

ProPublica reporter Nicole Foy sent handwritten letters to several sources when working on a recent story about an immigrant who died while building a ship for the U.S. government. Foy drove around Louisiana, going to as many as a dozen homes to find immigrant workers who weren’t easily reachable by phone or email.  

“For most of these workers, email is not a thing they really use,” said Foy, who is ProPublica’s Ancil Payne Fellow focused on coverage of immigration and labor. “I was trying to reach a very difficult segment — undocumented workers who mostly speak Spanish in Louisiana, which is not known for having the biggest immigrant community.”  

Sometimes, her door-knocks yielded results. When they went unanswered, she would pull out her notebook and write a letter. She wrote in both Spanish and English, saying she had stopped by and hoped to talk. “With handwritten notes, anybody could pick them up,” Foy told me. “So I'm very careful about what I say and what I reveal.”  

She left her business card inside the notes and put them in mailboxes. “I think because we’re so used to recording interviews and doing things virtually, we miss a lot,” Foy said. “Showing up and leaving handwritten notes, or even mailing a note, is just a different way to interact with people. And sometimes it’s unique enough that it’s what gets someone to talk to you.”  

Freelance journalist Alicia Garceau turned to letter-writing after finding an item that sparked a story idea. She was skimming through the FBI’s FOIA library — also known as The Vault — when she came across a potential source. She tried several phone numbers and left a few voicemails but never heard back. So she mailed a letter to his home address. It took a few months, but the source eventually called. 

“The event I discovered in The Vault happened 40 years prior, so I think contacting the source by letter allowed me to explain my intentions and gave him something to think about,” Garceau said. “Unlike an email that might have gotten deleted or buried in his inbox, a personal letter stuck with him.”  

I asked Garceau whether writing by hand influenced her writing style. Her response will resonate with many: “It encouraged brevity; my handwriting is terrible.”  

Journalist Matt Wynn also claimed a slovenly scrawl, calling it “the worst handwriting on the planet.”  

Wynn used letter-writing years ago to contact a grieving mother. He called and left several voicemails but wasn’t sure if he had the right number. After not hearing back, Wynn decided to mail a letter as “a last resort.” Instead of writing by hand, he typed his letter and added a few handwritten sentences to make it more personal. He kept a cordial tone throughout and relayed his desire to learn more about the mother’s late son.  

“I do remember spending a tick of time wondering, ‘Do I put this on letterhead or not?’” Wynn said. He opted for plain paper — a choice that felt appropriate for a correspondence intended as more personal than official. The letter led to a response, and Wynn ended up interviewing the mother soon after. 

“Letter-writing is a way to shake loose sources who are otherwise not shake-loose-able. For me, it’s always a step on the I-can’t-reach-this-person path,” said Wynn, who is executive director of the Nebraska Journalism Trust. “Running this nonprofit newsroom now, it’s comical how much time we spend thinking [about] what envelopes we should use [or] ‘do we handwrite the address?’ These things affect how many people open a letter, and how they experience it, and they’re the same questions I was thinking about back in the day when I was working on that story.”  

Tampa Bay Times reporter Lane DeGregory spent five years writing letters to a single source: a woman named Susie Wheldon, whose husband, Dan, a race car driver, had died in a fiery wreck. DeGregory wanted to write about Wheldon, who lived in Tampa Bay with her two young sons.   

DeGregory called Wheldon and left voicemails at least three times. She sent five or six emails that went unanswered. Then she decided to write a letter. She typed it on Tampa Bay Times stationary, folding it into an envelope with her business card and three clips she hoped would give Wheldon a sense of her work. 

“She was neighbors with a friend of mine, so I think I mentioned that, too, and outlined why I wanted to share her story. She never responded. I gave her space,” said DeGregory, a Pulitzer Prize winner. “The next year, before the anniversary of her husband Dan’s death, I wrote her another letter. This one, I think, by hand. I told her I was the mom of two boys (making that connection — I'm not just a journalist) and that I couldn't imagine having to raise them after losing their dad, and explaining to them what happened, and figuring out what came next.” 

DeGregory kept sending letters around the anniversary of Dan’s death or timed to the local Grand Prix race where he competed. Over the years, the letters got shorter. DeGregory didn’t want to bother Wheldon; she just wanted to let her know she was thinking about her and the boys and wondered how they were doing. 

“I'm not sure if it was the actual notes or my persistence. But five years after Dan's death she emailed me. She said she'd kept the business card I'd mailed her all those years ago and was finally ready to talk,” said DeGregory, who wrote this story about Wheldon. “People might be more likely to respond if they know you took the time to compose a note, write it by hand, put it in an envelope, find a stamp and send it out into the world. I also think people hold onto letters and cards — or set them aside to deal with later instead of deleting them. Bottom line: It can't hurt.” 

I had this same mentality when reporting my book, which includes a chapter about my childhood home. I hadn’t stepped foot in that house for nearly 20 years but now found myself wanting to walk its halls and feel its walls. I hoped that returning might conjure up long-lost memories and reinforce long-lasting ones. I didn’t know the current owner, so a cold call seemed inappropriate; I wanted to take a more inviting approach.  

I wrote the homeowner about my book, our shared connection to her house, and my hope to visit it during a trip back to my hometown in Massachusetts. As I wrote my old address on the envelope, it struck me that mailing a letter there was a way to acknowledge the place that linked sender and recipient.  

I received a positive response in reply and had a chance to walk through my old home. The experience makes me think of a quote from 19th century scholar James Willis Westlake, author of “How to Write a Letter”: 

Some journalists I spoke with said they’ve sent handwritten thank-you notes to sources. As my mother’s daughter, I’ve done the same. After interviewing Tracy’s mom, I handwrote her a note expressing my gratitude for her time and willingness to talk.  

Reporting my book largely involved interviews with clinicians, caretakers, and people who have lived experiences with an eating disorder. It struck me that so many people had poured their heart out to me; the least I could do was take time to thank them. There was no way I could handwrite notes to everyone, so I often turned to email. But in some cases, when I could sense that the person had never shared their story before and had mustered the courage to confide in me, I got out my stationery.  

I also wrote thank-you letters to friends and colleagues who read early copies of my book, as well as those who had taken the time to blurb it. As an added touch, I crafted origami bookmarks and included one in each note. Sometimes, as happened all those years ago, the letters sat on my desk for a month as I waited to buy stamps. But eventually, I mailed every last one.  

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Mallary Tenore Tarpley teaches at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media. Her debut nonfiction book, “Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery,” will be published by Simon & Schuster’s Simon Element imprint in August 2025 and is now available for pre-order. She recently launched a newsletter, Write at the Edge, geared toward helping writers hone their craft.