Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
In an era of encrypted email, apps like Signal for safe texts and calls, and The New York Times’s channels, there are many ways for tipsters to submit information. But some still rely on an old-fashioned and decidedly low-tech tool: the plain brown envelope.
That’s what arrived by snail mail in mid-July, just before the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. It had six American flag stamps and a handwritten address directing it to “Tips” at The Times’s New York headquarters.
The envelope contained nearly 100 pages of documents revealing the full story of the death of the astronaut in 2012 at the age of 82 following quadruple bypass surgery. The documents showed that his two sons, Rick and Mark Armstrong, had threatened a malpractice lawsuit, prompting the hospital to pay the family $6 million in a secret settlement.
[Do you have a confidential tip? There are several safe ways to reach out to The Times.]
The documents included sometimes-testy emails between lawyers for the two sides, opinions of medical experts on Mr. Armstrong’s treatment and records from the Ohio probate court that handled his estate.
The package was accompanied by a brief typed note: “While the health system surreptitiously tried to cover this up by requesting court documents be sealed, we felt compelled to share this information with you,” the anonymous tipster wrote. “We hope others can be saved as a result of the dissemination of this information to the public because this American hero did not have to die an untimely death.”
If real, such a settlement would be newsworthy for several reasons, including these two: First, just about any significant development in the life or death of a public figure of Mr. Armstrong’s historic stature is news. Second, the sealing of legal settlements is an old and contentious practice, because the secrecy sometimes deprives the public of important information — say, a potentially lethal flaw in a consumer product — and leaves in place hazards that could be corrected.
But before we could consider publishing a story based on the documents, we would have to authenticate them. Anonymous tips are welcome, but they are also challenging: You have no idea who the source is, which means the person could be a hoaxster feeding you fabricated documents. So we were pleased to discover that the probate court records, though stamped “Filed under seal,” were available online to anyone who knew where to look. They confirmed the authenticity of the submitted material. A few days after the envelope arrived at The Times, we published an article about what was inside.
That article focused on the previously-secret medical malpractice settlement, which the mailed documents described. A second article, which followed five days later, explored deep rifts within the Armstrong family over how to preserve the astronaut’s legacy.
We got hints of this divide in the court documents, which revealed jostling over who should get what share of the $6 million settlement — with some family members, including Mr. Armstrong’s widow, choosing to take no payment at all. But getting the whole picture required interviews with the Armstrong family and the people who knew them well, like Mr. Armstrong’s personal lawyer and his biographer.
That reporting showed some family members working to preserve Mr. Armstrong’s legacy by working exclusively with universities and museums — and others selling thousands of his personal items at auction, generating millions of dollars in revenue. This divide felt especially newsworthy to us in the case of Mr. Armstrong, a public figure who had often seemed reluctant to profit off his celebrity. How would a man who stopped signing autographs because he worried about the recipients selling them feel about a child’s report card he’d signed being auctioned for $750?
We still have no idea who the tipster was. But if the person was involved in the case, there’s a powerful motive to remain anonymous. Court records say that if any party to the secret settlement discloses it, all $6 million will have to be paid back. So if anyone on the family’s side of the dispute decided to become a whistle-blower, that individual would have six million reasons not to take public credit for the tip.
But we are grateful to that tipster who dropped that envelope in the mail — and even if we wanted to, we would have no way of discovering who it is. Unlike some newer technologies, the plain brown envelope leaves no electronic trail.
Follow the @ReaderCenter on Twitter for more coverage highlighting your perspectives and experiences and for insight into how we work.
