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Want to blow a whistle? Here’s how to talk to Harvest Public Media

“All The President’s Men” was published in 1974.

Over here at Harvest Public Media, we may not have Deep Throat. But we do have Undercover Cowboy.

Deep Throat, of course, was the Washington Post reporters’ source for their Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of the Nixon White House and the Watergate burglary. Deep Throat was revealed in 2005 to be Mark Felt, a former FBI official.

We recently broke some news via a good leak by someone we called Undercover Cowboy that brought to light a $2.6 million embezzlement case from the Oklahoma Beef Board.

No dark parking lots, shadowy Nixon character or, um, presidential resignations, but we were proud of our scoop. But hey, our leaker’s name is cool. And Undercover Cowboy passed us information with some plain old-fashioned talking on the phone and a little email trick.

In this era when it appears that it’s getting more impossible than ever to get a factual answer from many government agencies – let alone a response to a Freedom of Information request – we thought we’d offer you some ways to reach us while protecting yourself.  We will protect our sources. And remember, documents are best.

Old-school – send us letters, documents or photos at our snail mail address:

Harvest Public Media
Attention: Peggy Lowe
4825 Troost, Suite 202
Kansas City, Mo., 64110.

I’m Peggy Lowe, investigations editor, at peggylowe@harvestpublicmedia.org. Our editor is Jeremy Bernfeld, bernfeldj@harvestpublicmedia.org.

New-school – There’s some cool new apps out there that will help with cell phone communication. We checked out “Signal,” the encrypted messaging app. After signing up for the service, you can send us a message at 562-290-7817. If you want to be super-duper safe, buy a cheap burner phone with a prepaid plan (use cash), and message us.

You may also want to talk to someone closer to home, and we have Harvest Public Media reporters in four states who you might want to contact. Here are their addresses, snail mail and email, along with phones numbers:

Amy Mayer
Iowa Public Radio
amayer@harvestpublicmedia.org
515.294.6447
1013 WOI Road
Iowa State University Communications Building Room 2024
Ames, IA  50011-1067

Grant Gerlock
NET News
ggerlock@harvestpublicmedia.org
402-470-6346
NET News
1800 North 33rd Street
Lincoln, NE 68503

Kristofor Husted
KBIA
hustedk@missouri.edu
573.882.4680
University of Missouri
78 McReynolds Hall
Columbia, MO 65211

Luke Runyon
KUNC
LRunyon@harvestpublicmedia.org
970-350-0835
1901 56th Avenue, Suite 200
Greeley, Colorado 80634

Peggy Lowe joined Harvest Public Media in 2011, returning to the Midwest after 22 years as a journalist in Denver and Southern California. Most recently she was at The Orange County Register, where she was a multimedia producer and writer. In Denver she worked for The Associated Press, The Denver Post and the late, great Rocky Mountain News. She was on the Denver Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Columbine. Peggy was a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan in 2008-09. She is from O'Neill, the Irish Capital of Nebraska, and now lives in Kansas City. Based at KCUR, Peggy is the analyst for The Harvest Network and often reports for Harvest Public Media.