Do you have an important investigative story you want to alert us about, or a news tip about a problem or issue in Princeton, Mercer County, or New Jersey government? We offer several ways to get in touch with and provide materials to us. No communication system is completely secure, but these tools can help protect your anonymity if that is a concern for you.

Please do not send feedback, story ideas, pitches or press releases through these channels. For more general correspondence visit our contact page.

What Makes a Good Tip?
A strong news tip will have several components. Documentation or evidence is essential. Speculating or having a hunch does not rise to the level of a tip. A good news tip should articulate a clear and understandable issue or problem with real-world consequences. Be specific.

We review messages regularly, but cannot promise each will receive an individual response. There are multiple ways to submit tips. Each method provides different levels of protection, so we encourage you to be certain of the pros and cons of the method you choose. We will respond to tips using the same method in which they were submitted. For example, if you submit a tip to us with WhatsApp, we will only respond to you using WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is a free messaging app owned by Facebook that allows full end-to-end encryption for its service. Search for and download the app from your mobile device. Only the sender and recipient can read messages, photos, videos, voice messages, documents and calls. Though you can limit some account information shared to Facebook, WhatsApp still keeps records of the phone numbers involved in the exchange and the users’ metadata, including timestamps on messages.

Add us: +1 609-216-6627

Signal, a free and open source messaging app, offers end-to-end encryption to send messages, photos, video and calls. Search for and download the app from your mobile device. Signal retains only your phone number, when you first registered with the service, and when you were last active. No metadata surrounding communications is retained. The app also allows messages to self-destruct, removing them from the recipient’s and sender’s phones once they’ve been seen, after a set amount of time.

Add us: +1 609-216-6627

You may also send us encrypted emails. We now use Proton Mail, a Swiss email service that allows us to send and receive encrypted emails and documents. Our email addess is planetprinceton@protonmail.com We recommend that you send the encrypted emails and documents to us via public wifi and not the wifi at a business, school or government office.

If you send us mail through the postal service, which is another secure means of communication, we recommend that you use a blue U.S. Postal Service public mailbox, not a post office. Our mailing address is Planet Princeton, P.O. Box 423, Princeton, NJ 08542.